[SmokeyC]

Hey everyone!

We have so many projects on the go so I figured I could start a little Journal so people can follow along!

Us:

Soooo.... May of 2021 my husband and I decided to leave life behind in Ontario and drive to Alberta to chase our dreams. At the time we had 3 dogs, 1 cat, and 1 horse (Dudley). We put our furnishing is a shipping container, the pets and a couple clean shirts in our vehicles, put our house up for sale and left. Sounds crazy but that's honestly how it went.. personally I would not recommend selling your house from 3600+ kms away but we survived. When we landed in Alberta 3 and 1/2 days later we started renting a house and the property hunt began!

Our house we sold in Ontario:

The view from our rental:

Where we were renting was 1 and 1/2 hours drive from both of our new jobs so we knew we did not want to look in that area. After only a couple of weeks searching we found the place we decided to buy and it was a real diamond in the rough (heavy on the rough). It had previously been used as a cattle ranch, specifically a cow/calf operation but when the owner died 20+ years ago his wife walked away and let her son take over and he let everything go! He was growing "medicinal greenery" in the house, garage, and multiple sheds and let me tell you, THE SMELL would give you a contact high if you drove past lol. Luckily anyone else who looked at the run down farm buildings and the house that looked like something on TLCs Hoarders refused to see the potential.

A tiny taste of the clutter that was left behind:

In the meantime while renting I had purchased Tansy who was a yearling AQHA filly and Gordon had purchased Maxwell a 6 y/o Grade QH gelding. Don't worry we never forgot about old boy Dudley still left back in Ontario!

Tansy’s Sale picture: 😂

Maxwell’s sale picture:

We took possession June 30th, 2021 and the fun began! We almost gutted the house before moving in and focused on getting a small acreage (~1.5 ac) ready so we could start moving horses, to be continued...

New flooring and paint because those carpets and linoleum were not salvageable and the smell of the wallpaper was foul:

The pasture:

Finally started to feel like home when our things arrived:

 

[Knave]

I’m excited to follow along.

 

[SmokeyC]

JULY - AUGUST 2021

Once we got the house livable and could move in some furniture so we weren’t driving back and forth from the rental we doubled down on getting things ready for the horses. This involved a TON of brush hogging! Much of the property and pasture had been over run with thistle and had virtually no benefit for our horses. Next we secured hay since our pasture was rented out to a beef rancher and we only had about 1 and 1/2 acres of mowed thistle to house the horses. Thankfully there were pre-existing cattle shelters and although they were packed FULL of garbage and junk the structures themselves were amazing. One we had hay, shelter, fencing.. we brought the ponies home (including getting Dudley shipped from Ontario)

Max and Tansy checking out the cows once we moved them:

Dudley when he arrived from Ontario.
My friend had been sending me photos from back in Ontario and I noticed Dudley was often ribby in the pictures and rapidly losing his top line so we decided to get him shipped ASAP so we could get a handle on him right away

All 3 of them got along so well right away, it was a huge relief because we took a gamble and really didn’t have a way of separating them if things got really nasty unless we housed someone in “round pen” which was actually an old feed coral for cattle.

One weekend we finally decided to take some time to explore, we decided to go see the mountains for the first time (about 3-4 hours from home)

 

[My Salty Pony]

Girl, thanks for sharing, I love the way you are telling your story to us, so interesting and keeping my attention, lol..Most times I just look at pictures and dont read, ha ha ha ha..But you are keeping this fun to read so really really cool..
Cant wait for more updates

 

[SmokeyC]

SEPTEMBER - DECEMBER 2021

Due to my husband and Max losing confidence in one another we sent Maxwell back to his previous owner to see if he could pinpoint the issue and so he could take lessons with the previous owner on Max.

and Max:

After many phone conversations with our pasture renters, we became fast friends. He knew he was going to be short on feed this winter and felt bad that Gordon was out a horse for the next few months so he offered to sell us one of his AQHA mares, we picked her up Thanksgiving weekend for a trial and it was almost immediately obvious that she and Gordon were going to get along great.
Star when she arrived:

Now that we had two broke horses again we could start heading out on the property and put some miles on, so we took advantage until it just became too cold and the ground too hard and slippery.

Eventually it got too cold to do any riding or really anything lol so we just kept the horses fed and happy, we managed to survive our first Northern Alberta deep freeze!

Dudley got a blanket upgrade because he doesn’t grow any winter coat

These Northern girls handled the weather no problem

Truthfully due to the weather and bitter cold the winter months are pretty uneventful.

 

[Chevaux]

Beautiful scenery. I look forward to reading more of your posts.

 

[SmokeyC]

Beautiful scenery. I look forward to reading more of your posts.

@Chevaux thank you very much! I'm hoping to be able to get caught up to present day shortly then just update regularly, a lot has happened in the last year and it's nice to have somewhere to share it.

 

[Ruth McClure]

Beautiful horses! 😍 I’m looking forward to following along.

 

[SmokeyC]

Beautiful horses! 😍 I’m looking forward to following along.

Thank you very much! Thankfully Tansy has matured quite nicely from the very first picture 😅 it was a little touch and go for a couple months lol

 

[TrainedByMares]

Awesome! You are doing some good work! Love the scenery!

 

[SmokeyC]

January 2022 - March 2022

Okay guys, things have been hectic but I’m back and I’m ready to continue lol!

Cold… nothing but cold January through February, there was almost a full 33 days where the warmest part of the day didn’t come above -20°C
Maxwell came back:

This is how we fill stock tanks so doing this in -40°C was almost impossible because the hose would freeze faster than you could turn it on, we still need to troubleshoot our water system further for this coming winter:

We made sure that everyone stayed well fed and pleasantly plump for warmth:

In March I found a factory that was disposing of ther retired laying hens (1 year old hens) they were getting a new shipment of hen for April 1st so they were selling these laying hens crazy cheap with no laying guarantee as long as you could pick them up before April 1st. So the chicken coop adventure began. I decided when we first found out we were getting the property that the old grainery would be our coop. It’s 11 ft x 13 ft and build really solid so other than completely gutting it, it was perfect lol

Before:

During:

Finally Done:

We then welcomed the 8 girls, they were in a pretty bad way but with some TLC and room to roam they have quickly become egg machines again, its hard to believe they were being gotten rid of because they weren’t laying well. We have been getting an egg daily from each consistently. It goes to show how heavily improper husbandry affects production.

 

[SmokeyC]

April 2022 - May 2022

Truthfully April was a quiet month, things were starting to warm up but not enough to melt the ice, riding was still out of the question since everything was sheet ice. We have since found a local heated arena that charges an annual membership so we can ride all year, so we will be looking into that for this coming winter.

In May the ground started to thaw so we knew it was go time and we needed to pound posts and string fences to get the horses more pasture before the custom graze cattle showed up the end of the Month!
Gordon was working out of town but when he was home he started clearing trees out of old pastures and gateways that had become over grown the last 20 years and we started stringing fence and hanging new gates

This is our proposed eventual pig pasture!

We pounded new fence lines for the horses:

We got a total of the 3 new sections fenced for the horses, a 5 acre field, a 2 acre field, and a 1 acre area (maybe Dudley’s eventual grumpy old man pen 😂)

Once the horses were settled and we were happy with what they had, we refocused on the pig pasture and started stringing fence:

Weekends had started to get busy with local brandings, rodeos, and just riding and enjoying life so the pig pasture has been put on hold for the time being, it’s approx 60% completed.

We did managed to drag this old greenhouse over to the chicken coop to be turned into our outdoor run for the girls, UNFORTUNATELY all chicken wire is onsevere backorder so it just sits as is for now but I will hopefully have some wire soon so I can get the girls outside!

We also FINALLY built a “tack wall” in our main barn so that we could get our saddles and tack out of the horse trailer and much more accessible:

We’ve been able to consistently take our horses (Dudley and Star) to a few different places for brandings, checking friends cows, and just putting on miles, it’s been a blast. May had definitely been our busiest but most rewarding month yet.

 

[My Salty Pony]

Great pictures, boy you two sure have been busy And love your hen house, y'all did a good job on it..

 

[SueC]

Hey Smokey, we did our "tree change" starting mid-2010 and have been super busy, as one always is when on land and with animals. I always enjoy following other people's stories of becoming smallholders etc and spent ten years writing for a back-to-the-land hippie magazine which shares such stories, as well as lots of DIY tips. Good for you and good luck!

 

[Ruth McClure]

Your place is looking lovely! And you've sure been hard at work on various jobs. Good on you!

 

[SmokeyC]

June 1 2022 - June 14 2022

Okay, we are caught up, this is good!

Our custom graze cattle started arriving June 1st by the truck loads, we are grazing approx 200 pairs (cow and calf) and 9 bulls. Thankfully this year has been a good mix of rain and sun so the pastures are looking good and lush. Last year we had drought conditions and very poor quality pasture so the cattle were constantly pushing the fences looking for more food. Fingers crossed they stay put this season and we arnt constantly rounding them up!

The first load of the season:

We have continued to pick away at replacing old gates as needed:

There was unfortunately something that must have happened that caused a stampede on the property and in the stampede 4 cows tripped and went down, some were killed instantly and others survived only a short while. This left 4 orphaned calves, our renter wanted to thank us for everything we had done over the past year and for being so hands-on and willing to ride through that cattle regularly so he didn’t have to come check them himself so often. So he offered to give us one of the heifer calves so we could start our own herd. So we ended up with our first cow, a 2 week old Angus x Charolais heifer calf, her name is Cedar.

We ended up feeling guilty after a few days and wanted Cedar to have company other than the horses so we found another sweet little orphan, her mom had unfortunately broken her leg when she was only 2 weeks old and had been bottle fed since. So we welcomed Cypress another heifer calf who is Simmental/Angus x Charolais.

Cedar is our wild child, Cypress is much quieter.. they are a funny pair. Cedar is only 3 weeks old now and Cypress is 8 weeks and Cedar is 100% the ring leader and the one getting into trouble.

We have finally checked our trail cameras and caught a few moose on them over the winter.

Now that Gordon is working Star regularly and has started roping/doctoring cattle off of her we decided to make sure she is feeling her best so she is now receiving regular chiro care at our vet clinic.

My 2 y/o filly Tansy has decided to become a horse overnight, I was having difficulty contacting the trainer I had originally scheduled her in with but it ended up being a huge misunderstanding. Emails ended up in junk folders and phone numbers were lost. So it’s all sorted out now and we have decided to put a very light start on Tansy starting this weekend.

She’s maturing so fast!

 

[whisperbaby22]

Lovely photos.