This is Zelda, Jim's favorite little dog! He's just pretending not to like her licking his head :) I see that she sleeps up on the bed and that Jim sneaks her down to the kitchen in the morning to join him for coffee. Now, what's so bad about all that? :)

Welcome to the Farm, Karen! UKC Ch. Blackstone's Anna Karenina is visiting us this spring where she will have her puppies by Solo!

Thank you so much to our longtime friend and AKC show judge Nancy Eilks for sending her our way! Karen is a big Bouvier with sound structure and temperament. We hope for some good puppies from this alliance!

Here's our new mare, Charish.

A big day for us here; this morning Solo and Trouble had an alliance. This helps schedule how our spring and summer will look. I will also be taking a picture of our new riding mare and will post it here!

I have put a link to Trouble's litter on the left sidebar of this page. Please look over there for updates!

This is 'Hazel' - she is a young Bouvier that we purchased from Legacy Kennel this past spring and who we are co-owning with a local family. She stands 22.5" at 6 months so will be a smaller girl but hopefully will make size . She certainly carries a lot of coat! She is sired by GCH Ch. Legacy's Zane Grey out of CH. Kari-Dustie vd Vanenblikhoeve.

Our farm dogs had a busy day in the city today - Solo competed in UKC obedience and qualified with a 194 out of a possible 200 points and Trouble competed at the University of Minnesota's Leatherdale Arena where the Great River Stockdog Club was hosting a fundraising event. Entrants brought crates of ducks (5 in a crate) and the dogs participated in an AHBA duck trial. My friend Phyllis handled Trouble to her Started Duck title.

Jim spent the afternoon bringing in firewood from along the road - the County had come along and cut dead and/or dying trees away from the roadway and even cut it into manageable stove-sized logs. We were commenting that in years past the wood would have been gone immediately but this year it sits. The other big news is that the local NAPA auto parts store in our little town went down in flames today! As far as we know, no one was hurt, thank goodness - but the loss of even one business will hurt us all.

A mostly winter day here today; single digit temps and snow falling - all to be expected in the northern tier in January! We rec'd a nice note from the fellow who took our dairy goats home with him last year; he's agreed to send one back here when they're done kidding so that once again we will have fresh chevre! He sent this picture of Clover and Callie, taken last week.

Ziva and Lynn had a great time on Friday with a qualifying run in AKC agility! This great and fast team ran a 38 second run in only 18 seconds! Amazing!!

We wanted to share this photo with you. A friend took this one as Alta relaxed after a houseful of out of town guests,here for my 75th birthday celebrations.

We both send congratulations to Trouble (we do check out the website, though Alta has trouble with the keypad )

Hope you and all the "cousins" are doing well.

Hugs, Caryl and Alta

Trouble has come in season a little early; we'll keep you all posted as developments proceed! To find Trouble on our website ~ her registered name is Briarlea Alta Bella.

Yesterday was worming day for our sheep flock - Trouble brought the sheep into the barnyard and then pushed them all into the barn. I usually have a chute for worming but we took it down this fall which means we were worming them all packed together. Not a lot of fun but with our new Premier worming system it went very fast!