Archive for September 2017
Field Open
The weather forecast for our area indicates we are in a stretch of dry, sunny days that could last a week. If we had hay to cut and bale, this would be a good time. Instead, we have a freshly mowed field that, yesterday, we opened to the horses for grazing.
For all the times they indicated a strong interest in getting out on that grass, I had visions of them racing out into the big space, jumping and kicking with glee. Cyndie asked me if I wanted to film the moment, but I seemed to know better.
I murmured that the horses would probably step out of the paddock gate and stand right there to munch.
Lo, and behold, they did pretty much that. I encouraged Hunter to join me in a run out into the wide open space, but he didn’t take the bait.
They stood in what we call the alley way, the space between the paddocks and the arena, and meandered aimlessly while chomping away. I moved a wheelbarrow around the paddock and cleaned up manure while they grazed. Eventually, I spotted Dezirea and Hunter had made their way just beyond the previous border, but they had turned to face in toward me and the other horses, appearing to intentionally turn their backs on the promised land.
You can lead horses to the open field they so badly craved, but they will decide when to take advantage of it.
When Cyndie went out this morning to serve up their tiny portions of nutrition feed, she said there was no manure under the overhang. They stayed out in the field all night long.
They got what they wanted, just on their own time.
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Crazy Times
Things have been a little crazy around here lately. I blame the hurricanes in the Atlantic. If a flapping butterfly wing can trigger a hurricane, what do three hurricanes to the south/southeast of our continent trigger way up here? Probably something crazy.
The other day, Cyndie reported stepping out of the house to check on the chickens when she heard all sorts of commotion and squawking going on nearby. She found them over in the neighbor’s woods, all up in tree branches. It occurred in the late morning hours, so there was no reason to think they were just up there settling in to roost for the night.
She said it was easy to coax them down and lead them back near our compost piles, where she tossed some cracked corn in hopes of keeping their attention focused on our land. 
There was no sign of what might’ve chased them up into the branches.
Elysa and Ande stopped by last weekend and found the chickens in a wonderfully social mood. The birds enjoyed some grapes for a treat and spent a little time hanging out with the lounging humans.
Luckily, the birds weren’t loitering nearby on Tuesday when Cyndie was walking Delilah and a rabbit triggered a response that cut too sharp around a fence post. The ring which the leash was clasped to ripped out of the harness.
The dog was off-leash!
…And ignoring all commands, while disappearing into the woods after the bunny. Cyndie hustled to secure the chickens and then hunted for about a half-hour, before finding the escapee laying at the bottom of the backyard hill, looking like she was waiting to be found.
Just enough crazy to feel like something isn’t right, though, gladly for us, nothing forcing us to evacuate from fires, floods, or Category 4 and 5 freight-train hurricane winds.
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Great Show
Many, many months ago, I bought tickets for a show in downtown Minneapolis at the State Theater on Hennepin Avenue, not really sure why I was picking this concert over so many other more obvious choices for us. Must have been my keen intuition.
Last night, the performance date finally arrived and we headed to the big city to see the TajMo band. Two blues greats, Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’, have joined forces to come up with a very pleasing combined version of themselves.
Here is a link to a nice review of their show in Nevada back in June that matches closely with the version we experienced. It does a good job of capturing the essence of the night we had.
The only drawback with our little forays to the Twin Cities on work nights is that it cuts into my sleep, which usually makes for short blog posts, too.
I’ll leave you with a couple of shots taken on my phone from up in the balcony. Did I mention it was a really great show? It truly was.
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Looking, Listening
The morning light coming over the eastern horizon bathes our property with such picturesque hues. Yesterday, Cyndie captured how the smooth, freshly mowed hay-field looked as she and Delilah made their way around to open the chicken coop and tend to the horses.
Was it a coincidence that while I was processing this image, John Hartford’s “Gentle On My Mind” was playing and took over my brain with its lyrics?
“…in back roads by the rivers of my memory
Keeps you ever gentle on my mind.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
That’s the kind of song I wish I had written.
I’m probably in this mindset after reading Rickie Lee Jones’ tribute to Walter Becker on RollingStone.com. Just put me deeper in songwriting envy, revisiting the Steely Dan catalog and some of Rickie Lee’s best.
“done up in blue print blue. It sure looks good on you…”
She writes, in answer to her query about the “blue” meaning, that Walter told her he didn’t know; just felt like writing it.
I understand exactly.
Rickie Lee’s big breakout self-titled debut album was released when I was working full-time in a record store. Her phrasing and lyrical story telling captured me immediately.
“you never know when you’re makin’ a memory…”
My memories are flowing over the rolling hill of the hay-field toward the rising sun that is sculpting the popcorn clouds hanging low under the high blue sky. I am thinking of lives and loves who have come and gone with whispers and kisses, dipping toes in unknown oceans of improbable possibilities that did or didn’t actually play out, but undoubtedly shaped everything that has happened since.
Luckily, love grows, unbounded by physical limitations, and it continues to pave the rivers of my memories.
Ever gentle on my mind, indeed.
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Getting Orange
Things are growing more orange around here. Yesterday at breakfast, Cyndie called me to come look at the difference in color of our eggs, compared to the ones purchased at the grocery store. Looks like the free-range diet of our three chickens is producing deep color in the yolks, seen on the right, below.
We spent the Labor Day holiday doing a lot of work, for a day off. Starting with a couple of hours cleaning out the compost area, using the loader bucket on the diesel tractor. There’s now plenty of room to store a winter’s worth of manure, just in case winter gets around to showing up.
Then we split up and Cyndie used the power trimmer in the labyrinth, while I entered a race against time to get the hayfield mowed before it rained.
Looking back toward the horses, I spotted another splash of orange color erupting from the green of our tree line.
It’s beginning to feel a lot like September.
At the end of a long day’s effort, we put our tools away and headed for the house under the drops of a perfect late-summer rain shower.
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Again
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now what is happening
to make everything alright
to change the outcome
to illuminate the night
in lieu of alternatives
in light of more spite
take this little guitar
or it might be a uke
that thought it was a violin
not made out of wood
more like an animal skin
rounded out hollow
one song still within
that it played by itself
oozing memories for others
with fragments that make sense
mostly people
not the places
a door slams me awake
and it’s over
without warning
leaving the sound of the wind
and an endless drone
all crickets and frogs
the very place things begin
there’s a sheet
under there somewhere
bunched and tangled
I smooth it out
then pull up the covers
I’d like to start over
again
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Eating Iron
When I originally designed our slow feeding hay boxes, I wanted to make them robust enough to handle the tenacious jaws of always curious horses. I’d seen how much wood horses can chew off fence boards and didn’t want the boxes to come apart whenever hay runs out and they turn their attention to the structures themselves.
For that reason, I chose cast iron corner pieces as stops to prevent the grate from being lifted out when the horses yank up on it. On the other end, I used a metal chain like the ones that secure our fence gates. This allows quick and easy access to remove the grate, and I figured the familiarity of the chain for them would be a good thing.
I didn’t expect they would chew the iron to bits.
So far, they have only abused one of the two boxes, so I am using the other box to show how it looked with the cast iron corner pieces in place.
And this is what was left when I removed the fragments from the abused box yesterday:
Do you think they are getting enough iron in their diet?
Meanwhile, they have hardly chewed a scratch into the wood of either box.
Based on that, and because wood is easier to replace, I’ve resorted to a much less elegant stop, using two small pieces of scrap plywood.
Seems to me to be easy fodder for their teeth to grab, but we’ll see how this goes. Wont’ be the first time they surprise me if they end up leaving them intact.
Just when I think I might be outsmarting them…
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Periodic Maintenance
That tree in our back yard which leads the way in changing colors is cranking it up to full blaze now that we have arrived within the month of September. This image doesn’t to justice to the view, because our sunlight was muted by the smoke of wild fires in Canada and the western U.S. most of the day yesterday.
I spent time in the morning consulting with a specialist from our county soil conservation office as he surveyed the situation where the neighbor’s tilled corn field is overflowing my silt fence. According to him, we have done all the right things for drainage on our property, adding that compared to other sites he reviews, our problems are not very significant.
My perfectionism sees it otherwise.
He did basically fault the neighbor, of whom I gathered he didn’t hold a high opinion. The best fix to hold the soil would be for the neighbor to plant hay in that field, instead of corn. I don’t have any idea if that is something I might be able to influence, but I will suggest it at the first opportunity.
On my end, I learned that the silt fence does require maintenance to remove material when it starts to fill, because he said it is obviously functioning as intended.
I will do that, but I will also add another short section of silt fence above it and then start building a berm of branches between the two, eventually creating a thicket of wild growing weeds and trees.
Since it is so late in the growing season, such a barrier will take a year to become the filter I envision, but just having the skeleton of tree limbs in place before winter will provide an additional place for the silt to build up and start a foundation for a natural barrier.
Looking at the drainage swale below our paddocks and across the pastures, the advice was to periodically reshape the high spots by digging those out as well. Funny me. I had it in my head that there was a one-time solution where I could shape the swale properly and then never deal with it again.
Why should it be any different from the periodic maintenance required on everything else?
Lawns need to be mowed, septic tanks need pumping, engines need oil changes, rugs need vacuuming, animals need feeding, relationships need tending. There aren’t many things that can be ignored indefinitely.
Land needs management. I guess I won’t argue with that logic.
Though, given that, seems to me that days need more hours.
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Brief Scare
I didn’t get to hear about it until long after the fact yesterday, but for a moment in the morning, a chicken safety alarm was raised. Our trusty assistant, Shelby, was tending to the horses when a neighbor whom she didn’t know drove up our driveway exclaiming that a pair of wandering dogs had killed all her cats.
She suggested we protect our chickens, so Shelby ushered our three surviving birds back into their coop for the rest of the day.
When Cyndie told me this story, she said our neighbor described the dogs as a German Shepherd and a Chocolate Lab. That sounded familiar to me. A quick search of the trail cam files confirmed my suspicion.
These trouble makers were captured trespassing on our trail in the woods back in March of 2016. At the time, no harm had been done, so we didn’t bother seeking a verification of ownership.
Now, I’m thinking we might want to keep this photo handy on our phones for possible inquiries around the block. I will also look for a new vantage point from which to aim the trail cam again, in order to watch for possible new sightings of these two.
If they are still coming on our property, it troubles me a bit that they’ve been able to do it without ever being seen, beyond that time the camera caught them. With our frequent movement around the grounds every single day, it would mean they are pretty crafty in their stealth if they indeed have still been paying us visits unseen.
Even though it was just a brief scare yesterday, it has left us with a lingering feeling of unease.
Wonder if it will help to send these dogs love. If it doesn’t, I’d like to figure out a way to offer them some of Delilah’s sharp-toothed version of a greeting to discourage any future interest in choosing to cross our property lines.
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Relative Something 