Time to Relax

It's summer! I got out of school last week, after a long and grueling week of final exams.

Well, it wasn't all that bad. I ended up in good shape with straight A's and an Award in Spanish to my name. So now it feels really good to relax. I'm in Florida again, and as you might expect I'll be making my annual visit to the Carriage Museum soon.

Where I am in Florida doesn't always lend itself to fun photography unless horses are involved, but I do have a few shots to share from Cape Ann, Massachusetts.

The famous "Motif #1" at Bearskin Neck

I took a lot of photos as usual but these are the only ones I like. When we arrived at the Cape the weather was very cold and rainy, so I didn't have my camera out. Over the next few days we boulder-hopped along a rocky section of coastline, visited Bearskin Neck and Rocky Neck to check out the art galleries, and climbed up part of a cliff over the ocean that my dad used to climb a lot, years ago. I ended up climbing that cliff barefoot because the highly impractical ballet flats I was wearing finally broke after two years of almost non-stop use. I think it was more fun barefoot than it would have been in sneakers, though I wouldn't advise following my example.

My mom is also blogging a bit more actively now, so you should take a look at her blog here.

Farm Chatter

Last week my school gave us Thursday off in observance of the Winter Carnival tradition. It wasn't technically Winter Carnival because there were no events, but it was nice to have a free day. It should come as no surprise that I spent the entire day at the farm. Even though not much was going on, it was fun to hang out. We have a new calf called Gustav. He was given to us for free by a dairy farm up in Vermont. He's not very healthy at the moment, having not drunk any colostrum, but Liam is treating him and he seems to be improving. Shockingly enough, I only got a snapshot of him because I was sort-of-kind-of busy doing chores. It's no big deal--I'll get more when I go down next.

In any case, I did actually get some decent shots of Ruth. She was living inside the feed room for a while because it was so cold, and Gustav is in there now. She got moved out on Thursday to live in a stall with Jess, one of our older calves.

Ruth

Gustav

Because Spring Family Days are coming up, this week on the farm will probably be all about making and packaging farm products like syrup, jam, ice cream, cheese, and beauty products. We have a lot of milk, as well, now that there are three cows being milked.

I also made it down to the farm on Saturday. Rachel and Liam didn't really need my help as they had plenty of work job students to do what was needed, so they seemed happy to let me bring in a horse and get rid of me. Although I don't technically have work job on the farm this spring because I'm getting credit for sugaring, I still see the horses' exercise as my responsibility... for the most part. I can't really do much with them because we're not allowed to ride off of the farm (stupid liability issues) so if I get down and can hack them around the pen for a few minutes it's been a successful day. How lame is that? But anyway, I did throw the Western saddle on Kara and trot around for a little while in the pen. These pictures of the horses are from a few days before.

Kate

Today I also got to have some horsey time. I had my first lesson of the spring semester at Stoneleigh-Burnham, riding a small chestnut Quarter Horse called Moe. He started off very pokey but was also looking around at everything, until I got him over a few fences and he perked up. He didn't listen to me very well for the first two times we went around the little course, but the third time was halfway decent and didn't involve too many breaks in stride. If we'd had a little more time to work through it I think I could have made it perfect, but we could only do so much in a half-hour. No photos from that because today was Founder's Day and I had to get back to school as fast as possible, but it was a good ride.

A few more random shots of the cows:

Jess playing in the snow

In order front to back: Eliza, Rachel, Sarah, Zuska

Jess

Hope you enjoyed those! More Antarctica photos are coming a little later--maybe this Wednesday or sometime around there.

Fall is Here

It might be the slowly changing leaves around here, or it might be the chilly rains that have made each Friday night for the past two weeks more miserable than usual, but one thing is certain: fall is on the way. Or here. Technically fall started on the 22nd, so I guess it's here. Many of the trees are still greenish or mostly green, and we are still getting some warmer days. But the coming of fall means that I will be taking much more colorful photos than usual, which makes me incredibly happy. Taking pictures of animals in front of green stuff gets a little boring sometimes, and I'm not getting enough sleep to warrant shooting the sunrise.

The farm has been doing well; Liam is the new farm manager and we also have a farm intern now, who runs half-marathons and is pretty darn awesome himself. And of course, Rachel is still around, though I don't get to see her nearly as often as I'd like.

Raspberry season is still going strong, and despite a number of really awful vinegar flies the cold weather has meant that we can make jam without worrying too much about getting larvae in it (yuck!).

Picking raspberries is still not the most fun job, but hanging around with farm people is worth it.

There's more to tell, but this will do as an update for now. Expect more photos from the farm, but this time it won't be of raspberries. Tomorrow we pick up our first crates of apples from the orchards, and cidering season will be on its way!

It's that time of year again.

School time! Although it seems a little strange, I'm really quite excited to get down to work. Classes start tomorrow, so I don't have too long to wait. Volleyball tryouts are happening right now; I had a 7 AM to 9AM session this morning and will have another at 3:30 this afternoon. I still don't know if I'll make the varsity team or not, but I can work really hard and that's what I've been doing. In a few days I'll know.

I haven't been very good about taking photos over the past few days because of orientation activities and tryouts and setting up my room and seeing friends... however, I did work on the farm for three days and got some photos from there. And that's really the best place for it anyway, since it's so pretty there this time of year. There are so many flowers blooming, tomatoes and asparagus growing, calves sitting around and eating...

We still have Jordan, Ricky, and Pete, although they would normally have gone to live with another farmer at the end of last school year. They will be leaving at some point, but that point has not yet come and I'm perfectly content to keep them as long as possible. I got a few good photos of them the other day, too. Jordan is growing into a very handsome young bull, if I may say so. He still has the adorable white spots above his hooves, but you can't really see them here. 

The grass has gotten high where the calves haven't been eating in, which led to some interesting shots.

Ricky and Pete are also growing up to be quite photogenic.

This was just an experiment...

Here are the rest of the miscellaneous shots I took over the few days I was at the farm all day, every day.

Hope you enjoyed them! I certainly had fun shooting them. More to come soon, and maybe I'll get to use the fog in the mornings; I have A block off of class to work on the farm.