Archive for January 2016
Nothing But
We had nothing but weather around here yesterday. Moments of sunshine, plenty of degrees, and a brief passing rain shower in the afternoon. It was shirt-sleeve time in the morning for cleaning the barn. The warm temps also provided an opportunity to give the waterer a thorough cleaning, which was badly needed.
It was so cold the last time I tried to clean the waterer, the cover was frozen on solid. That time, I did a cursory scrubbing to break loose the green growth that develops on underwater surfaces, but I couldn’t drain it because I couldn’t get that cover off. I tried splashing debris out, but that offered limited results.
Yesterday, while I was cleaning stalls in the barn, Delilah was reacting to the sound of gunshots in the distance and a neighbor’s barking dog, with a cacophony of her own barking in reply. I decided to take a shot at capturing video of her disturbing the peace.
It took a few tries, but eventually, I caught her. She tends to stop when she notices I am up to something that involves a camera. Honestly, I think it makes her feel guilty, and she worries what others will think if her reckless barking was revealed to the world.
If you are brave enough to endure the video below, I will warn you to prepare for some dizzying panning, and a varied level of audio. I haven’t quite mastered the art of using a cell phone to record moving pictures, and I must have been covering the microphone off and on while struggling for a grip that would support the device.
Judy, this is for you. Your request for more video of Wintervale contributed to my decision to give it a go. Thanks for the nudge.
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Weathering Out
Does it seem like I am always writing about the weather? It just keeps weathering outside. What can I say?
I should have had an inkling, after the spectacular red sky the morning offered.
Last night when Delilah and I stepped out for her last walk of the day, we were met by this:
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Earlier, I had checked the radar and felt like we had a chance of the mixed precipitation missing us. Shortly before our walk, I flipped on the outside light and found the deck bone-dry. I’d forgotten my concern by the time I opened the door with Delilah, so then it came as a surprise. Silly, how quickly I moved from anticipating it, to being taken by surprise.
It felt and looked like rain, but a large percentage of it was the little ice balls. The ground was becoming a frozen glaze. I knew the horses deserved to come inside before they got soaked and chilled by it, so Delilah’s walk was delayed a bit, while I tended to horse chores.
Not only was her walk delayed, it was abbreviated, poor girl. I didn’t want to be out in freezing rain and sleet for any longer than absolute necessity.
I heard from another poor girl last night that the weather in Florida has continued wet and cold, with flooding rains. Cyndie’s “vacation” sounds like anything but. I warned her that she will be returning on a day when we might be getting bombarded by a significant winter snowfall on Tuesday.
I don’t know if it has anything to do with her, but it could give a person a complex.
Regardless, it just keeps weathering out there, …and I find myself writing about it.
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Very Happy
Despite the annoying ongoing saga of my favorite auto repair shop failing to figure out why my “check engine” light keeps coming on, I am feeling so very happy today, over how well my homemade slow feeder hay boxes have worked out for our herd.
We keep the boxes pushed up against the back wall in the two spaces beneath the overhang, so the hay doesn’t get wet. There is enough space for two horses to nosh at the same time (if they are feeling agreeable).
Only one time did we find a box pulled way out of position. It was really puzzling, because there was a surprising lack of obvious drag marks that would have helped to reveal how it got there. Other than that curious instance, the horses haven’t showed any inclination to need to mess with the boxes at all.
I had struggled to make the boxes sturdy enough to withstand a beating, anticipating that the horses would test each one in a manner similar to how they tested our solar-powered electric fence charger. I made the mistake of hanging it in a location where they could reach it.
The red control knob disappeared, the plastic trim around the solar panel got ripped off, and they scratched up the paint with teeth marks. I wasn’t very happy about that outcome.
Occasionally, the horses will get extremely picky about hay they don’t want to eat and the grate ends up at an extreme angle, due to their eating only one end of a bale down to the bottom. Most often, they just munch away evenly and the grate settles to the bottom.
As I was making my way in and out of the gate to the small paddock last night, making trips to the hay shed, I noticed a sensation of also being very happy that our horses allow us to be so relaxed with gate management. I have yet to find evidence of them attempting escape from any of our fenced areas, and they show no tendencies toward threatening a getaway when I am occupied with my own entering and exiting through the openings.
This gives me the impression they are satisfied with their confines and all that is within.
When they are happy, I’m happy.
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Nuisance Flurries
The weather of late has been a repeating series of nuisance snow flurries that irk me. We get just enough in the way of accumulating flakes that it makes the place look neglected, but hardly enough to warrant plowing or doing any serious shoveling. A few days ago, it became necessary to clear about 6 feet around the door to the barn, because it was blowing into an accumulation that was twice as deep as what actually fell from the sky.
Last weekend I scraped the driveway clean to freshen things up, and then Monday night we collected another inch, just to mess it up again. When I got home from work yesterday, it became evident that we received a little more during the day, making it just deep enough that I felt it needed to be plowed.
While waiting for a ride to my favorite auto repair shop, I shoveled the sidewalk and cleared snow away from the house to simplify the details for plowing later.
I was getting my car back from the shop, where they had changed another sensor in the catalytic converter to get everything working properly again.
After walking Delilah and taking care of chores for the horses, then pausing briefly for my dinner, I was ready to do some plowing.
I brought Delilah outside with me and tethered her near the shop while I cleared snow around the building as the ATV warmed up. It was dark, so I couldn’t easily see whether Delilah was happy with her situation, or not, but I decided to plow more than just up and down the driveway a few times.
Getting around the barn and hay-shed require a lot more monkeying around than just the straight shot running up and down the driveway. It becomes a series of short distances forward, followed by lifting the plow blade, shifting into reverse, re-establishing a position, and then dropping the blade, shifting back into a forward gear, and repeat.
I can do the driveway in about 10-minutes. The rest takes about an hour.
I made Delilah wait. It was easy to justify in my mind, because I fully intended to treat her to an extensive walk before we went back into the house. I don’t know whether she sensed it, or not.
After parking the ATV, I donned snowshoes and hit the trails with the dog. She immediately set off after what I would guess was the trail of a cat. She was in such a hurry that she almost pulled me over several times when my snowshoe would catch partway through my stride.
I’m glad we were doing this in the dark, so nobody could see my awkward stumbling gyrations as I struggled to keep up with our dog in her race after some prowler that was probably already long gone.
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Changing States
I was reworking some old images, in search of inspiration for a Words on Images creation, and I cropped this picture of the river up at Wilkus’ cabin. I like it a lot, but apparently not as a background for words. It will remain unembellished.
The water goes from liquid, to flakey, to solid ice. Depending on which state in the US you reference, there may be just a little snow, or there may be 3 feet that arrived in a day. We got about an inch overnight last night. It was coming down at a fair rate when Delilah and I headed out for her last jaunt before bed.
Our snow cover seems like such a paltry amount after seeing the totals from the blizzard out east. Speaking of water in both liquid and frozen states, I shudder to think what it must be like to suffer a flood from the ocean when temperatures are freezing and snow is blowing. Those coastal regions got whacked by the significant storm surge combined with a full-moon high tide.
I guess they won’t need to shovel it.
I’ve never had to deal with a hurricane coming off the ocean, but I would think a hurricane-winter-storm would about the worst possible conglomeration.
I do not want to change states with New Jersey.
And speaking of changing states, Cyndie reports her visit to Florida has not been all about lounging around the pool. The weather there has been chilly. Our next warm spell in the days ahead will bring us up near where their low temps have been dropping to.
Maybe I’ll be able to take a selfie while sunbathing by the barn this coming weekend. I can send it to Cyndie with a note, “Having a wonderful time. Bet you wish you were here!”
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Curious Allure
There are a couple of things missing from the video I posted two days ago of Delilah’s morning walk, that are frequent parts of her daily surveillance of our property. Below is a hurried, and thus blurry, photo I took, catching her in one of the actions yesterday showing her engaged in the classic canine behavior of scent rolling.
One explanation (of several) for scent rolling is that the dog might be trying to cover their own scent with another, as a leftover instinctual behavior from days when they were wild and had to hunt for food. The “scent-disguise” would help them sneak up on prey.
This would make sense for the times Delilah is seeking out the little critters hiding beneath the snow.
But what is the invisible scent that she picks to roll in that would cover her own and not alarm her prey? My guess is, rabbit. What animal would feel threatened by the smell of a rabbit?
The other thing Delilah does that amazes me about a dog’s nose is her occasional focus on individual tiny branches of things growing about a foot or two off the ground. It usually starts with the usual check of tracks on the ground or in the snow, but in certain instances, her attention become riveted and she moves her nose in minuscule increments along some spindly stem.
How much scent can there even be on such a tiny surface, I wonder.
Yesterday, I noticed she was taking things one step further. She was also licking the twig.
What could possible be so enticing to her?
Then it occurred to me that the question was even more intriguing because of the height at which she was picking up this scent. I know that she is extremely fond of rabbits and rodents, but those are all too small to be rubbing up against things growing that high. Even a wandering cat would be unlikely to be the source.
The other common animal that gets Delilah all riled up is a deer, but they are tall enough that it seems unlikely there would be much in the way of contact that low. So, whatever it is would most likely be similar in size to Delilah.
A fox or coyote, maybe?
Time for me to invest in a trail camera, I guess. Or learn to read animal tracks.
I should probably get a trail cam.
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An Experiment
I tried a little experiment yesterday. I treated the Grizzly like a snow machine and did some trail riding. I had the benefit of some aggressive winter tires that were included in the deal when we bought the used ATV, but the results of my experiment did not ultimately produce results I was hoping to achieve.
I was envisioning a wider trail than the skinny packed footprints created by Cyndie when she has been walking Delilah. Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to plow the deep snow, because there wasn’t enough traction to overcome the added resistance, I hoped to at least skim off an upper layer while packing down the edges under the wheels.
One of the reasons that didn’t work is that the blade would still dig in at times because the terrain isn’t perfectly flat. I had to lift the blade to a point it was rarely skimming any snow at all.
That produced a final result of two deep ruts on the outside with a narrow plateau in the middle. It didn’t solve the narrow path issue that annoys me.
The best way to get what I want is to purposely trudge the foot trail wider and wider as you go. It is a process that takes time to achieve, although not really all that long if you are walking it 3-times a day with a dog. I have taken to putting on snow shoes this weekend, to more quickly widen and pack the main perimeter route, even though that adds unwanted preparation time to the exercise of getting geared up for a simple walk.
If I was dead set on using the ATV, I could drive the trails over a series of days and make enough progress to plow it down, since the snow will re-freeze each night and provide increasingly better traction for the wheels, but that’s not really what I want.
Given a choice, I prefer a human-powered solution, as well as the aesthetic outcome that a foot path through the woods provides.
I’m going to keep strapping on the snowshoes for a few days.
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Morning Walk
I recorded a portion of yesterday’s walk, capturing Delilah’s routine of pouncing the snow in search of a snack. No critters were harmed in the making of this movie.
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Breakfast Served
I’m posting a little later than usual for a weekday, but it’s a weekend day for me, since I work a 4-day week at the day-job, so that’s my excuse. The actual truth is that I am busier than usual tending to tasks because my ranch partner is on vacation. Cyndie is lounging by the pool at her parent’s home in Florida for a couple of weeks.
I know! She deserves it, make no mistake.
She threatened to pay me back by taking care of our place and George’s for a few days so we could go up to Hayward, WI and do some skiing. That’s nice, but sounds like a lot more work than lounging by a pool, to me.
I am back in the old routine of waking up alone and giving all the animals the morning attention they require. The first task is cleaning up after the horses in the area of the barn overhang. Then I serve up their breakfast cereal in a dance that has become very routine for them when I am doing it. I love how apparent it is that they understand what I will do, and they wait patiently, for the most part, for me to mosey through the steps.
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You may notice in the images, we are being treated this morning to a picturesque “snow-globe” snowfall that is adding a magical feeling to this winter morning. It doesn’t hurt that the temperature has warmed considerably, bringing more than a magical feeling, it is a very real sensation of being much more comfortable for a winter day.
On the way to the barn, Delilah has already taken care of her first order of business, and then she busies herself in the barn by searching for mice or barking annoyingly at the horses or some distant other dog that is inevitably baying for attention. Delilah is more than happy to oblige the neighbor dogs, regardless the anxiety it creates in me and the horses.
If she would be quiet, that morning time can be incredibly serene. When she’s not, her harsh hollering is exceptionally grating. It usually earns her a short leash in the middle of the barn, after which, I close the doors on her. There. Take that, Ms. Barksalot.
When the hay boxes are topped off and the immediate vicinity is poo-free, Delilah gets what she has been waiting for. I take her for a walk. This morning’s was a shortened version, because when we reached the road, there were empty garbage and recycle bins ready to be returned to the garage.
Delilah is usually more than happy to have a short a.m. walk, because returning to the house means she will be presented with her morning meal.
After all that, the master of the house finally is served. Well, not really served. I have to get it myself. Time for my breakfast!
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Relative Something 