Winter has come to the Abbey. The fields are white and the trees are covered with crystal icing. The dawn comes up on a winter wonderland. Temperatures have been brutal up until now with wind chills of 25 below zero. Today is going to be warm; I think we actually will hit 18 F, which is a heat wave when you think about it. It is actually 43 degrees warmer. The funny thing about really cold is it’s just cold! There is no degree. It’s simply just cold. The snow crunches under foot and it’s difficult to breathe without a scarf around your nose. You dress in layers. Pajamas first, so that when you are back in the house you can shed the remainder of EVERYTHING YOU OWN and crawl back in bed. By the way, this applies for both morning and evening.
Once the temperature drops below zero all the animals are brought in each night. The alpaca only need to be out of the wind. Their fleece will keep them warm. The horses on the other hand need the insulated barn. Our barn has a low ceiling so their body heat keeps the barn a little bit warmer.
Thinking about Christmas, I had a wonderful idea. Let’s put Santa hats on all the horses and take a picture for our Christmas card! The horses will line up by the fence, which they do all the time, and it will make a great picture.
I was off to Elmer’s Feed Emporium. The Feed Emporium had become one of my favorite places to shop, and frankly the only place I go lately. Elmer has everything, feed and feeders for all animals, Carharts and their look alike, lots of machinery parts, everything the modern farmer needs. The days of Ann Taylor, Brooks Bros, and Nordstrom’s are gone. I figure if they don’t have it at Elmer’s, I don’t need it! Imagine that coming from my mouth. I bought seven hats and phoned Sarah and Jesse.
That weekend we went to the barn with the hats and Sarah’s good camera. We cut a slit in the hats to place them over their ears, which would look cute hanging down. We put the horses in the stalls. First off, the hats just would not stay on, so Jesse used some twine to tie the hat on each horses head. Bob and Blu were really good about it, but Griffin put up a stink. We finally got it on. Little Ellie was probably the worst shaking her head. We were ready!
We had all hat in place and we let the horses out. Griffin bit Althea on the way out and she started running. Sarah, while heading out the door with her camera, slipped on the hillside and fell face first into the questionable snow. I had the pail of feed to entice everyone to come to the fence for photos, but now they were chasing me around trying to get into the pail. My boot stuck in the mud, I couldn’t free it, and decided to pull my foot out rather than fall over. I was hopping around with a boot on one foot, and the other with stocking foot, which by now was freezing and covered in muck. Buy the time Jesse got Althea quieted down, most of the other hats were on the ground or under their necks. At this point we were ready to kill each other. Sarah was storming back to the house covered with muck and worried about her “GOOD” camera. Jess was trying to capture each horse to cut the hat of their necks. I was madly looking for my boot, which had disappeared somewhere in the mud. I had long past given up the pail of food to Hennessey. Defeated and dirty we left the horses -- hat free, closed the barn doors and walked, or for me, hopped, back to the house in total silence.
We had some pictures of this chaos. Half a horse here and half there, some ground snow where the horses use to be, a nice shot of the rear end on Elle, and one where I slipped a Santa hat over a chicken, but all you could see was chicken feet. Oh well! I suggested that we do a collection of these pictures and entitle it “Have a Happy Fricken Christmas,” needless to say no one laughed.
We finally did get the Santa hat photos, doing it one horse at a time. We place them in cameo‘s on the card and wished everyone a wonderful Christmas and Joyous New Year.
As in all things, from the ashes comes inspiration, my Christmas present for my family this year are heavy weight alpaca socks for everyone. As for the Santa hats they are hanging alongside the stockings on each stall door, waiting to be filled with apples, snacks and candy canes on Christmas eve. Inside it is warm, the smell of hot apple cider comes in from the kitchen, the Christmas tree stands in the living room twinkling with lights, gifts lay under its bows and as always, it’s just another day at the Abbey.
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