Martin Mountain Fire

As most of my friends know, we have been put on Fire Notice for our area. This means that we have to be on stand by to be ready to leave in an hour's notice. Of course I was at the Canadian and Western Canadian Finals and came home as soon as I was done running the second go around. Len didn't tell me what was happening until all the animals had been moved. What a good husband he is. All the sheep have been taken by friends to their sheep fenced place and Clairice, one of the maremmas. Sonny is the younger maremma and at 5 months is too boisterous to send down with the sheep to a small pen and busy area so he would be non stop barking. The horse is gone to stay at another friend's and former owner. My husband and his friends loaded up horse trailers with the "can't replace stuff" and it is gone. So if anything happens I just have to throw Sonny and the Border Collies in the truck and go. We couldn't have done this without our friends and we really really appreciate them.
Here are some pictures that my husband Len took on Friday when the fire started. These were taken from the top of the trial field (above the handler's gate).









You can find out the information on this page:

http://bcwildfire.ca/hprScripts/WildfireNews/OneFire.asp and click on Pritchard(Martin Mountain)

And another month is here

It is very smokey here today. The fire at Terrace Mountain flared up again and the wind is just blowing the right way. Amazing how far smoke can travel. When they had really bad fires south of the Border a few years ago and a long way from us...we had really thick smoke every day.
So went out to graze sheep off the driveway and they decided that fresh cut straight out of the baler was better than grass on the ground...silly sheep.




There isn't a lot to do when it's hotter than hot and so I decided to tackle the large job of getting Sonny's puppy coat un-matted and loosened up so he would shed better. He loved the attention:




Here is our lawn these days on the driveway side...we really need rain, forecast for 3 days of rain at the end of the week. Need the water for animals and such over watering the lawns.



The garden is watered out of the pond at the bottom of the hill by pumping it up through some irrigation lines.



Here is my favorite thing in the garden. It is a solar butterfly that changes colors all night long.