Tag Archives: neighbours

farm work party: painting the pig pen

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My good friend Aram and I spent a portion of the work party day painting our new pig pen. I don’t have a completed pig pen photo yet (I just finished the white trim today), but we got the majority of the pen painted ‘rustic red’ (or as Chantalle put it, ‘bad lipstick red’) to match our barn and chicken coop.

While we were painting, our neighbour Kerri-Jo came riding by on her horse to check out what we were up to. I’ve gotta say – the community aspect to our project really hit home at this point. In addition to having a wide variety of people come out to help us, having neighbours come by on horseback to say hi and see what we’re doing is seriously cool. Rural living at it’s finest! While we were painting, Kerri-Jo’s husband Michael and their two kids were helping out with the deep bed part of the project too. Gotta love community!

getting to know the *neigh*bours

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The property next door to ours is home to three horses.  I love horses.  LOVE them.  I’m a girl who loves horses.  It happens. 

I took horseback riding lessons for a few years when I was in junior high and fell in love with them – their physical beauty, their faces, their smell – they really are magnificent animals.  The more time I get to spend near them the better, so you can imagine my delight when our neighbouring horses started showing some interest in me.

Over the past few weeks, the horses have been watching me as I go out to check on the chickens every morning.  From across the back field, they raise their heads and eye me as I trudge towards the chicken coop in my red rain boots (maybe it’s really the rain boots that catch their eye ;).  While I’m letting the chickens out and filling up their water dishes, the horses make their way over to the property fence that divides us.  After finishing with the chickens, I walk over to say good morning to them, pat their soft noses and feed them some grass from our side of the fence (which is way more prolific than the grass on their side of the fence).  I love this new morning ritual. 

Yesterday, Fergus (the cat) was hanging outside with me so I carried him over to meet the horses.  He wasn’t as keen about this as I was and scrambled out of my arms as soon as the horses started to move.  Like Jackson (our dearly departed dog) and the chickens, I’m sure the cats will get used to the horses too.  Bit by bit, our little farm oasis – where animals and humans and plants co-exist – is coming together.