Chester's Hope
12600 Sideroad 17 L0C 1H0 Sunderland, ON, Canada

Molly loves her new best friend and tries so hard for her, it’s wonderful to see how they’re connecting.

Update: Toads eat lots of flies and mosquitoes, which helps my horses, so I touched the snake’s tail and it let go of the toad and hid. I moved the toad to another water trough and named him George. Apologies to Mother Nature, I couldn’t leave George to die. Who knew garter snakes eat toads? I’ve been wondering where all my toads from under the water troughs have gone. Sadly now I know. Had to stop recording cause it made me sick. I so wanted to rescue the toad, but I’m no...t Mother Nature, so I left things as they are supposed to be. Can that snake swallow that large toad? I want to know but I don’t want to watch, so just tell me, please.

Beautiful evening sky tonight.

Interesting read. When I found out my hay supplier sometimes uses acid to treat our hay, I was worried about how that affects our horses, but some good reading alleviated my concerns, and we get awesome hay every year for it.

Toads under water troughs. I carefully move the troughs when I’m dumping them out, and I carefully place them back again to avoid hurting the toads that live under them. Three of four troughs have toads under them and they do eat bugs so we want them around. Do you like having toads around?

Finn and Atlas sharing a blanket. Video is two minutes, and it went on for another two minutes before Atlas dropped the blanket.

Lobo’s hindlegs were stacked while he was snoozing in his stall this afternoon. Bear is no longer black! Image and Pete have called a truce while keeping flies off each other.

Ally and Molly having fun together. Exactly what Molly needed, she loved showing off her pedestal skills.

Chester, my first horse I owned back in 1980, when we first came to this amazing country. Only had him for a few short years before he died way too young. But he lives on in our little place called Chester’s Hope.

Three, two, one, power nap!!!

There’s a handsome boy across the aisle and Image is reaching out for a hello. Satchmo had a busy day chasing crows off the fields. Now he’s tired.

Our regular flytraps are working well, and our modified horsefly traps are working amazingly. Those are all horseflies in the trap, and a few deer flies. Different bait for different bugs, same result! I’ll be building more of them. Regular flytrap video in comments.

I quickly slapped together a simple deer fly and horse fly trap yesterday, made of a large ball in a black garbage bag, a hoolahoop and my wedding vail, along with a regular flytrap at the top to funnel the flies in. I took out the dish from the flytrap to make it a large opening for the deer flies to go through. Hung it on a regular plant hanger near the gate of 4 horses, and despite a cooler and windy day, I’ve already got about 6 deer flies and 4 or 5 horse flies trapped ...in it. This stuff really works. The idea is to attract horse flies and deer flies to the shiny black surface that is warmed by the sun, and then funnel them up into the trap, because when they fly away, they always fly upwards, so the veil catches them. I’m going to build a bigger one with a wooden frame and a black barrel and will make this one sturdier by mounting it into a wooden frame as well. Will share pictures when it’s done, but if even this silly contraption does the job, I can’t wait to see what the black barrel will collect.

Sharon next door took this cool picture of Bear and Riley in the mist this evening.