Saddle Up has many horses and they keep the manure at the back of their property. You can get fresh stuff for the compost pile or take from piles that have cooked for a few months, which is what we got this time. It’s fantastic organic material to amend our sandy soil and make it good for growing vegetables.

I took Lucy with me last weekend. Jeff at Saddle Up started loading us up with their tractor, but blew a hydraulic hose. He then had to get the Bobcat to get us filled up. Then I drove the sagging farm truck — with hazard lights on — back to St. Pete at a clip of no more than 30 mph.

While there, we visited with their two pigs, their chickens and even a couple horses that were grazing. Oh, and they even have a goat!

Last year, the first freezes occurred in December and continued through February; sometimes lows plunged below 32 for several nights in a row. We lost lots of stuff.

We had one of the warmest Decembers on record this year and didn’t get a freeze scare until Tuesday night when forecasters said even Pinellas County would suffer a hard freeze. We covered our tomatoes, beans, peppers and other vulnerable veggies with blankets and sheets, then went to plastic when we ran out. I’ve since read that plastic is not recommended for covering plants, so that’s probably the last time we’ll use it.

Covering our plants takes several hours of work, especially when it’s windy, as it was Tuesday. The wind knocked down a few of the covers, but we got lucky because the low only dipped to about 38 on Tuesday night. The only casualties were the cucumbers and a few beans.

Forecasters said Wednesday night would be warmer, so I took the covers off. But Wednesday night got down to 32 and finished off the cukes and wiped out the beans. A few tomato plants also were killed. The papaya trees looked dinged on the leaves, but we’ll have to see if there any long-term affects. Everything else came through.

Winter freezes are frustrating. Many of the plants killed by freezes — tomatoes, cukes. peppers and beans — can’t be planted until the sweltering summer is over, usually October. The grow and grow and just start to produce in December and January … and then are killed in a freeze. All that work!

Our cukes were just starting to put out about two weeks ago and now they’re done. Oh well. I know weather forecasting probably isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but it also was frustrating getting bad information about what night would be coldest. I don’t mind battling nature a bit — it’s kind of fun — but I’d like to start winning a little bit more.

It’s fun to mix and match fruits and veggies and we’ve even already had a little juicing party with friends. It’s a Breville 800 Class juicer and it’s awesome, turning any fruit or vegetable into juice and leaving behind only a sawdust-like after-product that goes to the compost pile.

Juicing is becoming pretty popular and a lot of people doing it have seen the documentary “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead,” in which a guy goes on a 60-day juice fast to essentially save his life. I’m not sure I’m up for juice fasting, but I’m trying to replace a meal a day with just juice.

Anyone in St. Pete aea looking for a dog trainer, we would recommend Phyllis at No Bones About It: http://www.nobonesaboutit.biz/

Some photos from graduation night:

The home goes several feet down, then curls flat. Today, she was pulling grass up by its roots and bringing it down into the burrow to make a bed.

It’s really fun to watch her dig, then move the dirt up the chute and use her front legs to spread it out. Her whole face is covered with dirt.

I’ve read that female rabbits will do this when they are pregnant — or when they think they’re pregnant. Zoe isn’t fixed, but Paco is. Now if we suddenly get baby rabbits … well, we’ll have a vet to visit.

She was a sandy mess when we got her home, but she had a great time.

And the dog. I mean, come on. Oh boy, the dog destroyed her frisbee. The dog got a new frisbee. The dog dug under the fence. Whoop-de-frick. Nobody cares.

Every Tom, Dick and Harry in town has a dog. Know what you have that almost no one else has; and what is the centerpiece of this little farmy operation you have going? A clue: It likes prunes and rhymes with dig. Dig?

So show some photos of me already.

This frisbee has a hole in the middle, and when Lucy grabs it a certain way, it lays over her head, making her look like a parade-goer in a Jamaican street festival; or the kid who got stuck playing a flower in the school play.

And she still tries to catch it with her front feet.