Hi Everyone!
Hope you had a great week. I think last week’s post did not get published. Must have been a tech issue because I wrote it and hit the publish button. My apologies. Guess you will be seeing that next week.
We finally got all the garden planted and can now relax a little until the veggies start coming in. We also added new members to the farm this past week. Here are the new little future egg layers. Danny didn’t think 2-3 eggs a day was enough for us. We do eat plenty of eggs, but most days we are fine. On heavy cooking days or when the kids come home to visit, well, we almost have to make a grocery store run for eggs. The new girls are supposed to be heavy layers, so now we will probably be selling eggs when production sets in.
Last week I showed you a couple of paintings I had finished. I thought I would give you Bob’s back story today. I have mentioned him often on this blog because he is Mr. Personality and Mr. Mischief combined.
My husband, Danny, has worked with, trained, owned horses most of his life. Several years ago there was an elderly neighbor that had reached the point where he was struggling to take care of his horses and asked Danny if he would come help him. Of course Danny said yes.
When Danny got there he was helping feed and clean up the barn. I don’t have a clear visual of exactly where Danny found Bob, but somewhere on the property this small yearling had gotten into a place that the elderly gentleman could not reach and was literally down to skin and bones when Danny discovered him. Realizing that the horse needed immediate attention and not wanting to hurt the gentleman’s dignity, Danny asked if it would be ok to take Bob back to his farm and look after him there and the gentleman could come get him or visit him any time he wanted. The elderly man told Danny that the horse had been purchased by his wife, who had passed, because Bob was from very good western quarter horse bloodlines. Of course the gentleman never asked for Bob back and passed away a couple of years later.
Danny has been trying to get Bob trained now for at least five years, but life keeps getting in the way. We are pretty sure that if he ever gets trained he will be an awesome trail horse. Obviously by this painting, Bob is no longer underweight. He is a big guy with a big personality and too smart for his own good. Full of curiosity, Bob has become a Houdini horse and somehow gets his big butt out of the fence without breaking it (though he has a history of running through them) and we usually can’t find where he escaped from.
Bob will carry off your tools when you are working in the barn or pasture. He has chewed paint off the side of my stepson’s truck. He figured out how to open the pasture gate and let the other horses loose twice in 24 hours before we realized how they were getting out. Then we wired the gate shut and Bob stood there and loosened the bolts on the other side of the gate with his lips!! He has knocked the lid off my beehive in his attempt to see what was inside and froze my bees. Lately, he has found joy in taking his big head and bulldozing through the chickens to watch them run. I swear you can see him grin when he does it!
Did I mention he is my favorite of the horses here? Don’t tell the others please. Yes, he is a royal pain in the rear and I have called him several other names besides “Bob”, but he always has that big ‘ole head stuck out wanting a scratch or rub. He is the one that always comes up to you as you walk in the pasture and will often walk with you to see where you are going. As Danny says, ” there isn’t a mean bone in that horse’s body.”
Bob makes me laugh and he makes me cuss, but on the couple of days that I struggled this past year in adjusting to my new life in the country, it was Bob that provided some horse therapy and let me lean on his big side, hug his neck and nibbled on my hand and did that mysterious thing that horses do when they somehow make things better by just being, Just Bob. And that my friends, is the title of this painting of my friend Bob. Just Bob.
Ok, now I have gotten all choked up. There will be more paintings of Bob because he likes to model and he needs a job.
Have a great week!
All photographs and artwork property and copyright of Christel Huttar.
Pencils, Paint & Paper 