Morning Bray Farm

Congratulations to our contest winner, VA Horsegirl! Her name was chosen using Random.org. She’ll be seeing a Morning Bray Farm tote bag in her mailbox soon.

 VA Horsegirl Says:
May 7, 2010 at 10:41 am “So this man walks into a bar with an ass…”

Honestly and truly, we appreciate and love reading each and every single one of your comments. They make us laugh, chuckle, guffaw, and even get teary-eyed sometimes. You guys are the best!

For what it’s worth, here’s my contribution…

Two peanuts walk into a bar. One was ASSaulted. 

Did you get it?!

I’m from Maryland. I need green. I love flowers.

We’re celebrating 100 posts today, and once again, we’d love to have you join us for some fun. (You can click on the photo below for a larger image.)

One lucky, randomly chosen winner will receive a Morning Bray Farm tote bag. To enter our 100th post contest, leave a comment on this post completing the caption for the above photo. If you’d like to modify the caption and do your own thing, we’re good with that too.  The contest will close Friday at 7 p.m. (Mountain time) and we’ll announce the winner on Saturday.

We love you all,

Bernard, Ellsworth, Fergus and Nigel  xxooxx

For the first few days they were here, Fergus and Nigel were terrified of the water tubs we have in the corral and pasture. Naturally, we were concerned about them taking in enough water. Fergus was much more bold about drinking from the tubs and from what I could tell, Nigel was only drinking when Fergus was drinking, which also worried me. Yesterday, I saw Nigel drinking with Bernard, which brought joy to my heart.

Of course, I was excited to get more pink donkey tongue pictures.

Don and I enjoy taking our camp chairs out into the corral or pasture as often as we can to sit and be with the boys. When I did just that yesterday afternoon, Bernard decided to lay down for a nap next to me.

I decided to join him.

We were hoping we might have Fergus in a halter by the time our farrier came around on Saturday.

Not yet, but that’s okay.

Okay because Shorty; our farrier, said the difference in Ellsworth this time versus last was night and day. It was only last time Shorty was here he was able to trim Ellsworth’s back feet.

Don bought a new (smaller) saddle cinch for Ellsworth and we tried it on for size later that afternoon.

Everything looked good, so we gave Ellsworth a test drive. Our gentle boy walked me around the corral several times. I never asked Ellsworth to move, but he did turn and stop when we asked him to. I couldn’t believe I was actually riding Ellsworth! ♥

I finally got pictures of one of the boys with their pink donkey tongue left sticking out as they tend to do after they have their drinks of water. It was Bernard.

Love you, love you, love you, love you Bernard. Okay, so here’s another secret. My nickname for Bernard is Buhbee. I don’t know why.

And then, after the post last week about mutual grooming, guess who I saw grooming each other? Ellsworth and Nigel!

Don and I were talking yesterday about how we’d know Bernard’s or Ellsworth’s bray anywhere, and how the donkey boys have been braying much less since Fergus and Nigel arrived two weeks ago.

So, for posterity, we present Bernard and Ellsworth braying. It was at about the time these videos were taken we decided Morning Bray would be the name of our little farm.

In case you’re wondering, not a peep from Fergus or Nigel yet.

This is Cecil, just one of the many barn swallows we have here at Morning Bray Farm each spring and summer. He’s sitting on a wind chime hanging on our back patio. The string heading off to the right of the wind chime is a horse or donkey hair trailing from Cecil’s nest.

To simplify matters, we call all of our barn swallows Cecil. When the babies come, we’ll be calling them Sons of Cecil, just like we do every other year.

Some interesting facts about barn swallows from whatbird.com:

• The killing of barn swallows for their feathers was one of the issues that led to the founding of the Audubon Society and the passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
• Females prefer to mate with males that have the longest and most symmetrical tails and a dark red chest color.
• When building the mud nest, both male and female make up to 1000 trips collecting mud.
• A group of barn swallows are known collectively as a “kettle” of swallows.