Sunday, May 19, 2013

In which I get all caught up on many things

So, first of all, the oldest and possibly biggest update - on February 13th, my sweetie and I got hitched for realz - it was the anniversary of our first meeting online, a dating website, of course. I remember looking at his location (Paris, France) and thinking, yeah, this is gonna happen. But what the heck, his pic was cute, and I was home on a snow day, so a little flirtation was definitely in order. We chatted for a bit about not much, and then I excused myself to go shovel the snow off the driveway..."I love shovelling snow," says he, and I answered, "Will you marry me?" Humour. Har. But then 8 years later, he did. And it was cool - us, our good friend the priest, my 2 kids as witnesses, and my daughter's bf as a bonus. I wore jeans, but also a beautiful celestarium shawl that I knitted. It has beads in the shape of the northern sky's constellations on it, and I love it:
There is only one picture of my wedding, a hilarious cell phone pic that my daughter took, with her bf's face photobombing the corner, but it was the perfect wedding for us, and the most stress-free thing I could imagine. 

Stress-free is good, because shortly after that, my beautiful Murphy-horse got a bad impaction colic from lousy hay. He almost died, and my wallet did die - but I was very glad he pulled through. The end result of this story was that my daughter and I decided to move to a new boarding stable; expecting to have to look for months to find a suitable space, we lucked into one right away: not only cheaper, but a newer barn, bigger turnout, 500 acres of riding trails, and also SHEEP! with fibre that I can spin! And, as the icing on the cake, the cherry on the sundae - it's actually in my all-time favourite piece of Nova Scotia ever. For years, every time I drove up Highway 101 on the way to the Annapolis valley, I would see the gypsum cliffs of Ellershouse and St. Croix, with the old Acadian dikes in front, and fantasize about riding there. Imagine our joy when we found out the new barn began on top of those very gypsum cliffs. I had to pinch myself to believe it.

Here is what it looks like from the highway:



And here is one of the many trails we can ride:

And for those of you who knit and spin, here are some of the sheep!

They are a beautiful flock of pure-bred North Country Cheviots, bred by Jan Hunter at the aptly named Clifftop Farm. Shearing will be soon, and you wanna believe there will be a photo-essay on that!

These two little cuties are twins whose momma didn't want them - Misfit and Lambert, being bottle-fed, will come running to any human, hoping for cuddles and milk. Next year, when their fleeces are ready, there will be hats and mittens for all specifically from them :)


And finally, here are Murphy and Katie, happy in their new home:
 


And finally, here's what the farm looked like in March, when we moved in:

That white lump front and center is Nikki, the Great Pyrenees guard dog, who not only defends the sheep against coyotes and all enemies, but also takes it upon herself to accompany us on our trail rides.

So, lots of new things in the new year - a husband, barn, sheep - life is good. More later!

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