Windows Live Writer

Finally got a new computer and am in the process of setting it up. It had this blogging program on it, so I thought that I would give it a try. Since I am still on a dial-up out here in the wilderness of southern Indiana, I thought it would be a great idea to be able to blog when I am offline. It seems to have lots of bells and whistles, so far I am impressed.

The unrelenting Summer heat has relented today and it was just in time for us to get our first load of hay in the loft. I didn’t think that we would be putting any square bales in the loft this year because reasonably priced, good quality square baled hay is a thing of the past. I thought that we were going to try to get by with just big round bales but we fell for it again and this hay is another disappointment. These bales are half the size of the hay that we got a few years ago for half the price. It is so light and loose that it won’t stay on the elevator.

In this tough economy everyone is trying to get rich by ripping off their neighbor. Small farmers or hobby farmers have to have their own hay equipment and their own hayfield in order to survive anymore. We can sit and reminisce with the Grandkids this winter about how you used to be able to buy good clean hay without weeds in heavy, long, tight bales for $2.00 per bale.

Now let’s see how Windows Live Writer publishes to blogger.

Before Seat Belts and Car Seats

You know that you are getting old when you wake up one day and you are living in a very foreign country. Things are just not like they used to be. This has the potential to be an extremely long post. I will try to keep it short.

Are the changes that have taken place in the last 50 some years for the better or the worse? Some are definitely better but most, in my opinion, are for the worse. For instance, Banquet Pot Pies used to be full of tender white chicken or turkey breast meat and large chunks of good quality vegetables. They were delicious.

The last time that I had a Banquet Pot Pie it was full of some type of dark meat that was hard to identify with microscopic vegetables that looked like they were the castaways from someone's poorly performing garden. But most importantly the taste was terrible.

Many foods have changed for the worse. Potato chips bags used to be full of potato chips instead of air. T.V. Dinners tasted good and were cheap too. Pepsi doesn't taste the same now at all. My Son recently bought some cans of Pepsi that were made with real sugar in "re-makes" of the original cans and it tasted so good.

I told my oldest Son the other night that he didn't have a car seat or even a seat belt when he was young. When he was a newborn until he was 2 or 3 years old, he sat on my lap in the car. If he and I went somewhere alone he was on his own because we didn't have seat belts in all cars and trucks and even if they did have belts, you didn't strap your little kids in them, they weren't made for kids.

With our second Son, we did have a car seat of sorts. But it was probably more dangerous than no car seat at all. It was a hard plastic booster type seat with a hard plastic shield that came down in front of him. It didn't work with seat belts, so if we had ever been in an accident he would probably have broken his nose hitting that shield.

Station wagons used to be popular for families with children because the kids could entertain themselves by crawling over the seat into the back to play games or take naps on long trips.

When I was young and you went anywhere in a truck, it was a given that the kids had to ride in the back if it was warm weather. That's just where the kids all rode. We were still riding in the backs of pickup trucks when my kids were young.

I have blogged before about how we hauled horses when I was young and even when we were first married. Our horses just jumped into the back of the pickup with a wobbly, wooden rack with their heads over the roof of the cab facing the wind.

We weren't the only ones who hauled their horses like this, that's the way everyone did it. Now you have to have padded trailers, bumper pads, blankets and leg wraps. You also have to go to seminars, read books and work with your horse for hours or hire a trainer to teach it how to step up 4 inches to get into that trailer.

I honestly do not remember having problems loading horses into the back of pickups. I don't remember spending hours training them and we certainly didn't have to read a book or go to some big name expert's training clinic to figure out how to load a horse.

Our horses just jumped in when asked because they were livestock and not pets. They respected us and trusted us. If we asked them to do something they did it because we were confident that they could and would do it. We have dumbed down our horses today, we no longer give them credit for intelligence and ability. Our horses of yesterday didn't get a lot of mixed signals from their owners like horses do now.

I recently read in our local paper that they are thinking about making cold medicine by prescription only because of the Meth problem that is getting so out of control. That is such a shame for the people who are stricken with a nasty cold on a weekend or during the night and who can't afford to run to the Doctor every time they get a sniffle.

This all makes me wonder when we will have to start signing a paper or getting a prescription to buy drain cleaner. It has already caused farmers grief and heartache by having to account for their chemicals and the worry of keeping everything locked up tight.

We can no longer give privileges to the majority of the people, we have to punish the majority for the abuses of the minority.

99 Bales

We got 99 bales of hay in the loft this evening. We will pick up what's left in the field tomorrow after the dew is off of it. I have a blister from dragging the bales all the way to the back of the loft with my hay hook. It gets easier the more hay that you get in there. The dragging distance shortens with each load.

I also got two rope halters done and ready to be shipped out in the morning. My hands are sore and swollen but hopefully they will recover tonight in time for more hay and more halters tomorrow. I will be so happy when our loft is full, about 800 bales, and our friend's barn is full, about 300 bales. It would be nice if we could also fill the neighbor's barn but if not, we should have plenty of big round bales to see us through.

There doesn't seem to be a hay shortage this year and the prices are coming down. I don't think that the farmers around here are happy about it, but we sure are.

Prices

The price of everything is going up. I have a hard time understanding people's motives. Since times are hard right now, they will increase their prices, so that they don't have to lower their standard of living. But if people can't afford to pay the higher prices, what good is it going to do you?

Everyone gripes about the price of gas but they won't stay home, they continue driving because it is what they have always done and they can't discipline themselves enough to stop. It seems to me that if we really wanted gas prices to come down, we would stop driving unless it was absolutely unavoidable.

We have had to stop some things, we don't just run to town because we need one or two things. Sometimes our cupboards are pretty bare. We don't seem to be losing any weight though.

The price of feed is putting small homesteads and the small farmer out of business. Unless you are totally self-sufficient. The equipment that you need to become self-sufficient is high, feed is high, we blamed last year's hay prices on the drought but we don't have a drought now and no one is coming down on their hay prices. So here we are in the first week of August, with 30 some head of horses and 5 head of goats to feed this winter and no hay in the barn.

There is plenty of hay out there but everyone still thinks that it made of gold. I understand that fuel prices make the hay more expensive to produce but there seems to be some greed involved also. The thing is, if people don't have the money to spend and if wages are not increasing, who is going to buy their hay? The animals will have to go, then who will buy your hay next year?

I have always told my husband that I felt sorry for people who have money, then lose it. They are used to having whatever they want. Then when the local factory shuts down, they lose their houses or have to readjust their lifestyle. 

I have never experienced this myself because we have never had any money to start with, but it has to be hard on them. Their stress level at the thought of not being able to pay their bills anymore must be unbearable. I would think that they would also have a lot of regrets for not planning ahead and preparing for an uncertain future.

You can never predict what lies ahead of you, so you need to do the best you can without living foolishly. Constant refinancing of a home to buy more toys, insures constant pressure on the nervous system, anxiety attacks and worry. 

Why not concentrate on paying yourself out of debt while the money is coming in and always make sure that you have the cash in your hand before you buy any toys or take any trips or even eat out? But we are a credit driven society, perhaps what we are going through now will wake some people up.

It is very sad to see many of our local businesses closing their doors and many of our friends and neighbors, some who are close to retirement age, facing unemployment after working for many years at those local businesses. Where do they go to get a new job and start all over again?

The Poor Horse

I have been reading many horse articles lately, I have a search set up through Google that brings up the hottest horse topics. It is so sad to see some of the stuff that I am seeing. The animal rights people are calling for an end to horse racing, rodeos, trail riding, and horse ownership.

The anti-slaughter people want all breeding stopped to control the horse population. I have written other blogs about how I feel about end of life issues with horses, so I won't go there again. But it certainly is a sad day to be a horse, the horses haven't won any victories here. They have just lost their value.

We received a questionnaire from the Appaloosa Horse Club of which we are members, wanting to know why we didn't register a foal or foals that we had sent a stud report in on. I don't know which foal this is talking about but it must have been from last year, probably one that the mare just came up empty.

We do register all of our horses that qualify. But many horse owners have stopped this practice. The foal crop from last year and probably this year as well, will consist of many pure bred horses that will just not have their paperwork done or fees paid.

I can fully understand not registering a foal, because when a weanling will only bring $10 - $25, with or without papers, and you have already paid out lots of money to feed it, plus Stud, Vet and Farrier fees, it doesn't make much sense to spend $50 to $80 to do DNA and registration papers. Unfortunately we have arrived at a time when registration papers just don't add much to the value of the basic horse; that is, the horse with no training or with mental or physical problems.

This survey asks if we would register these foals if registration fees were lowered. Then it asks several questions about the reasons why we aren't registering our foals. Some of the answers that you can check is "Cannot afford at this time" and "Waiting to make a decision regarding foal's value".

When the basic horse has no value and all breeders stop breeding, which is already happening because of the price of hay and grain, has anyone thought this through to an end conclusion? Well trained horses still do have value even if it is somewhat deflated, but young stock, old stock and horses with problems are facing a bleak future.

A foal in today's market has to be really special to have any value at all and breeders have to keep their foals at least three years, train them and find a buyer in order to even hope to break even. It is little wonder that horse breeders are becoming a thing of the past, an endangered species. That should make the anti-slaughter people happy.

Since the Government is getting so good at breeding and selling Mustangs, maybe one day all horses will be raised on factory farms just like cattle, hogs and chickens are now. All small farms and ranches will be a thing of the past, like the decaying wooden barns scattered along the countryside, just a memory of when you played in the loft as a child.

Right to Keep

The Associated Press: Guns Case Goes to Supreme Court

I'm no Supreme Court Judge, Lawyer, Scholar, or even of Male persuasion and I don't play any of these on T.V.

However, I can interpret the following sentence: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed"

This sentence has four separate parts, separated by commas, the second part more clearly describing the first part and the third part totally standing alone but also claiming ownership of all of the other parts.

The third part is the key to the complete sentence. The PEOPLE have the right to a well regulated militia, they have the right to the SECURITY of a free state, they have the right to KEEP and bear arms and they have the right for those RIGHTS not to be infringed upon. What is hard to understand here?

What was the purpose of a Militia in the first place? The purpose of a Militia was to keep others from imposing their will upon the People. There are those in this country who are constantly trying to impose their will upon others.

Whether you like it or not in order to maintain order, one must have weapons of some kind. We are so brainwashed in this country that we think that all that guns are used for is crime. That could not be further from the truth, throughout time weapons of defense have been necessary and one cannot depend on one's government to defend them at all times.

Independence is another key word to me, our government seems to wish to make us more dependent all of the time. They are trying to destroy the small farmer or people who might be able to support themselves without any government assistance. This includes regulating what lands can be used and what they can be used for. They want to tell us how to handle and sell our animals. The latest thing that has been pointed out to me is that seeds are being altered so that they will not germinate, so that you can't keep your own seeds from year to year and will have to buy new seeds every year.

I am so surprised that declawing cats has not been made illegal because we are so concerned about animal rights, but when it comes to human rights, those need to be limited and the government should control our lives because we are unable to govern our own lives. Banning guns is an issue of declawing us, of taking away our defenses.

9-11 comes to my mind as those poor people on those planes didn't try to take control of their own lives until it was too late. Because we are not conditioned to take care of ourselves, we trust others with our lives. We have been declawed and our gun free zones have become an easy place to prey on innocent victims. If the fox is in the hen house you don't turn your head and hope for the best, we have to take action.

Don't let the people who are scared of guns and have been conditioned to think that guns are a very bad thing take away your right to protect yourself and your property.

There are many more people in this country that own and handle guns responsibly than there are criminals that have guns who could care less about what laws are on the books or how the Supreme Court rules on this issue, as a matter of fact, they would love to see the United States of America completely disarmed.

I am one person who gets very annoyed when I am punished for other people's actions, especially when my punishment is enjoyed by those people who caused the problem in the first place. Criminals have caused the problem with guns and they are the only ones who will benefit from a ban of guns.

Hay for Sale

Many farmers horded hay this past season because of the drought. Instead of selling out of the field they hired help to store square bales in their barns that have gone unused for many years, because they feed big round bales to their own animals and usually sell square bales in the field.

They thought that they could sell their square bales out of their barns all winter and people would pay a premium, especially horse owners. Instead, most of the horse owners faced too many obstacles to paying high prices for hay. Horse values dropped, hay was hard to find and too expensive, the economy got worse and some lost jobs. So, many horse owners have sold their horses for whatever they could get, breeders stopped breeding and thinned their herds by selling, giving away or euthanizing.

Now Spring is just around the corner and barns are still full of hay, not many people want to buy last year's hay. Much of the hay that was put up last summer was poor quality because every spare weed lot was baled. It looks like some farmers may have cut off their noses to spite their face, as horse owners are smarter now. We have all learned our lessons, get rid of all of the hay burners that are no longer useful. Feed only good quality hay, and feed it smartly, eliminate as much waste as possible, use hay alternatives and shop around, your loyalty to your hay supplier didn't mean anything to him during a rough year, so why be loyal to one supplier?

I believe hay will be plentiful this year and will be for sale in the field again and at pre-drought prices. Grain prices will come down as the demand drops, we fed a lot of grain this winter to supplement the quality and amount of hay that we had, I am sure that we were not the only ones who did this.

Most horse owners will not be caught in the same situation that we found ourselves in this past fall and winter. People who own a few extra acres that can be divided off and not used as pasture, will do their own hay instead of having to depend on others. It has been easier and just as cost affective to buy hay instead of putting up your own, but that may have changed now.