Archive for July 2017
Neighing In
John is out of town for the weekend, and he didn’t want to bring his computer –in order to keep his travels light for flying– so he has asked the animals to fill in for him for a few days. It’s the least they could do, in the face of all the loving care he bestows on them day after day…
The Herd Makes Themselves Heard
Hunter: I’d like–
Legacy: I’ll do the talking, thank you very much. [The three chestnuts instantly defer.] Since John is gone again, we are happy to cover for him on this crazy blog thing he is always pondering on. We can hardly get a word in edgewise through his busy brain when he is toiling away among us because he is constantly ruminating over what wild, exaggerated story he can make up about our behavior.
What? You didn’t think I knew the word ruminating? Flbbblllbbbbhh. Excuse me. I had something in my nose.
Hunter: Can I–
Cayenne: Pardon me, but are we going to graze out in the pasture soon?
Legacy: As I was saying, the stories John writes about us are all blown way out of proportion. The man has no sense of scale. If he would just quiet his mind long enough to recognize the simple intricacies of what we would like to teach him, the tall tales he spins would come back down to earth and finally speak to the wider audience we think our messages deserve.
Hunter: Don’t you–
Dezirea: I just noticed some movement up on that hill beyond the neighbor’s outbuildings. Are any of you concerned?
Legacy: If John would spend a little more time making sure our hay was out here before we want it, and not after, I wouldn’t have to spend so much time staring him down when he walks by. And what the heck is it about his fascination with our feces? But enough about him. I can’t say enough good things about Cyndie. Imagine the things we could accomplish together if she would stop asking all those doctors to do surgeries on her joints. I worry that she might run out of limbs to repair and decide to start in on my aching knobby knees. <cracking sounds>
Hunter: I–
Legacy: Honestly, I’m not the complainer this is starting to make me seem. It’s been a while since I had access to such a wide audience and some of those issues hadn’t been purged for a while. I guess it’s time I should get the herd back to grazing. This place really is a paradise. [Nickering of agreement from the chestnuts.] If you ever have a chance to visit here someday, we would love to meet you. Wintervale is radiating with love and affection. We, the herd, are thrilled to be a part of this great adventure John and Cyndie have going.
As John might be heard to mutter on occasion, Namaste. If I could bring my hooves together in front of my chest, I would. Just picture me nodding my head up and down at you, with emphasis.
Hunter: Bye!
Legacy: I heard that.
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Distant Thunder
We had plenty of warning last night that heavy weather was going to visit. The majority of thundering was happening well to our south for about an hour before it moved in and started dropping rain on us. The sun was just setting when the edge of the billowing tower of clouds became visible, giving them a foreboding glow.
It was a late night for me, as I crammed to get some manure management done before we head out of town for the weekend. It’s a job I have been neglecting for enough days that it was going to be a problem for our horse-sitter while we are gone if I didn’t do something before leaving.
And, we are leaving this afternoon. In fact, I am leaving from work. Our plan is to meet at the airport in Eden Prairie to fly to Barb and Mike’s lake place near Grand Rapids.
After completing my manure chores, I needed to haul some hay into the barn for the weekend. Then it was time to shower and pack. I struggle every night just figuring out what I will wear the next morning for work, and that got amplified last night by needing to also think through a weekend of possible needs.
Since we are flying four people in a small plane, the goal is to pack light.
It’s a great recipe for forgetting something, if you ask me.
I packed a swim suit, and my sunglasses, so I at least have the essentials if something else was overlooked.
Now we are just hoping there is no thunder happening along our flight path during the hours we hope to fly. If the weather isn’t friendly enough, we’ll simply drive up north instead. Which, in that case, would mean I could then haul up more than I need, like I usually tend to do.
Maybe I should toss all my heavy non-essential items in my car just in case. It usually turns out that if I bring extra stuff, I won’t have a need for it. The need only arises if I don’t bring something.
It’s like a law of physics or something. Probably a cousin of Murphy’s Law.
Wish us some flying luck! It’ll be pretty sweet if we are able to pull it off. Who wouldn’t want to cut the travel time to the lake in half?
Here’s hoping any thunder is REALLY distant during the appointed hours of our planned travel.
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Natural Medicine
During my drive to work earlier this week, I heard this inspiring story on public radio about an increasing trend for Forest Bathing, a practice that started in Japan back in the early 1990s.
It’s what we do almost every day at our place. Each time we walk Delilah along the perimeter trail through our woods we are breathing healthy phytoncides emitted by the plants and trees. This reduces stress levels and boosts our immune systems.
Wandering along the trail among the trees while listening to all the bird-calls and the sounds of rustling leaves is inspiring enough on its own, but add in some of nature’s medicinal forest air filling your lungs and you enjoy quite the bonus!
Forest bathing is a perfect complement for the workshops Cyndie leads with the horses and labyrinth. It has always been part of the experience here, but we never described it with as much clarity as the variety of published articles on the subject are now offering.
I believe that giving the experience some specific definition of what is happening serves to enhance the results. Thank you MPR!
In my mind, nature has always seemed the best when it comes to medicine.
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Adding Hay
Our original local hay source is back. Tom was the first reliable local provider of small bales from whom we purchased hay 3 years ago. At that time, we over-bought and ended up not needing more bales from him the following year. Then there was a wet year where he didn’t have any second-cut grass bales that met our needs.
We ended up shopping around.
This year conditions have been good for hay and he called to see if we were interested. Last night we hustled over to see what he was offering and ended up bringing home a truck-full. His bales include a larger percentage of stemmy content than our most recent supplier who Cyndie found through a local ad, but Tom is located half the distance away.
If our horses don’t reject Tom’s hay outright, we’ll probably put in a reservation for another 160 bales or so from him. We expect to be bringing in hay from three different sources this year, and would like to avoid coming up short before the winter season is over.
I think determining the correct number of bales needed for a year is more of an art than a science. We haven’t quite mastered the craft yet, but each year we seem to be gaining skills. It would help if the horses wouldn’t be so picky about eating what is served.
It doesn’t do a lot of good to have the hay shed filled with bales that the horses won’t eat. I’m told they’ll be less picky if they get hungry enough, but we haven’t seen that happen here yet.
We are offering the horses some test servings of the hay varieties we are putting up this summer to bolster our confidence on the new bales before committing with money and stacking muscle on further truckloads.
It’s a manner of practicing our artistic skills.
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Flirting Disaster
You’d think I would know better. Well, I hope you would. I think I should know better, …than to take ill-advised risks around the poison ivy on our property.
On Saturday, I knew the time to put a large effort into work around the property was limited. I would need to have a couple hours to clean up and drive to my high school reunion, so I wanted to avoid wasting any time. I held myself to a tight schedule and moved from one thing to the next based on time, not on completing the job.
I figured getting multiple things partially done was the best goal for the day.
After moving some compost, I grabbed the power trimmer and headed up to the north pasture to put some finishing touches on that bad haircut of a mowing job. Mostly, I needed to knock down the grass around each of the many evergreen trees.
It was hot, and I was lathered in a soaking sweat before I even started. As the spinning nylon line shredded every growing thing in its path, the plant shrapnel started to stick to my exposed skin.
Can you see where this is headed?
Oh yeah, I came upon poison ivy mixed in with the grass under the trees. A smarter person might have stopped right there and taken precautions.
My neck began to itch, and I knew it was too soon to be a reaction to poison ivy, but it got my attention. Just sweat alone is a trigger to scratch, but the addition of innocuous debris would cause an itch. Still, I was hesitant about reaching up to touch it, lest I rub a possible exposure into my sweating pores.
Since I was already covered and sweating, I decided to just forge ahead and be as careful as possible. When it was time to stop, I carefully made my way inside, peeled off the soaked work clothes and scrubbed in the shower with oil-busting soaps.
By last night it was apparent disaster had not been averted. Arms and neck are showing signs of what I would classify as a significant reaction.
Why didn’t I stop as soon as I realized the situation I was in? I wish I knew.
Maybe I’m trying to teach myself a lesson. I’ll let you know if, as the rash runs its course for the next couple of weeks or so, I experience any insight from this disaster with which it appears I’ve done way too much flirting.
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Rekindling Memories
What’s a mere forty years? Well, to a kid who just finishes high school, it can seem like a couple of lifetimes. That’s how much time has passed since I saw some of the folks who lived in my community and attended the same schools as me when I was growing up.
Last night we held a reunion for the Eden Prairie High School class of 1977. Almost fifty precious members of our class showed up to laugh together about the foibles of our youth and catch up with what is happening in the present version of our lives. The third version of ourselves, if you count it roughly in ‘high school’ years.
It tends to involve grandchildren, and body parts wearing out.
It also involves a lot of love. The people who make the effort to attend a reunion have a tangible interest in being with the people who share their common history. The facial expressions of recognition and remembrance last night were a joy to behold, very often followed by an embrace.
I’m pretty sure we could have talked all night, but somehow the hour gets late and life beckons. The common feeling is that we should do this again, soon. Why wait for the next reunion? It’s a nice thought, but that real life we all lead spreads us far and wide, putting our available time for gathering at odds.
“I’ll have my people contact your people.”
“I’m available Thursdays at 2:00. How about you?”
Or, in my case, “I’m an hour from the cities. How does that work for you?” Well, hopefully it can work for more than a few. A couple people tossed the idea of our ranch being a possible reunion gathering spot in the future.
I’d do it without hesitation. It’s a place with a lot of love, and a touch of the countryside reminiscent of the acres of our old stomping grounds forty-some years ago in Eden Prairie.
Maybe that’s why we love our little paradise so much. It would be a thrill to share it with the folks who mean a lot to me from my youth. They are the first girls I fell in love with and the guys who, whether they realize it or not, helped me figure out what kind of person I was going to be when I grew up.
We are shaped by those around us. I learned good things and bad. At this point in life, the good things have become well established and the bad things provide a few chuckles, looking back.
It’s kind of nice that we can do it all again, in our memories every ten years or so, with the people who were actually there at the time. Next reunion, we’ll be into our fourth ‘high school’ measured lifetime. I’m already looking forward to the opportunity.
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Final Step
It starts out as luscious green grass. The horses eat it and their bodies process it. They spread it on the ground for me to scoop up and shape into big piles. In the piles, microorganisms take action and the temperature climbs to around 160° (F). Eventually, things settle down and the pile cools.
At that point, it’s ready for use feeding growing things which puts that luscious green back where it came from at the start. The final step is loading some bags for sharing our wealth with others.
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My project yesterday was a little more involved than usual after the chickens showed up to offer assistance. Their version of helping seems to always involve getting as much in the way as they possibly can. I tried negotiating with them, but it seems as though they don’t understand English.
Compost work was interrupted by lunch, after which our attention shifted to the north pasture. With Cyndie assisting, we pulled the posts with a chain and the loader bucket of the diesel tractor, which cleared the way for me to mow the overgrown field.
Well, not exactly. The evergreen trees in that field have gotten so big, the tractor doesn’t fit between many of them anymore. It becomes a maze of weaving around groups of trees that are often too close together to provide easy weaving.
It was certainly more trouble than I could manage, in terms of getting the field to look decently mowed. I did achieve a wonderful version of the ‘bad haircut.’
The night ended with a small setback, as the chickens made their way into the tree over the compost piles again before we could entice them to the coop. It seems as though the training for that may not have a final step, but will be a repeating exercise for some time to come.
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Better Sense
It looks as though my shadow has better sense than me about taking a much deserved break in the midst of toiling over non-stop things to do.
After work yesterday, it was another trip in the pickup to fetch 45 more bales of hay. Tossing them off the truck and then hefting them back up, stacked high in the shed, was a little more exercise than I was planning to do.
Of course, the stacks get higher as I grow more exhausted, so I out-smarted the task by placing the last half-dozen on the lowest level for now.
I do have better sense than to over-tax my weary body on one particular activity.
I’m better off spreading the exhausting efforts across several days-worth of projects. After that, my body can catch up to my shadow and take a well-deserved rest for a few minutes on a Sunday afternoon.
About that time, it will be the beginning of another week and I’ll get to start the process all over again.
Luckily, the rewards for our efforts are plenty, and we are richly blessed in this paradise we endlessly tend.
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Natural Oscillation
There are days, and even just moments within days, when it feels like the world surrounding me is flowing away from my presence. Then there are probably an equal number of occasions when the sensation comes across more like everything is blowing toward me.
Well, duh. Ebb and flow. Of course it would feel that way. The thing is, I have to pay enough attention to perceive that oscillation. It might seem obvious, but it is also, for the most part, invisible. That is, unless you take into account the marvels of the universe that are all riding along on the same waves.
Our animals, the weather, the innumerable growing things everywhere around us, they are all dictating and reacting to the energy that pulsates and resonates through our beings.
We recently watched a documentary about water, and it pointed out how much connection there is throughout the world, simply through water. Our bodies are mostly water. If you and I drank from the same pool, we would have the same water within us. It would be the same water being consumed by the plants and animals in and around that same pool.
The same water that has been cycling from sea, to sky, to earth for as long as we can imagine.
It’s no wonder the pull of the moon and the reacting tides make such a common impression on people. It’s affecting the same water in all of us.
Or, something like that.
For some reason, my craving for pizza tends to arrive with a mystical regularity that exceeds most natural frequencies. I benefit from not being very picky about types and styles, and am blessed that Cyndie is almost as adventurous as me, so frequency comes with variety.
Last night, she baked a homemade pizza on the grill.
All I can say about that is, “MmmMmmmm.”
That’s a comment I tend to make around here at mealtimes with an unsurprising regularity. It’s my natural pizza oscillation.
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Highly Effective
I’m very impressed with the effort put forth by our three surviving chickens to hunt and peck all day long in an ever-expanding range away from their coop and beloved tree perch. It has me believing a full flock of the nine we once had would have been a highly effective insect control method.
Our two Plymouth Rocks and one Buff Orpington surprised me last night by showing up out of nowhere to hang out around me while I moved some hay from the shed to the barn. They subtly tagged along toward where I moved when I cleaned up manure in the paddock, and then followed me to the compost area.
All the while they keep scratching away and gobbling everything they uncover. Nonstop machines, they are.
Luckily, they followed me down to the chicken coop when I took some measurements for modifications. It was easy to get them inside for another day of re-training to their proper night perch. I’m feeling a new inspiration to find a way to accommodate the addition of new birds.
The hay I was moving is the most recent we purchased. By all our still rather novice understandings, this batch seems to be top notch. The horses will be the ultimate judges.
We have purchased old hay from this supplier before, which the horses took to without hesitation, so we are optimistic the fresh bales should be well received.
They look good, smell good, and have the right percentage of moisture. With the addition of new doors on the shed, we can now store the bales out of the bleaching rays of constant sunlight, so were are feeling a bit more at ease over keeping our horses properly fed for the coming season.
Just in time to allow us to put attention to getting more chickens and figuring out how to manage all the details of coping with the challenges of caring for them over winter.
What could possibly go wrong there?
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Relative Something 