Oh hey there, Spring.

Spring in Colorado is so very different. Last year, in the depths of a crushing drought, spring showers never quite materialized over the mountain ranges. The green flowery flushes stayed dormant, preserved for a more hopeful year.

I woke up to the steady beat of rain against the windows this morning. Like a kid with a snow day, i was too excited to fall back to sleep. Around home, the crocuses are in full bloom and there are some very fat forsythia buds to be found. I love this time of year when everyone becomes a gardener, checking the ground and trees for shoots and signs that spring has returned.

Sandhill Cranes Trumpeting

Springtime in Michigan is one of my favorites, because I love the prehistoric call of the Sandhill Cranes who frequent fallow corn fields during their migration.  The dogs were more excited about all the mud.

Grrls Meat Camp in the news

Grrls Meat Camp has been getting some great press of late.  I'm incredibly honored to be a part of it, as well as to be included in this article.

Women Breaking Down Hogs, Beef and the 'Old Boy Network' in Kentucky Butchering Camps

If you're interested in attending one of these workshops, well, you're in luck!  There's one coming up.  I can't make it, but I'm thinking about crashing the after party/BBQ.

Grrls Meat Camp Workshop in Kentucky, April 12-14

Wisdom & Gravity

"I'm grateful for our house,

for this cozy bed and covers,

for my friends and for gravity....

ya know mom, with out gravity 

we would be just flying around in the sky...."

                    — G. Cure, age 5

Horses Making Weird Faces

This was Roxy, two days before we left for Michigan.  She slipped in her muddy paddock and tweaked her back just before her cross-country trip, to the point where she was limping on two legs.

Poor Little Miss Cow-Eyes.  The very patient woman standing next to her is a vet based in Boulder who specializes in equine acupuncture and chiropractic.  Roxy absolutely detests needles, so acupuncture was out.  But my normally happy-go-puppydog mare was in so much pain, we had to suffer through some adjustments from the good Doctor.  The picture sums up how it went.

I was very nervous about the horses making the trip.  Would Roxy's sore back make it twice as hard on her?  Would Sam's arthritic hocks flare up?  Would they just plain freak out at the stress, the haulers, the strange trailer filled with strange horses?  Turns out, they were the best-behaved horses out of a group of seven.  We took the drivers out for dinner after Sam and Roxy were unloaded into their new home, a fleeting connection that ended in hugs.

Roxy's registered name is Denver's Ace of Hearts.  She's traveled about 35 miles in her lifetime from her original place of birth.  Sam, well, who knows about him.  My guess is he hasn't gone too far either.  But they are settled in and loving the new digs.  They have more space than they ever have before, with real green growing GRASS!  Well, not at the moment.  But it's coming!  We're all ready for Spring.

They're all settled in and happy [along with their new pasture mate Sparty].  

Now if it would just warm up a bit... 

Among the Treebones

One place I miss whenever I'm not there.  

Starting anew...

... Or am I back to the beginning?  I haven't yet decided.  Here we are back in Michigan.  For good.  I mean that we have moved back for good, but dammit, it just plain feels good too.

Home.  Such a satisfying word to say in a sigh.

Colorado is a breathtaking place, with mountain views and prairie sunsets and tumultuous skies.  But let's face it, I'm a Midwestern girl and I missed the water.  It never felt right to live in a place so barren, so burnt-to-a-crisp, so thirsty for water.  As our vet put it, "there are two kinds of people.  Water people and mountains people.  If you have water in your bones, it never leaves you."

When C and I were home for Christmas, we started looking at properties.  Oh, it was all very innocent at first, but once we realized that we could have land— with WATER— here for far less than we could ever dream of in Colorado, it seemed like an obvious choice.  We could have our "five-year plan" now.  We decided the opportunity was too good to pass up.

We hit the ground running as soon as we could.  Our house in Lyons went up for sale and we started the house-hunt in Michigan in earnest.  C flew back for interviews and house showings, and we worked feverishly on our house to get it in tip-top shape for potential buyers.  The logistical nightmare of planning to get all our belongings...

 my Buttertruck...

our three dogs...

 AND our two horses, goat and lamb home...

well that consumed just about all our energies.  But here we are, all in one piece.  We're still waiting to close on our new home but it's on 33 acres.  Dream life, here we are.  Oh and one more thing...

This year is already getting off to a great start.  I can't wait to keep building...