Yes, I'm back. Seems I took a bit of a hiatus from blogging which lapsed into pure laziness on my part. The main reason I stopped posting here was the demise of my beloved Nikon camera. Somehow the blog seems kinda blah without pictures to complete my story telling, so I lost my enthusiasm for telling you all about our adventures.
But when our nephew, Tyler, visited us in October he showed me that the camera was still intact, it was just the lens that was a goner. Luckily, he has a friend who is a fabulous photographer and they texted back and forth and Tyler's friend recommended a new lens to jazz up my camera. Um, just one issue with all of that. The lens was super expensive. So, I waited and waited and debated if I should press "Add to cart" on Amazon......and right before Christmas I decided to gift myself a super-duper present. Yes! The lens! After all it was my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one(and I even promised Joel it was an anniversary present for the next umpteen years for me as well).
And so I've been practicing with it over the holidays....doing shots inside and outdoors, too. Trying different lighting and arranging items to get the focus right, and begging our farm animals to cooperate and stay still and "look at me!". Ha! I'll work on that some more. And now, for your entertainment, here are a few pics of our recent activities.
Jeremy brought us the loveliest present this year for Christmas.....himself and his girlfriend, Hannah. They arrived in time for dinner on my birthday and stayed thru till Christmas morning. We had a wonderful time getting acquainted with Hannah and we hope to see a lot more of them both real soon.
Ok, I know it's half a month past the holidays, but I had to include at least a little bit of Christmas in this post. Here's the island in our farmhouse kitchen, all decked out for some hot chocolate, coffee, or whatever pleases your tummy.
And when I wandered out to the front pasture, look who was staring back at me. Buttercup is on the left, Beefcake(who is soon going to be in our freezer) is on her right, and Baby Bell is in the background. I love to walk around the farm and hear them moo-ing at me as I walk up to the fence to visit with them. Pretty soon we hope to start the process of mating so we can have a calf next spring and milk for our family soon after that! Woo-hoo! I can hardly wait.
After I took down all the Christmas decorations, I decided to chalk up a little sign for the back porch. And darn, if it didn't work! We got snow a couple of days later.
It was so pretty to walk outside and snap a few shots of our landscape layered in a light coating of fluffy snow. And then the temps dropped into the single digits. Brrrr.......
But these guys didn't seem to mind the cold or the snow one little bit. Shadow is on the left and Saber is on the right. She is about 70 lbs. now and he is well over 75 lbs. They are growing so fast and will be 8 months old in 2 weeks. They are supposed to reach their full stature by the time they are 18 months old. Won't it be interesting to see how big they get at full maturity?
Joel is crazy about these dogs and he spends a lot of time outside giving them love and bonding with them. They follow us everywhere and we believe they will be really great guard dogs. Every day they run out to the gates at the end of our lane(yes, we finished with all that fencing last Fall) and greet the mailman who affectionately gives them both a good scratch behind the ears.
Well, I hope by now you have forgiven me for staying away so long. I have so much more to tell you and will try to fill you in on the farm "goings on". For now, I wish you a Happy and Healthy New Year.
Back in the saddle again,
Debbie
