An hour ago, at 3 AM Eastern, I rolled out of bed to check out the lunar eclipse. The moon was almost completely in the shadow of the earth. Only a sliver on the right side was still brighter than the rest of the moon. I bundled up and went outside and took a good […]

Today, we had our first snow this winter. The weather report called for some flurries tonight, but instead we had about a 1/2 inch of snow this afternoon.  I went out around 5:00 to see if I could get to the grocery store, but even Guess Rd. was totally covered, and so I turned around. […]

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving (yes – some people who read this might not know that. I responded to an email from a guy in England on Thanksgiving … he was wondering why no one in the office picked up the phone or answered emails.) We usually take off Wednesday and – of course – Thursday […]

If you have read my posts over the summer, you’ll know that we pretty much spent our summer vacation building a 1200 foot (400 M) pasture fence. Well, Google Earth noticed too, and took some great pictures of our work – from space! Google hat vor Kurzem die Satelitenphotos von unserer Gegend erneuert und mir […]

Sunday afternoon we went Trick-or-treating in the neighborhood with some friends and with Waldo and Cleo.The horses behaved themselves as much as can be expected. The cars and dogs did not bother them much, but Cleo did not like the stop signs. After 1 1/2 hours it started getting dark and and they had had […]

(Deutsch weiter unten) Cleo and Wally have been living with us now for 2 months and, I dare say, our horse-farm project is going really well. Laura has put a huge effort into training and care, to get our two new family members into top form. She (and Julia and Gaylen) have worked hard to […]

… or horse manure, to be precise, is a wonderful thing.That’s because the biodiesel production process produces also a significant amount of glycerol that needs to be disposed of (circa 10 Gallons per 50-gallon batch of biodiesel). For years I have taken the stuff to various horse farms in the area and blended it into […]

Yeah! We did it! In April this year we set out on our horse-farm adventure and today I call it complete. We bought the pasture, built the fence, built the run-in shelter, cleaned up the weeds and brush in and around the pasture … and, most importantly, we got the horses. Today, we finished the […]

Today we brought home our horses Waldo and Cleo! This weekend we got their run-in shelter (mostly) done, so we borrowed a trailer and brought them home from the place were we had them boarded for the last month. DE … Waldo und Cleo sind endlich zuhause! Wir haben die beiden heute abgeholt und sie […]

Cleo – aka “Funny You Should Ask” – and Waldo … our two Tennessee Walking Horses. More pictures on Flickr hat noch mehr Bilder.

Saturday we finished building the pasture fence. Wow … what a slog! We started working on this project 4 weeks ago. I rented a Bobcat and built a 200 foot/70 meter driveway through the woods up the hill to the top of the pasture. There, we installed a 14-foot/3.5 Meter gate and then we built […]

Here are more pictures of our new, 9-year-old Tennessee Walker “Funny You Should Ask” aka “Cleo” Click on the picture for a larger version. More pictures below …

… is the name of the 9-year-old, blue roan mare we bought yesterday. Her stable name is “Cleo” and she is a registered Tennessee Walking Horse, which is a peculiar, uniquely American breed. She is a very gentle, curious soul with an impressive pedigree. We had planned to start building the fence yesterday, but there […]

Although Memorial Day is a a bit of a somber holiday, to most Americans the long weekend at the end of May is less about death and patriotism and more about celebrating the beginning of summer; about cookouts, parties, fishing trips and other family fun. For us, last weekend was all bout bonding with our […]

This evening, Laura tried out her new waders in the pond, and as she was poking around the edge of the pond she met the pond’s resident turtle: a 10-inch yellow-belly slider. The poor turtle protested some, but did not seem too worried overall. At her size (10 inches/24cm) she is pretty much as big […]

Yesterday, Jacob and I went to the Durham Country library and he got the current Guinness Book of World Records. So I started wondering what the connection was between the book of records and beer. Wikipedia to the rescue: On 4 May 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of the Guinness Breweries, went […]

One of the first things you do when you start a farm is to buy a farm truck. We bought the land a few weeks ago and last week we bought a 1999 Ford F250 pickup with a 7.3 liter  Powerstroke Diesel engine that produces 235 horsepower (175 kW) and 500 foot-pounds force (680 N·m) of torque. The odometer […]

Today was a great day: we bought the property next to ours! That is a huge milestone towards our dream of owning horses, because that property includes a 2-acre pasture. When we bought our house, we were just excited about having a horse pasture next door. We befriended the two horses who lived there, Stormy […]

The answer to life, the universe and everything!

… took a lot of energy. This was not a bad year for me, but it did wear me out a bit. The first half was dominated by our trip to Togo and Ghana. It took a lot of preparation to get ready. The trip itself was great, but quite exhausting. Work turned a bit […]