Relative Something

A couple of sunny days hasn’t been enough to dry our grass for mowing without leaving muddy tracks. The areas of saturation didn’t come as a complete surprise yesterday, because there is still standing water on our trails in the woods. I just didn’t expect so many wet spots in places where it isn’t normally wet.

The outlet of the culvert was no surprise, but it was wet well above there, too.

The area along the small paddock fence is usually a puddle after the snow melts, but not in June.

The alleyway behind the barn is as wet as ever, to the point of being practically undriveable.

As much as possible, I know to avoid these areas when I’m on the riding mower. Even though I was trying to be careful along one of the ditches beside the driveway, I got sucked into some standing water that almost swallowed one of the back tires. I’m not sure how I got out of that mess but soon after I switched to using the push mower wherever water was visible.

Almost as challenging, the compost area was a slippery, sloppy mess. During the week I was away, I had Cyndie dump manure into one particular spot. Because of all the rain, the horses haven’t spent much time away from the overhang area near the barn so there ended up being a LOT of manure to clean up there. Yesterday, I spent some time stirring up and shaping compost piles that were soaking wet. I discovered that active composting is the exception, not the rule in these conditions for most of the piles.

We had a little excitement in the morning when we found Mia covered with welts that appeared to be some kind of allergic reaction, maybe to something she ate in the fields or possibly a bug bite or bee sting? It looked rather extreme but she wasn’t behaving in a way that indicated she was being bothered by it. We notified our handler from This Old Horse, who brought over some pills for Mia.

Toward the end of the day, Mia looked better. We now have her wearing a protective fly sheet, too. It was white when we put it on her. I can’t imagine it will stay white for very long with all the mud and standing water across our landscape.

The weather conditions are a problem for normal operation around here but, hey, we aren’t dealing with the threat of a failing dam or 4 feet of water in our home.

If muddy tracks from mowing are the worst outcome we suffer, I’d say we have it better than a lot of other folks in the region.

Quit your bellyaching, John.

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