Archive for September 2013
Horses Run
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Get out and run, they did!
We accomplished some significant steps yesterday, and that allowed us to open up the front field to the 4 horses.
First order of the day was to finish covering the old existing fence on the far side of the field. The type of fence that previously existed around that field, which we kept intact along that back side, has 4″ squares of woven wire. We were told we should cover those to keep a horse from putting a foot through. It took several days, with Elysa’s help, to finally get it hung the full length
, working our hands raw through a variety of weather, running out of material part way, and negotiating the tangle of old growth along the entire length.
It was a major milestone, and key to feeling comfortable opening the space up to the horses.
Before allowing them out there on their own, Cyndie wanted to walk the horses, two at a time, along the inner perimeter of the fence-line to familiarize them with the border. That causes a bit of a stir, because those who are left behind make a big fuss. Cyndie and Elysa took the horses for a walk,
and I stayed behind to watch each of the remaining pairs calling out to their missing herd members.
The final thing we did prior to letting the four of them out together was to energize the electric fence. It wasn’t immediately needed while they were initially in the paddocks, but we want them to learn to respect our fences, especially around the front field, so this was the time to finally turn it on.
They didn’t go near it while we were around, so we haven’t witnessed whether they have received their first lesson or not. When the gate to the big field was opened, they stepped out a short distance and immediately began to graze the new territory. It was a little anticlimactic.
Slowly, they increased their range of movement out there, eventually getting out of sight over the hill. My curiosity got the best of me and I headed up the hill with my camera to look for them. They were doing great, grazing in some really lush grass. As I lifted my camera to capture the moment, they spotted me and came running. It was kind of funny, looking as if they thought they weren’t supposed to be there, or something.
As I walked back into the paddock, they decided to follow me, so we closed the gate behind them and I went back to finishing the chore of wrapping the trunks of the two trees there, so they won’t chew them up.
At the end of the day, they seemed pretty happy with their situation here, having gotten a taste of that grass they knew was on the other side of their paddock fence.
Needless to say, we are pretty happy, too.
Important Play
On the fourth day of adjusting to their new home, the horses appear to be working on their pecking order. Well, three of them seem to be working on it, as Legacy stands by, unfazed by their activity. His leadership is not being challenged. The rest of the group had us laughing at their game of following each other in circles around the water trough, each one trying to influence the other.
Elysa and I were describing to Cyndie how Hunter seemed to be seriously focused on keeping Dezirea away from anything she wanted. First, the ears pull back, then strategic positioning of increasing threat. Cyndie explained how their exercising roles of dominance are a form of emergency response drill. Just like we practice fire drills, they are practicing to see who can drive others from harm’s way, regardless their interest in going.
If there is a threat, a leader needs to move the herd, even when they are unaware of potential harm and would rather just eat. By showing another horse that it can be controlled, no matter what, dominance can be established and a leader will earn its role.
Now that the horses are becoming comfortable with their surroundings here, they are able to play around with the hierarchy of their herd. It looks playful at times, and like serious business, at others. It is important play that establishes who can be trusted to take necessary action when the time calls for it, which allows the rest of the group to feel at ease and commence with their grazing.
Today, we intend to put them out in the big field for the first time. Since it has been so dry the second half of the summer, we didn’t get enough growth to justify a second cutting, so we will graze the horses out there to let them eat the grass that did grow. It will also give them a chance to be out in open space, and increase their familiarity with their new location.
No doubt, it will also give them a chance to hold some emergency response drills, practicing the leadership roles they appear to be experimenting with since they moved to our place.
Main Attraction
In an instant, the horses transform the atmosphere of our space here, and immediately become the main attraction. That’s as it should be. For months it has felt strange to pull up the driveway and see all the infrastructure in place for horses, but not any animals. Now we have the icing on our cake, and the horses have quickly created a pull that brought our first group from the Cities out to meet them.
Cyndie’s niece, Althea, brought friends, and the horses happily soaked up the affection.
It is nice to see all the attention that the horses command takes nothing away from the rest of our paradise here. Indeed, they add to it. One of the first-time guests repeated wonderment over the beauty of our space. Yes, the horses truly do make this special place even more spectacular than it already was.
It is an honor to be tending it, and a joy to behold.
Welcome to Wintervale Ranch.
Featuring Hunter
Last night, Cyndie had a dinner date in the cities, so it was my first night alone in charge of the horses. I sat and watched them graze for a long time, then collected some apple treats for them, from the stash on our trail. After that, I wandered away to retrieve Delilah from her kennel.
Lately, the usual routine for me letting Delilah out, involves her rushing to the front yard to grab a toy for me to toss around. Not this time. Interestingly, she showed a very distinct interest to head the other direction around the house, toward the trail that leads to the paddocks. She led me right back to the horses for a visit.
Before Cyndie left for the evening, she had described her day with the horses. Cyndie and her friend, Mercedes, had walked pairs of the horses around our property, to better familiarize them with their new surroundings. The route included a stop at Delilah’s kennel, where the horses were now on the outside of a fence, looking in at the dog, in contrast to their previous meetings at the paddocks.
I’m wondering if Delilah’s immediate interest to go see the horses stemmed from their interactions at her kennel earlier in the day.
I had my camera with me while I was sitting to watch the horses graze earlier, randomly snapping varieties of their positioning. Upon review, when I got the images displayed on my computer, I discovered that the horse seemingly always in the front position was, Hunter.
He’s certainly not camera-shy.
Dezirea had a swollen eye, so earned a fly screen mask to give her a break from the unrelenting harassment of the winged beasts.
Identifying them in this last shot, from left to right is, Legacy, Cayenne, Hunter, and Dezirea.
Got Fertilizer?
It didn’t take long for Cyndie to step in it. The horses are here!
What an amazing experience. We enjoyed a flawless delivery. The herd quickly adjusted to their new home and went right to grazing. What a joy to behold. These 4 make a perfect group. Since there was no reason to break them up, we decided to remove the gate between the two paddocks and let them have full access to both.
The horses are Arabians. We have two mares and two geldings. Dezirea was a brood mare. Cayenne is her daughter, but is larger in size. (I’m told the father was a big horse.) Hunter is a gelding who grew up with 
Cayenne. He got kicked in the head when he was born. He is a bit slow, as in, it takes him longer to learn things, but he is a gentle giant. Those three are all chestnuts. Dezirea has one white knee-high sock. Hunter has one white anklet. Cayenne has no socks. The remaining horse is Legacy, and he is a gray. He is the leader of the herd.
For the most part, they appeared very relaxed with their situation, but it was apparent that they were on alert to sounds or actions. They were very easy to startle.
After a short time of just letting them graze freely, we used carrots to entice them to come check out the automatic waterer. When it would turn on to refill, they would jump back in surprise, but it didn’t take long at all before they accepted it as a harmless noise.
When we went to check on them after dinner, in the early evening darkness, we found them up near the barn overhang. They seemed to be hovering there, but not really coming in under the roof. We turned on a light and stepped out to see them, and discovered they were hesitant to 
step on the strip of rocks that protect the drip-line of the roof. Our presence seemed to give them strength, and Legacy crossed the barrier. Once he did that, they all followed suit.
It was hard to say goodnight at the end of the day.
And what a day it was.
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Great Anticipation
Today is the day. After years of preparation, starting way back when we hatched this crazy scheme, we will finally have horses. It is the culmination of our vision, and it is the first step into a new normal. What an amazing change this is from our years back in Eden Prairie.
It should be a busy day today. First thing in the morning, I am expecting a visit from a log home professional who will quote the job of sealing up our home and preserving the logs for the coming winter season. After that, we will be watching for friends coming to visit, the delivery of bales of hay, and then the arrival of our herd of horses –not necessarily in that order.
We’ve got some things to do yet, prior to their arrival, so we hope to get one or two chores accomplished before we enter the phase of just standing and staring, which I expect will consume us for the remainder of the day.
I hope they will be happy with the grass they find here. They are coming from fields that have been over-grazed, so our long, thick grass will be a significant change. I also hope I will remember what I learned at the Epona seminar I attended with Cyndie in Arizona.
“Breathe.”
I will remember to breathe.
Final Preparations
I took advantage of being home on Monday and whittled away at the list of things we want done before the horses arrive. Cyndie had to work, so I was left to choosing tasks that I could accomplish alone. One of the big ones for me was to finish preparing the area we have set aside for manure management (just in case the 4 horses happen to produce any manure).
We selected a site last fall, and did some initial clearing. At the time, it seemed like the perfect location, if only we could remove some stumps. We cut into the bigger of two that were right in front, to see if it might come out with minor effort. It didn’t. Elysa’s friend, Anne, volunteered to work on it, because cutting out a stump appealed to her. She made great progress at the time, cutting through all the roots around the perimeter, but the stump held fast.
Early in spring, when Cyndie initially began cleaning out the stalls in the barn, the old sawdust and wood chips got dumped behind and beside the stumps. We ended up ignoring the area for most of the summer, and it grew tall with weeds and some grass. Yesterday, I brought out the chainsaw and made all the stumps disappear, both front and rear (sorry, Anne). Now we are set to dump manure from the front side, and remove it from the back side.
It is another one of our visions realized.
It will be easy to access the manure composting area off the new road that comes around the back side of the barn. Turning around from the view of the [future] manure pile, I took a picture of what the back side of the barn looks like.
We’ve got some spare gates remaining, which will likely get used in a next phase of fencing, whenever that occurs. Speaking of gates, my next project was getting chains installed to latch all the gates in the paddocks. That was definitely a priority to be done before the horses arrive.
When Cyndie got home, she helped to roll some big rocks into the bucket of the diesel tractor. The semi driver scouting our layout said he could back down toward the barn if the rocks weren’t there. We’d been meaning to move them ever since they were dropped on that spot at the start of our re-landscaping project, so we promised him they would be gone.
Now the rocks are back by the labyrinth.
In the evening, before we turned out the lights and closed up the barn, we turned on the electric fence to confirm everything was in working order, and then proclaimed the place ready for horses.
Today, I will mount some hardware to create tie-points where Cyndie wants them, to secure horses during saddling or other tasks. I will pick up some grain from the feed store. I will bring our collection of pallets down to the hay shed, to place under the bales of hay.
We are one day away from the planned arrival.
Counting Down
Okay, I’ll finally admit it. We are now counting down the days until horses arrive here. I have purposely avoided writing about it, in case something interferes with the plan, but now we are close enough that I am breaking my self-imposed silence on the subject. Four Arabian horses have been identified, two mares and two geldings. This fact woke me in the wee hours of Sunday morning, and I wasn’t able to get back to sleep until after I made a list of all the things that were flashing into my mind that remain to be done.
I think I came up with a list of 12 items. After both Cyndie and I were up and talking in the morning, the list grew to 31 things to be done. Yikes! On second review, I was able to convince her that many of the tasks could wait until after the horses arrive, but there are still more things than can probably be accomplished. We’ll just have to prioritize.
Yesterday was a beautiful day to get a lot done, but we struggled with hitting our high gear. We knocked off some things that were on our list, but not the one that will take the most time, which is unfortunate, because time is now in short supply. It was a beautiful day, sunny, breezy, and the temperature was perfectly comfortable. There was no reason we shouldn’t have gotten a lot done, until our first visitor of the day arrived.
George, from our neighboring CSA farm came over by horse-drawn wagon to deliver this month’s share of meat and eggs. We had a wonderful and valuable chat, but it extended well into time we can barely afford. It is a tough thing to balance, because on the one hand, such interactions are priceless. It is very close to being the very essence of living in a rural setting like we do now. On the other hand, it keeps us from finishing what we start.
Normally, it wouldn’t be such a challenge, but yesterday, it happened twice. The second time it turned out to be the person who will be delivering a semi-load of hay with the horses. He was scouting the route to our property and wanted to check the layout of our buildings and driveway in order to be prepared. He turned out to be another very talkative person, full of knowledge about things pertinent to our endeavors here. Another priceless meeting and exchange that we are blessed to receive, but which knocks us off our list of tasks we want to get done. This took us into the dinner hour, and standing in the cool evening breeze brought on a chill that had both Cyndie and me happy to call it a day.
We ended up building the first fire of the season in our fireplace and Cyndie made soup and heated some french bread for our meal. More things to love about September.
That, and the pending arrival of horses…
Birthday Celebration
Saturday night was our opportunity to celebrate Julian’s birthday, and the whole family –Cyndie, me, two kids, and two guests– convened in downtown Minneapolis, on Hennepin Avenue, at the restaurant, “Seven” for a world-class evening of great food and superb service in a wonderfully vibrant environment. The entertainment district was hopping on this beautiful September Saturday night. The weather brought back memories of 32-years ago, when Cyndie and I were up in northern Minnesota on our honeymoon. Ah, September in Minnesota. I love it!
We settled into our seats at the perfect table for us, in the back of the restaurant’s first floor, where Cyndie could tuck her large bag of presents out-of-the-way, opened our menus and discovered a wonderful surprise… They had personalized our menus for the occasion.
We had a fabulous dinner. It was a very fine way to celebrate. Happy 25th, again, Julian!
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Idea Realized
Carrying on with yesterday’s theme of ‘before and after,’ this time I compare my design concept with the actual end result. Last night, I searched out the images I created back in February to mock-up what our idea for a hay shed and new driveway loop might look like. I see now that I didn’t put enough attention toward getting the scale correct.
If you were following along back then, you may recall that my first mockup attempt had the shed at the wrong angle. You can see that one on the right.
When I realized that mistake, I took a second shot at it, rotating the shed, bringing the size up a bit, and then adding some fence. In the end, we didn’t use the two-tone wall that the barn has, but we were able to match the colors close enough so that the two buildings look like they belong together. Unfortunately, the seasons don’t match in these two views, but otherwise, I think you can see that we came pretty close to achieving our vision for the hay shed and driveway loop.
Stay tuned to see the realization of some of our other visions in the days ahead…
Relative Something 