Green Acres

We went out to the country to visit my husband's younger sister who lives on a farm.

Man, I am so not a country girl. It gives me the creeps. All that empty space, no people around to hear you scream when Jason breaks into your house. I think I watched too many horror movies as a kid.

Anyway, it's a fun place to visit. YSIL (P) and her boyfriend (M) own 7 horses. No, they are not rich. P works as a stable hand at someone else's stable during the day (yes, she loves horses, can you tell?) and M is some sort of nurse dispatcher (not clear on that). One horse is good enough that they are going to breed it (apparently her Grandpa just got put in some racing hall of fame) and one is a show horse. The rest are pets that were rescued from abuse or abandoned by their owners so P&M either got them for free or very, very cheap. Apparently, just like cats and dogs, a lot of people buy horses and then realize they don't really want them. Horses. Seriously. Who buys a horse without thinking it through?

The house they rent has two stables (they use one and the other stands empty right now) and many fenced in fields so the horses are right at home with them so I guess that helps in the money department.



They have a small chicken coop near the stables. That's Owen doing a chicken impersonation in the picture. That's me on the right wearing two coats (at the same time) and gloves while everyone else walked around saying "it's not that cold".

P says that since the cold hit, the chickens have stopped laying but that's ok, she still has 6 dozen eggs in her house. Yikes!

Near one of the fields we noticed two apple trees with tons of apples rotting on the ground. With P's ok we all started giving apples to horses which made their day. The picture at the top is Bridget, Owen, P and Older SIL's dh, who seemed to enjoy feeding the horses more than anyone else.

P at first said she thought the apples weren't good to eat. Then she apologized because they "didn't spray them". When I said that's great - organic apples! - she just looked at me funny. I finally found a good, non-rotten, unwormy apple and took a bite. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm! It was tart and crisp like a McIntosh - my favorite! The other tree had apples more like Red Delicious. I managed to find two of the small ones and one of the big ones that were good enough to take home. I can't believe the amount of dirt that was on apples still hanging on the tree, but once they were scrubbed they were beautiful. I'll take pictures later, before we eat them.

Unfortunately, we didn't get pictures of the main fun of the day. P & M have a big (100 lb or so) dog named Monster. Monster is VERY affectionate and previously has scared the kids by trying to love on them too much. This time, on his home turf, we took Monster outside to play ball with him. Wow, that was a blast. He has a big, blue ball with a handle that we kicked as far as we could. He'd run full tilt after it and then carry it back. Over, and over, and over. It turns out after you do this long enough to wear him out (which took awhile) he wasn't so jumpy. We left with the kids having a new found love of Monster.

Unfortunately the bad part of the day was finding I am again allergic to cats. Not that I've ever been not allergic, but when I live with cats I get sort of used to it. Now, since Oscar has been gone 4 (?) months, we walked into the house (home to 2 cats) and about ten minutes later I felt that old familiar feeling. Sigh. That was on top of my cold even (yeah, a cold is yucky - a cold with cat dander is noticably worse). I spent a lot of time outside which was more fun anyway.