Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Suddenly Blades
They appeared days before our daytime temperature reached 73°F. The mound of manure I have been creating all winter in the large paddock, just a short distance upslope from Lake Paddock, has sprouted blades of new grass!
The cracked grains we feed the horses don’t all get fully digested. There are also scraps of hay that get mucked and tossed on the pile that could contain seeds.
It adds proof to my theory that I can get grass to grow without even trying, in places where it is not intended. It’s a completely different story if it’s a bare spot in the middle of our yard. Then, abject failure. Yet, blades sprout through the asphalt of our driveway.
Maybe I should pave over the bald spots in the lawn. 😑
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Moving Hay
When we moved to the country twelve and a half years ago, there was a lot that I didn’t have a clue how to do. After a career in manufacturing, you’d think I would have a better perspective on inventory management, but I struggled a little bit in figuring out how to manage turning over our firewood and bales of hay.
“First in; first out” (FIFO) is a classic method of using the oldest inventory first. That can be a trick to do when stacking your wood or hay in storage. The oldest ends up at the bottom of the pile.
For our firewood, I quickly changed from stacking it horizontally across the width of the shed to short rows, back to front. I just use the rows up from right to left and stack new wood behind them as space opens up.
That method doesn’t work for our hay. Since the bales arrive in large numbers all at once, we fill up the hay shed, and the last bales stacked become the first bales used. The routine I’ve settled on requires that we use up almost all of the last delivery before ordering more, which gets a little nerve-wracking since we don’t have complete control over when the next delivery can happen or how fast the horses will be burning through bales any given week.
When we do get close and the delivery is scheduled, I then hustle to move the last of the old bales out of the way in the shed and stage them in the barn. That is what I worked on yesterday, moving the last 21 bales from the hay shed to the barn.
The chance to meet our new handler, Jeremy from This Old Horse, ended up getting postponed yesterday afternoon. However, while I was hauling hay bales, I received a call from a contractor who wanted to come out this afternoon to talk about helping me put up a shade sail. I anticipate it will be a challenge to get a firm quote since there are so many unknowns at this point, but at a minimum, I hope to gauge a level of interest, knowledge, and ability for the project as I imagine it.
I’m expecting new hay to be delivered on Sunday, and if all goes as planned, I hope to meet Jeremy at the same time. It would be great to have another person to help toss bales into the shed for stacking.
It feels like a lot is happening here while Cyndie is in Florida. Of course, yesterday morning, before she left, Cyndie baked oatmeal raisin cookies for me to give the folks stopping by.
The more I give away, the fewer there will be for me to resist eating. Now, that’s inventory management.
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Bathing Again
Yesterday morning, I took a picture of Paddock Lake because I liked the patterns on the frozen surface that were glistening in the sun.
In the afternoon, when I stopped by for a visit with the lovely beasts, I noticed Swings’ coat was wavy to a degree that would trigger jealousy in a lot of women I know.
It was pretty obvious to me that Swings and Light had recently been swimming and the only logical place to do that would be down at the lake. I walked down to check it out.
Sure enough, there was a lot less water in the crater, and there were enough fresh hoof prints that my suspicion was confirmed. There had been some splish splashin’ goin’ on!
It seems to me that splashing around in the water would be more likely to occur on a hot summer day, but I’m not gonna argue with the grooming choices these horses make. It occurred to me that there are probably horses whose owners would never let them get this muddy. Our mares have a lot of autonomy when it comes to grooming.
We offer to clean the mud off of them with a brush, but it is rare for them to accept. What amazes me is how often I show up and discover their coats looking clean and smooth without any help from us. They obviously know how to take care of themselves.
One thing that I have found to require an assist from us is detangling the “fairy knots” that show up in their manes. Or, more accurately, Mia’s mane. She is the one most prone to developing them.
The person who has been our handler from This Old Horse ever since the herd arrived has shared that she will be leaving the organization. This afternoon, she is bringing her replacement over to meet me and the horses. Cyndie will have already departed for the airport by the time they are planning to get here.
I’m sure the horses will have themselves looking their very best for the occasion.
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Trip Back
Not only did I make the trip back home from the lake yesterday, but I selected a route that was a trip back in time for me. I received a message that my boots were ready to be picked up at the repair shop in Stillwater, so instead of driving straight home, I cut over through Osceola to cross into Minnesota on my way home. It cost me $30 to get the flaps resewn on my boots. I’m satisfied with that outcome.
Before leaving the lake place, I checked a map to refresh my memory of the route we used to take over and over for years from the time the kids were born. We picked an alternative set of rural roads to avoid heavy traffic on the 3-plus hour drive from our Eden Prairie home to Hayward. It provided a good variety of potential places to stop when someone needed to use a bathroom or have a distraction in the form of a treat. We ended up locating a variety of off-the-beaten-path restaurants that became lifesavers when anyone became too “hangry” for the rest of us to tolerate.
When I passed the turn that would have taken me directly home, the road before me became like a weird dream of scenery I vaguely recognized mixed with things I’m certain I’d never seen before. A lot has changed in the fifteen or more years since I last drove that way to and from the lake place. There were no roundabout interchanges on that route when we used to travel in that direction.
As I approached the first of several key turns of the old routine, I sensed it, but the crossroad was labeled as a more significant state highway than I felt was right. I opted not to turn, and as I rolled straight through, I glanced to the left and recognized it immediately. That was what we called the “roller coaster road.” There were a couple of steep rises in a row that provided a second of that zero-gravity feeling if I hit them with just the right speed, which I almost always did.
I made a quick U-turn and went back to follow that road, regardless of what it was now called. Soon, I was passing familiar old farmhouses and Trollhaugen ski hills, “Ward’s Bar,” and the torn-down place that was named “Best Place by a Dam Site” that was beside a dam. I had a flashback to chanting “We’re nowhere, we’re nowhere” with the kids when we were in the middle of the bridge between Minnesota and Wisconsin. There was the gas station where we would pause for fuel and some candy bars. Julian and I recently remembered we would get a “Whachamacallit” bar. The Dairy Queen was still at the end of the bridge in Osceola.
There were many trips on the rural roads along the St. Croix River when Cyndie and I imagined what it would be like to live in a place like that compared to our tiny corner lot in the suburbs. We had no idea at the time how great a place we would eventually find.
The horses were successfully trimmed by the farrier while I was away. They are all looking their muddiest best. Where they once were making horse-angels in the foot of snow, it is now just a sloppy meltwater mess of muck that they are rolling around in.
I brought Cyndie a pizza from Coop’s in Hayward that we had for dinner. I had a great time away, but it is really precious to be home. I intentionally planned it so I will have a full day with Cyndie before she heads to Florida tomorrow for a week, just when our temps are about to climb to almost 70F. Our kids will be joining her for a visit to their grandmother’s winter getaway.
Here’s hoping they get plenty of sun and a complete lack of alligators.
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Food Choices
As I was eating my fancy breakfast of yogurt with cereal and a side of peanut butter toast all by myself yesterday morning, it occurred to me that there is a pretty well-defined difference of choices I make when it comes to eating for nutrition vs. eating for pleasure. The most obvious influence is directly related to how much sugar has been added. It’s a fact of our human nature that sweetness is very high on the pleasure scale. There are people who can claim to be exceptions to the norm of appreciating sweetness, but I believe the number is a minority.
If a well-balanced diet didn’t matter, I’d choose ice cream at every meal. For uncooked breakfasts, I tend to select yogurt with my cereal. That is not a choice I would make from the side of pleasure. I select a yogurt with little to no added sugar because it’s good for me. Instead of hardly being able to wait for the next bite, yesterday, I found myself noticing that I wasn’t all that excited to put the next spoonful in my mouth.
But it’s good for me, so I eat it anyway.
If healthy nutrition didn’t matter, I would eat even more pizza than we already do. I’m okay eating fruit and vegetables, but I would choose a lot less fruit if I didn’t know it was good for me.
I’m not always hungry, but that rarely stops me from eating food when I see it. When I am on my own, like I have been the last few days, my laziness keeps me from eating all the food Cyndie sends along. For lunch, I could heat and eat the beef stew she provided, but it is quicker and easier to grab some cheese curds and crackers, mixed nuts, and beef jerky. Since they were convenient, I also grabbed a bag of pea pods and carrots to munch.
Of course, all I really wanted to eat was ice cream.
Rural Development
While out on a walk yesterday to get some exercise in the high heat of early March, I spotted new additions to the landscape in the forest across the highway from the Wildwood lakefront properties.
An electric company has wired power to the edge of the wooded land across the road. I passed two of these boxes that make it look like a new subdivision is going in. Maybe they are putting in the infrastructure to support a massive influx of climate refugees who will want to move to the Midwest after fleeing rising seas, intensifying hurricanes, and inhospitably hot high temperatures.
This area is probably not immune to drought and wildfires, but we are close to the Great Lakes, which might ameliorate those risks some.
We used to bushwhack our way through those woods to explore, at one time bouncing over downed logs on mountain bikes. We found several routes that reached all the way to the Birkie trail for skiing or cycling. More recently, I’ve noticed “No Trespassing” signs going up in those woods, so I’ve greatly curtailed explorations other than very close to the road.
Those new utility installations gave me a real sense of how much time is marching on.
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Watching Changes
Each afternoon that I have been up at the lake has brought melting temperatures, and yesterday was the warmest so far. It climbed to 58°F and turned the surface of the lake from white to wet.
That buoy I photographed the day before took on a whole new appearance.
Taking advantage of the mild conditions, I worked on a wood sculpting project on the deck in the bright sunlight. When it came time for a break, I laid down and faded into a nap on the deck boards, waking with my face in a puddle of drool that signaled a good sleep was had.
I stayed down on my back on the deck and listened to every sound I could detect, including the faint hum inside my head. Blood flow? A version of tinnitus, maybe. When I finally stood up and surveyed the surroundings, it became clear that I was watching the swift change from winter’s snow cover to exposed ground that was heralding the coming of spring.
Most of all, I was immersing myself fully in the pleasures of not needing to do anything by any specific time.
Mission accomplished.
Eventually, I will need to wash some dishes. I’m going to take advantage of staying in this lazy mode for one more day. Tomorrow, I will set things in order here to leave no trace and drive home to Cyndie and the animals. She leaves for Florida on Thursday and I will be in charge of the dog and horses for the week she is away, following their daily schedule of needs.
Having had these few days away on my own will go a long way toward making Cyndie’s next absence less daunting, especially since I love the routine of animal care just as much as I love these little breaks from it. When we finally end up at home together for a stretch of time again, it will be like a bonus.
Luckily, I love my time alone just as much as I love living together with Cyndie.
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Solitary Refinement
In the middle of my solo escape to the lake, I find myself thinking about how I can most fully absorb the pleasures of these agenda-less days. When I am tasked daily at home with duties, the dream of having nothing pressing me into an activity grows and grows. I long to have no reason to get out of bed and to pick and choose what comes next by whim instead of by the hour on the clock. An hour, by the way, that has once again shifted disorientingly forward to DST overnight. Ugh, I say, and I don’t even have any schedule that needs to be upheld today.
Looking back on the already vanished last two days of luxurious solo pursuits, I fear the benefits of getting what I so dearly wanted are disappearing without my fully appreciating the greatness of the moments. Today, I plan to see if I can improve on that perception.
There is a herd of deer wandering the grounds that I have enjoyed seeing each day. I counted seven yesterday in the middle of a sunny afternoon. From the obvious pattern of their heavily traveled hoof prints in the snow, it appears they have a much more set agenda than I do.
I made my way to our mini labyrinth in the woods and reclaimed the pathway with my own footprints. There was no sign of wildlife traffic in that area.
No, the deer have been walking right past the house along the ridge above the lake. One or two of them had approached the house to nibble on the branches of one of the landscape shrubs.
I took a few pictures on my walk yesterday morning when the temperature was still below freezing. There was a striking difference in the texture of the snow where shade had kept it all wonderfully powdery, as opposed to the hard crust more prominent everywhere else.
Later in the day, the clouds broke up, and the sun kicked up the amount of melting significantly.
My slow, aimless wandering was one of the divine pleasures I want to deeply appreciate in its contrast to strolling along with Asher, which is more my norm.
Oh, my. Look at the hour. How can it be this late already? Oh, yeah. That.
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Got Away
Made it to the lake place yesterday afternoon for a few days of solo holiday. Without doing much in the way of additional cleanup of snow from Wednesday, in the morning I walked Asher with Cyndie, and we did horse chores together. The scenery was pretty striking, with the bright morning sunshine bouncing off the oodles of snow that had fallen.
The horses didn’t seem as fixated on their grain as usual, and Light even left her food to seek some hands-on attention from Cyndie. After obliging Light with lots of robust scratching, Cyndie ended up covered in shedded horse hair. When she got back to the house, Cyndie changed her shirt but moments later reported she was soon covered in dog hair.
After breakfast, Cyndie assembled enough home-cooked meals from our freezer to feed me for more than a week and sent me on my way for the drive to the lake. Before I left, I drove my car around the hay shed a couple of times to convince myself the crude job I did of clearing the heavy, wet snow would be adequate for traffic while I was away. We are expecting the farrier today.
I texted a message to Cyndie to let her know the tire tracks were mine and not some unexpected visitor. When we were walking Asher first thing in the morning, I spotted footprints in the deep snow of the north loop trail, so we trudged over to check them out. Cyndie asked if they were mine from the day before when I brought Asher back from the neighbors’, but I said no. We wondered who would have been walking on our trail.
Then, when we came upon a pile of branches under the snow, I realized it was me who had made those tracks. I remembered noticing the branches and had thought it was a limb that had fallen in the storm before figuring out it was the pile I had created when cutting up the downed tree a couple of days before.
Memory problems much, John?
When I had been pulling Asher down the middle of the unplowed road after his escape, I spotted a truck coming toward us and diverted to the ditch to give the driver the full width of the road to navigate his way against the drifts. We then made our way along that short section of our trail to reach our driveway. I blame the temper tantrum I was having at the time for completely forgetting we’d made those tracks less than 24 hours before. [shaking my head in embarrassment]
There is a lot less snow in Hayward. The short leg of the driveway to our place hadn’t even been plowed.
I am going to see how long I can keep myself from shoveling the front steps as an exercise in letting one of my compulsions go unaddressed for once.
While puzzling in the afternoon, I listened to a couple of 1960s recordings of Bill Cosby’s standup routines. I have no idea what caused me to think of choosing that.
I think my mind really needs to get away for a while.
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Delayed Escape
I’m still at home this morning. The snowstorm that the weather service named “Lola” created more work than I could complete in a day. And it was miserable work, indeed. On most occasions, I actually enjoy clearing snow. Yesterday was not one of those days.
First of all, we awoke to more than 8 inches of heavy, windblown snow plastering everything. Beneath that coating of white was a layer of slush left from the gradual transition from rain to sleet to snow. All of that rain had nowhere to go since the ground is frozen and once again, hydrostatic pressure pushed water up through the concrete floor in the basement or along the block walls and soaked all the area rugs.
Cyndie said she would tend to the horses so I could get a start on plowing. It would have been easier to stay with her. The wind was ferocious and new snow was still falling. My goal was to try just breaking through with a couple of passes to make it a bit easier to do when it stopped snowing. It was barely possible. The machine and I got coated with a complete layer of sticky snow as I tried blasting my way through the deep drifts with the blade only lowered part of the way down.
After breakfast, I was using a roof rake to pull down the giant drift overhanging our front door and letting Asher play with his favorite ball while dragging his 30’ leash behind him. I noticed he had stepped away from the ball and I called to him to command his return. He gave me that look of mischief, turned, and ran full speed the length of the driveway.
I knew right where he was headed, to the neighbors across the road, where he started barking ferociously at their cat. I needed to trudge through the deep snow on the unplowed road to climb the rise to their driveway and was completely exhausted when I finally reached him. The ONLY redeeming aspect of this angering situation was that I got to visit briefly with our neighbor, Eileen.
Walking the equally arduous distance back in my seething frustration left me too tired to finish shoveling away the snow I’d pulled off the roof. I went in for lunch and waited for it to stop snowing while Cyndie took up the task of clearing the mess of snow in front of the garage doors. Every scoop of the shovel would end up sticking.
It’s hard to plow by the house because there’s nowhere to push the snow, so hand shoveling is usually easier. When there is almost a foot of snow, nothing is easier.
I made reasonable progress cleaning up the rest of the driveway with the plow in the late afternoon. The township plow on the road left quite a thick mess I needed to hand shovel because it was too much for the Grizzly to push. At least the driver was nice enough to be cautious around our mailbox this time.
Looking back toward the barn, you can see by the snow line in the trees how that hill protects from the north wind. The whipping wind had cleaned all of the upper branches, but the lower half of all the trees still held snow.
I won’t be surprised today to find blowing snow has drifted into the driveway again. I’d like to head up north before dark, so I intend to do the absolute minimum of additional plowing or shoveling with that in mind. Best laid plans, and all that… Wish me luck.
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Pretty Colors
Have I written much about the weather lately? When I’m trying to pretend my country isn’t spiraling ridiculously down the proverbial drain, the weather provides a convenient distraction. One thing I appreciate about weather is that the conditions I experience right outside our door are the pure truth. It is hard to gaslight me and tell me that the snow falling isn’t actually falling when I can see it absolutely is.
In the dark of night last evening, we could hear the pelting rain on the roof, but the radar image of the storm revealed the full gamut of what was swirling our way.
So many pretty colors! I am curious what we will find when dawn breaks. The ground was completely covered in white when we headed for bed last night.
We have been warned about the probability of heavy, wet snow in the amounts of 4-8 inches. I’m not looking forward to the effort of pushing wet snow off the driveway with the ATV plow. At least I have the benefit of sun and melting temperatures expected to follow this batch of precipitation. I can get away with doing a rudimentary job of exposing pavement. Solar energy will clean up the asphalt in short order.
My plan at the beginning of this week was to head out today for a solo mini-vacation to the lake for a few days. Cyndie just returned from California for the second visit in several weeks and will be leaving for Florida next week, so my getaway is a chance to balance the workload of taking care of the ranch alone.
I will relish the time free from dog walking and horse care since they become my exclusive priorities whenever Cyndie is away. I love the job, I really do, but I also love the opportunity to stay in bed for as long as my brain and body desire and then do whatever I want for the rest of a day without worrying about any other tasks that need to happen.
Sometimes, the best adventure is no adventure at all. Or, the adventure is in following whatever whim shows up and letting it play out for as long as it holds interest before dashing off after whatever shiny thing grabs one’s attention next.
I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit how often the adventure I long to experience involves lounging in bed well past a decent hour and falling back to sleep whenever sleep beckons. Some of the best dreams come to me in the morning hours. My mind is most creative in the morning. I have found that most of the time when I have mentally conjured up solutions to the world’s problems, it has been before dawn. Like a dream, I tend to forget those solutions by breakfast time.
Maybe tomorrow, I will wake up at the lake and take a crack at the long, slow effort to get out of bed. It all depends on when snow stops falling and how long it takes me to plow and shovel pathways for Cyndie to navigate while I’m gone.
That is today’s adventure.
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Relative Something 