Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Annie and Jessie - on the job

Annie and Jessie are on the job now.

We here them working through the night and even during the day.


They have been warming up to us slowly and we get to pet them...when they want to be pet.

Anatolian Shepherds have a long history. They originate in Turkey as guard dogs for sheep.

They were never household pets, they were workers and loved their jobs.

To this day, Anatolian Shepherds still have that working drive.

These sweet dogs have protected herds from wolves, cheetahs, and bears for centuries!



These pups have our respect.
They will keep our small herd of goats from harm and risk their lives.
We look forward to growing with these little girls (they aren't even 2 yet!)
and see them grow to be amazing adult dogs.

Thank you so much to the Allen family for allowing us to adopt these amazing dogs.





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Viva Las Vegas....for 12 hours.

We got into Las Vegas at 1pm on Friday afternoon.
Jeremy has never been to Vegas before so we did a quick run through.
We drove down the strip, pulled into the Paris hotel.
Took the trip over to the Bellagio.
Ate lunch at the Bellagio.



Went back to the Paris hotel.
Drove to our hotel (the only one that would allow two 100lb dogs in the room)



And met our new family members!

This is Annie...she is so sweet and was very timid while in the hotel.



This is Jessie, she was a little less timid but wouldn't come out of her crate either.



So we went to bed at 8pm, woke up at 2am and got on the road.

You may ask how we got the dogs in the car?!?

We loaded them in their crates on a bell hop cart.

They didn't come out of the car the entire trip!

Once we got home, we had to turn the crates over to get them to come out.

Poor babies!

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Body Guards!

We have had a rough couple months with the threat of a mountain lion in our area.

So we have been researching Livestock Guardian Dogs (LGDs).

There are so many options but we were at a loss as to which one would be good for our family and farm.

We were lucky enough to have a family that had two LGD's that needed a new home.

So we adopted them!

However, they were in New Mexico and we are in Northern California.

Can you say "Road Trip"?

We met half way in Las Vegas, NV.

What a drive! It was so pretty but so desolate!





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Our chicks are big girls now!

We have eggs!
12 of them now!

It seems like it has been forever since we got our little baby chicks
and now they are big girls!


Emily is so excited and checks the coop over twice a day!
She took the picture below.

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Pappa's Corral

As most of you have heard we have had issues with keeping our fiesty goats inside the fence.

So when my parents came to visit, Dad and Jer went to work.

Hey, it was free labor!!!

Can you believe they ran 400 feet of no-climb fencing in less than 48 hours?

They are amazing men!

We officially named it "Pappa's Corral"
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My Hardworking Ranch Hand

My husband is such a hard worker.
Not only does he have a demanding job as a firefighter....
but he comes home to an even more demanding job.

We are finally able to get going on the solar installation.

You see, we are off-grid which means that we don't have any power unless we run off of solar power or a generator.

Our generator has been charging our batteries but it uses propane (which is expensive) every time we have to run it. We run it about 2-3 hours a day.

Once we get the solar up, we won't have to run the generator and that will save us lots of cash!

Solar is FREE!!



He will be working on it again this weekend so I will update my blog with pics.
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Welcome Lucy!

Since I can't have another baby until June of next year. We decided to adopt.
Not a baby!
A puppy!

This is Lucy, our Australian Shepherd. She is so much fun and so sweet.

Emily loves this little girl.


This little girl loves to sit at my feet!


She thinks she is a big girl and loves to play with Lily and Lindsay.
They don't know what to think of this little pup.

She does know how to keep up with them though. We went on a 2 mile walk and she made it the whole way!

Another girl on the ranch!

Poor boys!
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