Archive for March 2014
Lake Wintervale
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This time of year, there’s water, water, everywhere. Can you guess where this is?
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Go ahead, click on the image…
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Spring Arrives
Today is the first day of spring on the calendar, so that means only a few weeks, or maybe a month, more of days when we might experience significant snow events. Yesterdays’ little excitement is already melting fast. I did need to plow the driveway when I got home from work, but it was relatively easy and the remnants left behind on the pavement melted quickly, leaving the driveway mostly clean after minimal effort.
Unfortunately, I was doing some cleanup with a shovel and leaned into it, sliding the snow to the edge, when a disc in my back went kablooey. It’s impressive how quickly a person can go from standing upright, to flat on their back on the mucky wet ground. It’s also interesting how blissful it can seem to be laying down with no pain, regardless the fact it was on the wet pavement. I was feeling content to lay there for the rest of the night, but Cyndie happened along and inspired me to make my way back to my feet again with the enticement of Chinese takeout she brought home for dinner.
Today is not a day for whining, it’s spring! I’ll celebrate with a shot of Cayenne posing in the bright March sunshine. Green things won’t be far behind.
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Snowing Again!
As of last night, it looked like this out our back door:
Cyndie ended up staying in town overnight, and I am trying to get out of here in the dark wee hours of the morning to get ahead of the mass crush of other commuters, on my way to the day-job. Sadly, that means dragging Delilah out of bed before she is awake, to put her outside in her kennel, and then trying to get horses fed a couple of hours earlier than they expect it, in the wet, snowy darkness. Oh joy.
Those tricky tasks are on top of my otherwise tight routine of simply waking up and getting in the car to get on the road as early as possible. If I don’t leave here early enough, it’s traffic jam city and commuting anguish for me.
An overnight winter storm doesn’t help things one bit. It’s a good thing I signed up for this adventure, or I could become one grumpy bunny.
Actually, I’m a little bit of a grumpy bunny anyway, this morning. Yesterday afternoon, I learned that the plaque detected in my heart by a recent test places me on the wrong side of the healthy curve for men my age. I have been welcomed into the club of aging folks who must take cholesterol medicine and the once-a-day baby aspirin to keep that bad boy from rearing up and surprising me someday when I least expect it. “Preventive medicine.” Gee, my favorite, except I like it to be from exercising and eating well, not from taking meds for the rest of my life.
Actually, when I asked the doctor how long I need to take them, he gave me an out. He said I would probably only need them for another 40 years.
I wonder if I will actually follow his prescription… Right now, I’m thinking that my previous ignorance was bliss. I was just fine until I went in for my latest “well-health” physical.
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Nature’s Course
There is no getting around the fact that we are at that time of year when the weather can flip from enticingly spring-like to “as winter as ever” in a single day. It can be a tough blow at the end of a harsh winter to be walloped by storms that give the impression the weather is headed in the wrong direction. Today is expected to be one of those tough blows, but it is not clear what the precise position of the storm will be. We are on the edge of a suspected path which could swing either to freezing rain or heavy, wet snow.
For the time being, I’m going to enjoy this image of our paddock from Saturday, when the snow had been cleared off the ground and the clouds were gone from the sky. We’ll have more of this type of enjoyment in the days ahead. We just need to tolerate a small setback to a winter storm for a few days.
That’s Dezirea munching hay, with Legacy standing by, on watch.
A couple of days later and it looked like this (although, in fairness, this one was taken with my phone looking through a dirty window from inside our sunroom):
At Delilah’s desperate urging, I let her outside to chase a squirrel, or squirrels, which had been tugging mercilessly at her predator instincts while she was trapped indoors. I followed her with my eyes as she sprinted deep into the neighbor’s woods to our north, much farther than she normally explores. The unconscious chase left her in new territory, and I would have been surprised if she just turned around and came back into our yard.
She disappeared for quite a while. When Delilah finally reappeared outside our windows, it wasn’t a squirrel she had as a prize, but the bottom portion of a deer leg. It is most likely that she happened upon a carcass that was left by some other predator(s), but she looked so much like a wolf out there, gnawing on that limb in the heavy falling snow, I felt a renewed appreciation for why our cats appear so wary of her.
She’s just doing what comes natural, but it can be almost scary seeing how incredibly proficient she is about it.
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Building Bonds
With the paddocks recently freshened up —can’t refer to them as clean, since the horses have already followed up Saturday’s major effort with a hefty new distribution of piles— we invited Cyndie’s niece and nephews to come inside the fence to brush the horses. It was a good chance to allow the 1000 pound animals to bond with the kids and receive the nurturing care being offered.
Hunter, in the foreground of the image at left, and Cayenne, far in the distance, were wonderfully cooperative. Legacy, hidden from view, was less so. He wasn’t on his best behavior.
I’m told that horses don’t hold a grudge, but I saw how frustrated he was with us Saturday when we locked the horses out of the paddock while we worked to clean it. I wouldn’t blame him if he was still miffed. While I was scraping manure with the New Holland, he was at the gate, huffing and snorting, scratching away at the ground with his hoof, and shaking his head to and fro. He definitely wanted back in. Cyndie said that when I was putting away the tractor and she opened the gate to let them back in, they didn’t rush in with glee, but casually sauntered in as if it was no big deal. I returned from the garage to report that we had worked an hour-and-a-half past their usual afternoon feeding time. Maybe that was what Legacy had gotten all worked up about. It was past the appointed hour for dinner and we were showing no signs of doing anything about it.
Yesterday’s temperatures had plummeted down to a solid freeze again, so when I stepped out in the morning to get a picture of the new manure pile we had created in the paddock, I was able to walk on top of the crust of snow without breaking through. I decided to hike out and up the hill into the big field, where the snow cover has receded enough to reveal areas of exposed ground. I was curious as to whether this would attract the horses or not. They have barely stepped in the big field ever since the last big snow accumulation. It had gotten too deep to make it worth the effort for them. I expect the horses would feel an increased vulnerability in deep snow.
There was one little trail the horses had trampled into the field, and that single route was what they now confined themselves to on the few occasions they did wander out. While I was taking some pictures from up on that hill, with the sun behind me, Hunter ventured up that trail, stopping where the path began to arc away to his right. Wondering if he was interested in coming further, I approached him with an invitation to join me.
Tentatively, he stepped onto the crusty snow beyond the packed path. Hunter isn’t light enough to stay on top like me, but he found it was no longer too deep, and carefully proceeded in my direction. In the distance, Legacy was keeping a keen eye on the scene.
While Hunter wandered around on the hill with me, checking the spots where the snow had melted away, Legacy and the other horses moved out to just beyond the paddock, but no further. I think they didn’t want to deal with the crunchy terrain, yet they were obviously interested in what Hunter was up to.
He was with me, and we were alone —make that, alone with Delilah— up on the hill. It was pretty special. Unfortunately, since I wasn’t grazing, my interest quickly waned, and I was soon ready to head back down. It didn’t feel right to just walk away and leave Hunter alone, so I tried to let him know my intention to go, slowly stepping down toward the paddock. In seconds, Hunter was following. In fact, he started to increase his gate and I needed to hustle along to avoid getting run over. I wasn’t sure if his rush was to make it easier for him to navigate the crusty snow, or if he was just that eager to get back with the herd, but his sudden haste took nothing away from the sweet experience we had shared in his choosing to join me up there.
It seems as though Hunter and I are building a special bond of our own.
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Many Firsts
In our new world of country living on 20 acres with horses, cats, and a dog, 2 tractors, an ATV, a spare pickup truck, plus 3 outbuildings, we frequently find ourselves facing tasks with which we have no previous experience. Yesterday’s ‘first’ was using the diesel tractor to clean manure in the paddocks.
Our horses arrived at the end of September last year, so this has been our first winter with them. After the fall season in which we tried to clean the paddocks almost daily, the winter weather introduced a whole new challenge to our system. The snow covers and freezes the daily accumulations and we pretty much stopped trying to do any cleaning at all.
I asked our neighbor, George, how they deal with the situation at their farm. He stated matter of factly that they just wait until the snow melts and then scoop out the entire top layer of soil and manure. I fear ours will be a muddy mess that will keep our machines out of there until summer, so I was weary of how simple he made it sound.
Last week, while out shopping for hay nearby, we drove from the east on the county road that passes just south of our place. It was the very first time I have traveled that stretch of road since we moved here. We had yet to see the view of our place from that direction in the year-and-a-half we have been here.
While we were out on that trip, we noticed a farm where they piled the manure right inside their paddock. With all our snow finally melting, the months of manure are getting revealed in our paddocks, so I suggested we consider doing the same. The mess in our paddocks is big enough that I figured we would need to use the tractor, but I was unsure about whether I could successfully navigate the challenging terrain. The driveway was melting and would be a mud pit. The snow was still deep in some areas and the wheels of the tractor might not get me through. The ice could leave me spinning in place.
While surveying the situation, Cyndie spent precious time brushing out the shedding coat of each horse. I tried raking some manure by hand, and quickly learned it was still too frozen to be very effective with that mode. It would definitely take the power of the tractor to make any measurable progress.
In hindsight, I think we picked the perfect day for this task because it was a day when the temperature stayed below freezing. The tractor was able to make good progress in scraping the top layer of accumulated manure, and in so doing removed a lot of snow. If we had tried this on a day when it was warmer it would have been a muddy mess.
We ended up with a giant pile in one corner, but that should shrink significantly when the snow portion melts away. I think we did pretty well with our first try at using the tractor to clean the paddock. It was, in fact, one of the primary reasons we anticipated needing that tractor in the first place.
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Embarrassing Excess
I am developing a complex about the number of boots, jackets and gloves that I seem to need to keep handy at our doors. Occasionally, Cyndie will clear the excess and stow it in a closet. When this happens, I try to respect it for as long as possible, but inevitably my plethora of outerwear re-accumulates, filling our entrances with my clutter once again.
This time of year is particularly difficult, because the transition from winter to spring brings a wide variety of conditions. I seem to be putting on a different boot every other time I go out. For deep snow and/or extremely cold temperatures, I prefer my Steger mukluks. However, they have a soft leather sole, and I frequently want something more robust for tasks around the barn, or with our machines.
My other options include another pair of insulated winter boots –with a rubber sole; my ankle-high muck boots; and (not pictured) my calf-high, steel-toe slip-on boots for when I’m going to be near the horses.
I really do wear them all, and often in the span of a few days. Around here, it can be almost summer-like one day, and the next, you might receive a foot and a half of snow (as happened here last year on May 2nd!).
It’s the same thing with jackets. The hooks by the door make it look like we are having a party or something, but no, two of those are Cyndie’s and the rest are all mine.
I’ve got a heavy canvas coat for the colder days, a light winter shell, my raincoat, and my favorite light jacket from Wilkus Architects. By the other door is my Columbia fleece and shell combination that is so old I decided to have it become the winter work jacket, letting it get dusted and rubbed by enough grime that you can hardly tell what color it once was.
Could I get by with just one pair of boots and one jacket? Not one that works well for all situations, that’s for sure.
Then I look at Delilah, who doesn’t wear boots at all. She goes in and out of the house, and her furry paws work just fine for every condition. Sure, we have to pull ice out from between her toes sometimes, and wipe her down with a towel when she comes in, but she makes those paws do.
I aspire to become as efficient as she is.
Although, I’ve got her beat on one thing. Her collection of chew toys and gnawed bones, antlers, and stuffed critters is ten times the clutter of anything of mine piled up around the inside of our house.
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Look
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is it true
or do we assume
truth happens
only when
we need to hear it
the rest
is illusory
allegory
a vague story
told as a tale
. tall
beneath urges
longings
daylight dreams
happening in real time
filled with love
laughter
and a feeling
that lingers just out of frame
begging to be viewed
but invisible
if you look
directly
into its eyes
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Directing Flow
While walking through the muddy driveway in front of the barn I noticed that one of the “fixes” I tried last fall to control runoff appeared to still be doing the job this spring. Previously, the water on the barn-side of the hay shed would flow straight across the drive path into the paddock. I made a little channel at a diagonal across the driveway in hopes of directing the flow toward the far side of the paddock.
With all the snow piled up beside the driveway, there was nowhere for the water to go, so it began to pool up. I grabbed a shovel and set about remedying that situation. While I was working on it, Delilah showed up to help. She had already been racing through the mud that is beginning to appear in several places, so I guess I should be happy she likes playing in the puddles, too.
When it was time to head in, Delilah was a mess. Aaaah, spring. She has already started digging up the dirt that is becoming exposed at the front two corners of the hay shed. She appeared to be trying to get as dirty, muddy, and wet as was possible in the short time she had to run free after I got home and let her out of her daytime kennel.
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Relative Something 