farm life

Woohoo, the Raindance barn cams are back online as of tonight! The links are on the Raindance main page for those that have missed watching equine reality television.

Jeff

January 24, 2010, 11:30am: Okay guys, it’s just too darned pretty out to not have somebody share the view so I’m going to try to rig up my iPhone to broadcast our journey snowshoeing into the woods. Don’t know how it will come out as I won’t be able to view what you do but we’ll give it a shot! Here’s the link – we’re leaving in about 15 minutes or so:

iPhone broadcast link

Hi folks,

With my iphone I can broadcast live from where ever I am anytime…so here’s my question for you. I’m going snowshoeing around noon or so I would guess. Would anyone like to join me via live broadcast? I’m not going to do it automatically because it means rigging something up in my jacket and I won’t get to listen to podcasts but that’s okay if somebody wants to go snowshoeing in the backwoods with me and the dogs. If you do want to – let me know soon: jeff@raindancehorses.com

Jeff

After Jordan died last year, I found my desire and discipline to work out just evaporated. I guess just working at my stressful job with its insane hours, plus the farm operations were enough to sap the energy I had. The result is I’m in terrible shape if you ask me. So I decided to do something about it and bought some snowshoes to get back out there. The maiden voyage didn’t go well – apparently you have to have them on your feet really, really tight… It did however allow me to get closer to nature as I spent quite a bit of time looking closer at it as it rushed up at me as I landed on my face.

The next day went better, though I attacked it with perhaps too much vigor and should’ve started with a smaller journey. Halo (my collie) likes to follow behind me letting me be the trail blazer and keep stepping on the back of the showshoes, reuniting me with the ground over and over. I knew the general direction home but having not worked out in far too long, I decided to hike through some wetlands which have weeds that seek to grab you and keep you with them to share their lonely existence. By the time I hiked out out of those weeds – after debating a number of times whether to turn back and follow my broken trail, continue moving deeper into woods looking for a better trail out or just resign and forage for a meager existence…I continued forward. As I fell farther and farther into a weakened state of exhaustion (otherwise known as reinforcement that I’m out of shape…) and malnourishment (Doritos sounded really good…) and dehydration (man a hot cup of coffee would be SO good out here…) that’s when I asked the dogs to assist in finding a trail. After that I realized they’re really only man’s best friend because among guys we mooch, and dogs really like to just sorta mooch off you as opposed to cats who make you feel like they do you a favor if they lower themselves to accepting something you offer them versus them stealing it off your plate when you get up to get something. Walker just likes to run and explore. He could’ve cared less if we’d become stranded out there.

Needless to say, we did make it out alive and plan to write a book about our experience and get on Oprah before she pretends to retire and instead switches to the cable network she owns. Or at least have more coffee and Doritos.

Kat hauls a huge round bale with Excalibur

As you can imagine, we go through tons (literally) of hay each year. We begin stocking up during late Summer, usually buying out the entire output of a hay farm, brought here by the semi truck load. It’d be cheaper just to burn our paychecks directly…

Hey folks, I’ve been working on getting the zillions of photos I have on my computer organized, catalogued and some of them uploaded to this site. As I work on this I’m uploading photos each day – keep checking back to see the updates, they’re currently on the page marked: Raindance Photos on the right side. As each category becomes too large I’ll split it off onto its own page but for now they’re all under that section.

Jeff

Reading is fundamental. Chaos learns to read.