Northstar Livestock

01/08/2025

Some of the young ones on a nice winter day.

01/06/2025

When they can be in the shelter and instead they're all outside.

01/03/2025

Back when it was a bit greener out.

STORY TIME –
Mishap - Twice

A neighbor of ours was a good-living man. He would be at church every Sunday morning, and he would never swear. He had a son who could be a little on the careless side at times. One day the two of them were loading blocks of firewood into a trailer to haul home for the winter. The son was throwing wood into the trailer and not watching very closely where he was throwing. He hit his dad on the head with a block of wood and knocked him out as cold as a mackerel. After a little while he came to, his head hurt but he didn’t say anything too much to his son, he just told him to be more careful. They went back to their chore of throwing blocks of wood into the trailer. Well now, didn’t the same thing happen again. The son throwing blocks hit his dad on the head the second time and again knocked him out. The Dad came to once more after a few minutes and was just so exasperated with the son. He said “Ralph, Ralph, Ralph,” and at a loss for words added, “Ya stupid bu**er ya.”

01/01/2025

Happy New Year Everyone!

Another story for Christmas from Bill.
Mistletoe

It seems that from way back in time mistletoe has been used as an excuse to kiss someone. I think the idea of all this is to hang it up and you as the kissor lie in wait for the kissee to walk underneath it and presto – there’s opportunity knocking. I reasoned that if someone walked under it that I didn’t want to kiss the thing to do was to let on like I didn’t see it hanging there. If there was someone who happened to come along that I did want to kiss that was a whole different game of ball. However if they weren’t heading in the right direction to go under the mistletoe a person might have to resort to kind of herding them along in the right direction to get them straightened out and lined up to get them back on track. With a stubborn one a fella might even have to set up a gate so they couldn’t go any other way, much like running them through a squeeze chute as you would with cattle.

I’d heard lots about mistletoe but had never seen it – not the real stuff anyway. A friend and I thought it would be great if we could find some to take to the Christmas dance being held at the high school. We were in grade nine then (but quite mature for our age). So we asked around where we might find some and someone (I think it might have maybe been my mother) suggested that we try the florist so we thought we would check there first. Sure enough, he had it and we bought a good sized bag of it for two dollars, or to break it down, for one dollar each. We were all stocked up and ready to boogie and away we went to the dance. We got to the school and were hanging some up when one of the older fellas asked what we were doing. We told him and right away he wanted some of our mistletoe. We said that we had bought it but agreed to sell him some so we sold him a little sprig of it for two dollars and we had our total investment back in one fell swoop. Word spread like wildfire among the boys that there was mistletoe available and everyone wanted to get in on the action. We kept selling these little sprigs for two dollars apiece because it was obviously a sellers market and there was huge buyer demand. We sold thirty some dollars worth and still had a little left for ourselves. Actually we thought about selling the rest of it and heading back to the florist for a fresh supply but didn’t want to run the risk of him being closed for the evening when we got there and us being left without any.

We didn’t think that there was any specific amount of mistletoe that was needed to kiss a girl but we reasoned that there should be enough there that they could see it easily to confirm for sure that it actually was there. With some of the little sprigs that we had sold that evening the girls would have had to have had 20/20 vision to be able to see them and if they didn’t want to be kissed by that particular boy they could feasibly argue that they didn’t see any mistletoe and it would be close to the truth. We had sold so many sprigs off of ours however that what we had left was mostly a stem with a couple little leaves and berries hanging on the end of it. It could be seen alright but you couldn’t really swear up and down that it was mistletoe. Actually it looked more like droopy, bedraggled poison ivy.

Anyway, we got to kiss a few girls; I wasn’t really working on a volume basis but more of a pick the goodies type of situation. I even got to kiss a couple of the pretty older girls that were in the higher grades so I thought I was really cooking with gas. We had a great evening and we also learned a valuable lesson about supply and demand. They talk about motivated buyers and we sure had a lot of them that night. When you can turn a profit and get to kiss the girls too you must be doing something right. They don’t stress this type of thing in our educational system but let me tell you – it’s a valuable lesson.

12/29/2024

STORY TIME -
The Spider

At Christmas time everyone looks forward to the big Christmas dinner, and especially so the turkey. I’m a guy that likes the leg and when Brenda is getting Christmas dinner ready to lift and I’m hovering around the pantry stealing pieces of turkey she will sometimes give me a leg. This isn’t an act of kindness on her part, rather it’s just that she wants to get rid of me. There are times around here that I don’t feel loved or wanted.

I sometimes think of a family who lived five or six miles from where we lived in Prince Edward Island. This couple had twelve kids in their family and the man of the house said that he wouldn’t take a million dollars for any one of his kids but he wouldn’t give five cents for one more. Anyway, Christmas day as he was carving up the turkey for dinner all these dozen kids were gathered around the table in anticipation of their big meal and all loudly proclaiming ‘I want a leg, I want a leg, I want a leg’. Now when there’s one turkey being served up that only has two legs and a dozen kids all clamoring for legs the numbers just don’t jive. He had to holler to be heard above the din, “I’m cutting up a turkey here not a friggin spider.”

12/25/2024

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Story Time -
Christmas Tree

Saturday last, Brenda and I took the truck and got our Christmas tree. Actually we got the tree from a lot selling trees and it's a dandy. The trees obviously had been pruned and are about as nice a shape as you would ever see. My thoughts go back to when we were kids and we would go up to ‘The Bay’ as we called it (Dad’s cottage), or to Ernie’s cabin next door to get our trees. If we didn’t find something we liked on our land we were welcome to get one on Ernie’s. He was a close family friend. We would wander though the bush looking as well as climbing to the tops of bigger trees and swinging back down to the ground. The trick on that one was to get out of the way far enough and fast enough so the tree didn’t smack you on the rebound. By the time we had our play and found our tree we’d be cooled down pretty well - so much so that you didn’t have the use of your toes. I guess one of the worst examples of the Christmas spirit was when Ernie’s uncle was not very well and was in the hospital. He had a row of big beautiful blue spruce down the edge of his property and some enterprising soul cut the top off one of these trees for his Christmas tree. They might have put up a beautiful tree that year but that one didn’t seem to be what Christmas was all about. Everyone who saw what they had done felt bad.

I can’t help but smile every time I think of when we lived in PEI and our kids went to the one room school across the road from our farm. Every year the teacher would turn all the kids loose for the afternoon to get a tree for the Christmas concert. The two farms across the sideroad from us had hundreds of spruce trees to pick from. The kids would be gone for the whole afternoon (to find one tree). We would see them all troop down the sideroad and then disappear into the bush. From there we would hear lots of yelling and hollering as they played their games in the woods. One year I said to Brenda ‘just for the heck of it lets go back to see how much ground these kids actually covered.’ We took the tractor back the sideroad and walked a little piece into the bush and I don’t think there was a square inch of snow that wasn’t tramped down by this group of kids. We could see where they had cut down a tree - almost at the point where they had started out from, pretty much as an afterthought.

The night of the Christmas concert the tree stood there in all its glory even though it could have done with several more branches. Anyway, the kids were proud of their tree and had a good time getting it so I guess that’s what counts isn’t it? Not one of them seemed to care a wit if it was a crappy tree or not – they had got it themselves.

There was another year on the Island that we often laugh about still. Brenda’s Dad had said ‘come on down and get a tree here, we have all kinds of them on the hill behind the house’. We said thanks, that was great, that we would be down to get one on Sunday. That day we started up the hill and we all spied one at the same time that was a dandy and after only a couple minutes walking as well. We cut it down and took it home and were quite happy with it. The next day Brenda’s Dad went out to get his tree and couldn’t find a good one. We had taken the only good tree on the place. He ended up with a less than super-duper tree and when we went down to Christmas diner everyone thought it was a great joke and we all laughed at his inferior tree.

When a person looks back though it really doesn’t matter what a Christmas tree looks like, the warm memories of being together with family and friends to share in a very special time of year is what really counts.

We hope you folks have a wonderful Christmas.

12/22/2024

We got a laugh from this photo taken back in the fall.
This crane picked an odd spot to roost for the night.

12/20/2024

STORY TIME (Bill) -
Long Walk

A little history here – my grandmother’s grandfather was the first person to ever have a horse in Bruce County, Ontario, the same county where we live today. I couldn’t tell you when this story happened but it would have to be well over a hundred years ago.

He started out from Montreal, Quebec riding a mare that he had bought. He knew she was in foal but he didn’t realize that she was as close to foaling as she was. He rode the mare for two days and she laid down and had her foal so the people that sold her to him were more than a little off on their due date. He then walked the rest of the way from there to Bruce County. He put his few belongings on the mare’s back, and would lead her with her baby tagging along behind. Now a new foal has to rest quite often and every time the baby would need to rest he would sit under a tree and wait while it had a little sleep. At this rate he sure wouldn’t have been able to go very far in a day and I’ve often wondered just how long it took him to make that trip. It was a distance of about 470 miles so it would have taken quite a long time. As well, all three of them must have been in pretty good physical shape by the time they arrived here.

I was in Summerside, Prince Edward Island years back at a welding shop getting some work done on one of our trailers and there was another fella waiting there as well so we struck up a conversation. He said that his name was Farrel and I told him that my grandmother was a Farrell. It turned out that he had been researching back the family tree and he said that there were three brothers who originally came to Canada from Ireland. Way back the name had been O’Farrel and it was later shortened to Farrel. Of the three brothers one went to Prince Edward Island, one went to Nova Scotia, and the third one he had traced as far as Montreal and didn’t know what became of him from there. I laughed and said, “I can tell you that one,” and I told him the story that I have just told you here as that was the brother that my family was descended from.

He couldn’t believe that I would be able to give him all of this information when this would have taken place way way back in time. You would have thought that someone had given him gold; he was so pleased to find out what had became of the third brother. There are a great many Farrels in Bruce County today, especially in Kincardine township and I’m sure half of Huron Township are Farrels and the other half are married to Farrels. They sure must have been a prolific bunch so populate this area the way they have. They’re good people and I’m proud to have some of that Farrel blood in me.

12/19/2024

Bill's 2024 Christmas Letter

Well Sir - I’m getting in the Christmas spirit now. Today with the snow and all, it looks like a Currier and Ives Christmas card outside. It is just plain flat out beautiful. To top that off Brenda is working on her Christmas baking. Now around here we tend to worry about her baking spoiling, so it gets eaten up pretty fast ‘just in case’. After blowing snow it does tend to whet a person’s appetite so the obvious thing to do when one walks in the door and smells all these good enticing smells coming from the kitchen would be to do a little sampling, followed up by a few more samples just to make sure that it turned out to be up to expectations, and it always is.

We have a big maple tree in front of our living room window that is a runway for squirrels, and we get a kick out of watching them. We have blacks and greys and lots of them. The fact that we have three acres of walnut trees may have something to do with our squirrel population. Actually, there are a few of us around here who are a little squirrely some days.

Our guys are quite spread out - Ontario, Alberta, Prince Edward Island, and North Dakota, so the postal strike has not been a help to us to say the very least. It’s a busy time of year for us around here to get ready for winter, to get ready for Christmas, chores, training horses, along with the blowing snow and digging out. We enjoy what we do so that’s important – except maybe the blowing snow part. If the wind changes the snow blows back on me and I look like frosty the snowman.

I was kidding Brenda about not putting enough raisins in her raisin bread and I am reminded of a neighbor of ours who was giving his wife a hard time about not putting enough raisins in her raisin bread. He said that the raisins were so far apart that a person had to roller skate from one raisin to the next. I guess nobody is perfect (other than myself of course).

I just wanted to mention that several years ago I wrote a book, a collection of short stories. We thought you might enjoy them. Being that I’m not a computer guy Jase said that he would put some of these stories on our page. I hope that you enjoy them.

We here at Northstar wish you a wonderful Christmas and happy holidays and all the very best in the new year.
As always, we want to wish you fresh air, good grass, cool clear water, and good honest horses.

Again, Merry Christmas Everyone,
The Irwins
Northstar Livestock

12/13/2024

This good looking young guy is on his way to his new home on Prince Edward Island.

12/11/2024

Opinions - should we blanket this one in the cold weather?

12/09/2024

This black Rio son is about as fancy as one can be!
His information is on page 2 of our site.

12/04/2024

This is a darn nice black c**t by Rio and out of a Smoke daughter.
This guy is a medium size and is going to be a great partner for someone. His information is on page 2 of our site.

12/03/2024

The scenery has definitely changed around here in the last few days.

11/30/2024

We enjoyed seeing this picture. These three blue roan stud c**ts left Ontario then stopped over in Alberta before landing at their new home in Utah.
We thought they were very nice young horses and will grown into very special individuals.

11/29/2024

This 2024 black c**t is a good one.
He's a medium sized guy by our stallion Rio.
He's very trainable and good minded.
His information is on page 2 of our site.

11/26/2024