Well, finally got a person to help me take care of farm in exchange for living in the little Airstream This time I went for brains. I have a woman engineer who works at Evergreen Aviation. She's an engineer and needs a place to live up here during the week. She goes home to her farm on weekends near Medford, OR. So, Erin adds tremendously to the harmony of the farm. She loves the animals and they act differently than before (better). She's gone today, so while I was cleaning stalls, Binnie, the baby goat, or kid, was yelling for me to go into her stall and give her kisses. She usually prefers them to food, even, but not tonight. Must have been a hungry day. Walter's jacket slid up and over leaving his belly open to the elements. Those Saxon jackets are good quality, but too short. Baby Gayle, the big, white, barren (or gay) goat was especially uppity tonight. She was extra hungry, too. Guess the pasture has already become useless for a little forage. I'll up the hay.
Susie hasn't rolled enough to obliterate the beautiful pink of her jacket. I wonder if she thinks it's pretty like a little girl would....I posted the pic yesterday on FB, but will add another here. I swear she thinks she is pretty. Can't say exactly how I know, but the fact that it's not covered in mud the second day it's been on is a big consideration.

Well, I wonder if we're going to skip fall as well as summer. Today, as it was yesterday morning, it is in the low 60's. But later yesterday it actually got hot! So, the tomatoes still haven't blossomed. Green ones sit on the vines as they have all "summer." The weather is truly surprising this year, so the warming tales are perhaps coming true quite quickly. I was thinking not in my lifetime, but this is very weird right now. The farmers, however, don't believe it. They say they've seen this many times and it means nothing. Everyone is predicting a hard, cold winter. The only thing that bothers me about that is the comfort of my horses and goats. I might have to put coats on the goats. Now, wouldn't THAT be a picture!
Meanwhile, I'm off to the farmers' market that continues in McMinnville until the end of fall. Still waiting for my harvest.

I'm back! I had to let the blogs go for awhile because there was an emergency with Walter my Thoroughbred for whom I named the farm. He got a deep puncture wound in his hock (the back knee for those who don't know horse anatomy) and actually punctured the sheath that surrounds it. The veterinarian was very grim about his recovery, but my friends came, scooped him up and cared for him flushing the wound every day for three months. He stayed there at their barn for a total of four months and they wouldn't take money from me! So, I was so depressed and distracted, I kind of dropped the blog.

Now, however, I think I'll talk about Susie, the Andalusian filly that those very friends gave me. Andalusians are supposed to be very round and even fat looking to other horse people. Susie lives to eat. She drives any other animal away from her food and even attacks the goats and sheep if they're on the other side of the barn. She is rotund. She is only a year and a half, so I don't worry too much because she runs all day in the pasture, but I keep making Ramona come over and look at her because if you feed a horse too much they can founder and die like Secretariat did. Founder is a disease where the bone in the foot rotates and comes through the hoof. It's very hard to treat and you have to be incredibly careful if they've had it and they survive. The have to be kept slender. So, you all look at Susie and think about it. Is she too fat?

And then there's Binnie the baby kid. She is so affectionate and sweet, that I often protect her from the other goats and the horses. She is the most "pet" goat of them all. If you're petting her and stop, she very gently picks up her foot and puts it on your knee. Or, she nuzzles your clothes if you're ignoring her. Pulls gently on them like a human kid might. I so love Binnie.

Well, I'm reeling from taking on the responsibility of another horse, but I had an offer I couldn't refuse. I have been thinking for a year of going back to Nikon from Canon, so I mentioned it to Ramona my friend who adopted Walter to get him over his injury. She said she would take my Canon equipment for an Andalusion filly and I went for it. An Andalusion horse is so mellow you can just get on their back one day after some ground training. They don't have to be "broken" as an ordinary cowboy would refer to it, or even whispered to as the latest PC trainers advocate. Both of those methods seem a little ike quackery to me anyway, but the point is Andalusions are just mellow like a draft horse. They used them in Spain for hundreds of years as war horses and chasing the bull in bullfighting. They can't afford to be flighty. Some people call the Andalusion an "old lady horse," which is fine by me. I can't any longer have adrenaline rushes with my horse Walter. I'll find another way to get them. Like driving a tractor. Here is another beautiful Andalusion mare at Ramona's farm named Serena. And Ramona alienating my horse's affections:
Susan Ragan
18940 Moritz Road
Sheridan, OR97378
(503)843-3452
cell(415)385-9091
www.susanragan.com

I can't tell you how much I love going outside naked. Sometimes I feed in my underwear. When I get up in the morning, the dogs are really anxious to go sniff coyote tracks and whatever else came onto their territory. They don't want to wait for me to get dressed; they're leaping in the air, screaming and barking to go out.  So I go open the door and go out onto the veranda stock, staring, buck naked. It's not at all salacious, just totally free.

Other times, when I've been really late getting up and the horses have to be fed fast, I go out in my underwear to feed them. The only risk there is the mailwoman might come onto the property, but that's never happened yet. Besides, I could just hide there and no one would think of looking in the barn.

I feel very like a rich person, although I can tell you, there's really no chance of that in my future. Stark, raving, ranting poor forever. But I'm free.

After LA and NY, can you imagine just HOW free it feels to go out naked first thing in the morning? I think I had to live in those seas of humanity just to enjoy this ever so much more. No noise except birds. Oh, and the roosters. When I go to the barn, the horses nicker.

p.s. No pictures of this, sorry.

Well, this wasn't my fault. Went to a 1800's cemetery with my friend Ramona who also likes to look at the old grave markers, etc. It's hard to read them so it's good to have two people to try to interpret them and imagine the lives they had here in this beautiful land. They all seemed to die young in those days. We hear this scrreching noise and someone had thrown a kitten out there in the cemetery. It was miles from the nearest farm. We heard this kitten abosolutely screaming and had to call it out of some giant blackberry bushes. I knew right then who was going to have to keep the kitty because Ramona has Jack Russells who eat cats. So now there are five cats on my farm. Oh, well, two never come in the house, so that's kind of ok. One is in the giant shed (two car garage) and one is in the hayloft. She was a stray, too. I think the one in the shed came with the farm. I really hope I don't end up with too many cats. I don't particularly like cats that much. Just Bob.
Bob was brought here by a woman to give to a little girl that was staying here for a couple of weeks. The little girl left and Bob stayed. Bob is actually the greatest cat I've ever met since Akeem Olajuwon, my cat who died of old age a couple of years ago. Bob has the giant German Shepherd Xeus totally under his control. One day he laid down in between the shepherd's front legs and went to sleep. I could see Xeus thinking, "This cat's so nuts he could be from another planet, so I can't eat him." He very gently extricated himself and goes in the opposite direction whenever Bob struts up to him. Bob marches to his own drummer.

Bob doesn't like Monkey at all. Here is Monkey's first picture. Name was Clarence from one on a headstone, but Monkey took over later in the day.

Well, yesterday my neighbors, Hans and Barbara,the German couple who raise sheep, came up to help me trim the goatlings' feet. Boy, that was an adventure. We did their old bitch, oh, I mean ewe or whatever you call the girls, Spotty.

They gave me Spotty because she was Baby Gayle's mom and they didn't want to send her to the auction. Spotty is 10 years old and rather useless, but she can cause an awful lot of trouble. First, she killed Bette, I'm sure. I was in the breezeway of the barn when I heard this incredible thump. I ran into the stall and Bette was down and unable to get up. Spotty was up in the horse feeder. Bette went into shock, and with the help of Hans and Barbara, we got her to the vet. She never came out of the coma and died that night. I figure she got butted in the belly when she had her feet up in the feeder and her belly was totally vulnerable. (The photo attached has Spotty underneath her daughter Baby Gayle, whom she would never hurt.)

Then, Spotty butts kids. Well, her butt is POWERFUL. One time she butted me by accident when she was trying to butt the dog and I got a charleyhorse in the thigh. So, when kids come, Spotty goes in her stall. She jumps up on the stall door and stares balefully at the kids, just hoping one of them will go into her stall.

Also, she hates Emma, the beautiful Nubian goat, who replaced Bette. Emma is kind of mean, though and holds her own. But I hope she doesn't get butted when her feet are up in the horse feeder.

So, Hans and Barbara got Spotty into the goat milking stand with a lot of scuffling. They wouldn't give up any more than she would. It was kinda funny, but I didn't laugh because Hans and Barbara are such good friends to help me do this. After we locked Spotty's head in, she ate grain and wasn't any more trouble. The other two younger goats were a snap. They are food hounds and couldn't wait to get up into the stand and eat grain. But Jimmy, the sheep, was another matter. He's vastly overweight and I'm thinking of changing his name to Heavy D. We had to lift him into the stand and he inhaled his grain on the first foot trimming. I had to fill the bucket for each foot.

 I was so relieved to get all their feet done. Time for breeding.

So, while I was trying to get pictures of Spotty to illustrate this blog, I forgot to secure the barn door and Spike and Albert, my two geriatric horses got out. Well, Spike is kinda crippled and wouldn't go far, but Albert is quite another matter. He runs to the nearest big road he can like he has a death wish. It's not nice for him to drag the other horses in his quest to get run over. So I jump in my truck and barely head them off the main road about a quarter mile away. Then Albert turns and gallops north through a neighbor's tree farm and veers toward a road again. This time it's over a mile away and even Albert is tired. Spike is nearly dead, huffing, puffing and sweaty. I jump out of the truck and get a dog leash around Spike's neck and yell to some neighbors to please help. Well, they come over like the knights in shining armor with lead ropes and walk my horses home over a mile away. I am dragging along behind up a hill all the way. I take them home in my VW bug and one of them drives my truck home for me. I then take him home. Neighbors in Oregon deserve their own blog. The people here are like Canadians--I don't have a bad word to say about any of them. They are the GREATEST people!

I remember my welcome to NY. I fell down the escalator at Madison Square Garden during a tennis match and the fans all dressed up in their suits and dresses stepped over me and not ONE of them offered to help me or even pick up my cameras. I had only been in NY a week and realized the portent for the coming eight years. I felt lucky no one took one of the cameras and made off with it.

I like to call the goats goatlings for some stupid reason. They are each so different it's hard to define them as a group. Spotty, named by her previous owners, is 10, near extinction, but meaner than any of the others. She hates kids and butts them. She is surprisingly strong; her butt once gave me a charleyhorse. She was trying to butt the dog, but got me as a substitute.
Baby Gael, named for my employee's daughter, is very sweet, but that's because she's ugly. Remember the song, "Always Marry an Ugly Woman"? She is white with pink eyelids and nose. Some people wouldn't think she's ugly, but she has to compete with Emma, who is strikingly beautiful.
Emma came from the auction and is still shy a year later. She was only three months, but who knows what happened in those three months? She lurches away when I stick out my hand only to cuddle in when I finally catch her and pet her. She really likes it. So, why she runs is a mystery. Maybe it's a game. Goats like games.
For instance the bathtub. There's an empty bathtub that they spend endless hourse jumping in and out of.
Bette Davis died. I think it was because Spotty with the surprisingly strong butt, butted her in the stomach when she was up with her front feet in the horse feeder. Every morning they bolt into the horse stall to find leftover grain. Spotty always hated Bette, who was very pretty compared with an old goat who is on her last legs. So Spotty got rid of her. That was pretty traumatic for me, but I'm trying to quickly get over the death thing on a farm. I hope to be like that little girl, who when the dog ate the duck, sai, "Why don't we eat it?"
Now, that's a true farmer--but she was a city kid.

The thing that most people don't think about when they live their dream on a farm is the issue of death. I was quite shocked when my goat Bette Davis just dropped dead after going into a seizure. I was really upset when my favorite cat born on the farm was taken by a raccoon or coyote. But after a couple of ducks died and several chickens, I've become a little more inured to the seeing death upfront and in my face.

Yesterday, my cat Rosebud, the sister of the one taken, played with a mouse for half an hour before, bedraggled and probably fatally injured, it ran under the house. Little did the mouse know that that's where the cats do their best killing. Unless, of course, they get into the henhouse and half-eat chicks. THAT was an eye-opener.

Now, I keep Bill in the house at night because I have this theory that male cats think they're invincible and strut around raccoons and coyotes thinking they are just like my dogs--that they'll run after the cat and not hurt it. NOT! So Bill has to come in every night. He's not as smart as the female cats that stay high in the trees or go under the house through small holes.

So, I ran over one duck with my VW bug because he was admiring himself in the hubcap and I didn't see him. That was a little traumatic. But I should have remembered how he loved the hubcap. Like Walter, my horse, loves mirrors. Can't get enough of themselves.

Then my puppy Oscar ate two ducks. And one was not dead while he was eating it. Luckily a very nice man was visiting and finished the death thing for me. That's the only time I've hit Oscar, so I hope it took. He doesn't eat chickens, which is good, because they're free range. But the ducks stay in the backyard where Oscar can't go.

So, when Walter got hurt recently and for a moment I thought it was bad enough to have to put him down, I was supposed to be not afraid of death anymore due to all the training.  Sorry, I failed miserably. I lost my head and thought of very bad thing. Hopefully I have 20 years to get it right when he dies of old age in his 30's.

Well, went into the central mountain part of Oregon, Sisters, to shoot a wedding, and what a wedding it was! Two of my photo students got married in this kind of nature preserve where a grassy area in the middle of natural land slopes down to a pond with a little dock on it. Not only are the two people my favorite young couple in all of Oregon, but their baby and young daughter were there as well. This was the most fun wedding I've ever shot. Both Lukas and Shawna are stunningly beautiful and are as beautiful inside. Because they are good photographers, they know light and helped me whenever I said we needed to hurry to get certain shots. They didn't push me to hurry the family shots, so we leisurely got through all the obligatory stuff.
Shawna's dress was so simple and elegant that it showed itself off in every photo from the posed portraits to the swaying dancing and natural light found portraits. When she was dancing the dress took on such beautiful shapes. I shot around 2,000 frames and those of you that know me know that with my UPI background, I don't waste much. We were always taught to shoot everything on one roll--even BASEBALL!!!! So, this wedding, in the middle of fantastically beautiful Oregon, was my favorite so far. I actually was really happy the whole time. There was no negative drama or tension. When Luke came to the site, he was really nervous, so he hopped around a bit. It was so cute. Shwana was nervous too, and the love that they showed each other during and after the ceremony really touched me and all the friends and family. Whenever they thought no one was looking, they were kissing. They never left each other's side. I wish all weddings could be like that one. Beauty everywhere, even in all the guests that attended.