Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Gruesome Find
Eventually, all the clues began to make sense. Not a day goes by that Delilah doesn’t find something outside our windows that drives her into a barking frenzy. Nine times out of ten, it is beyond me to identify what has triggered her reaction. If it’s squirrels, they are long gone by the time I arrive. If it is gunshots or thunder, she hears it long before I am able.
Yesterday, Delilah began to go nuts with the barking. Attempts to distract and calm her seemed futile. Minutes later, Elysa and Anne stepped in the door announcing their arrival for a visit. Was Delilah barking at them? I was willing to believe it.
As the afternoon wore on, we headed outside to spend some time with the horses. We found them uncharacteristically jumpy. I tried several times to brush the remaining snow off their backs, but not one of them stood still long enough for me to finish. The wind was gusting a bit, so we thought maybe that was making them uneasy. It gave us an excuse to move on toward the pasture to toss discs for Delilah to chase.
Out in the open, the wind was cold enough to drive us onward so we headed for the trail in the woods. I had already traveled this trail earlier in the day with Delilah when we did our usual morning patrol after feeding the horses. We had enough snow overnight to just cover the ground, so it was easy to spot recent tracks along the trail. There were very few at that earlier hour.
As the four of us walked along with Delilah, it was easy to spot something laying on the trail up ahead. My first thought was that the wind had knocked down a tree branch, but what my eye was seeing looked larger than a typical fallen branch.
Yep. Not a branch.
It was the largest limb from a carcass that I had ever come upon. My guess: it was the leg of a cow and coyotes were likely to blame. Why one or more of them had dropped this leg in the middle of our trail is a mystery to me. Of course, it was a prize beyond Delilah’s wildest dream. It was too much for her to carry, so I picked up the frozen leg and carried it for her.
She didn’t know what to do. Walk in front of me? Walk behind me? Jump up and bite it while I walked? We made our way back to the house where I left it on the ground for her to gnaw on. She instantly morphed into one of the pack.
Based on the size of this limb, I’m expecting to see the local coyote hunters busy at work around here in the near future. Farmers aren’t very patient when their livestock are being culled by predators. For those with sensitivities about such images, I am including this shot as a thumbnail to give readers an option of viewing it or not. Click per your personal tolerance for the gruesome, but natural, cycle of life involving wild carnivorous animals.
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Hay Games
February has arrived right on schedule, showing up with a new frosting of snow for us. The horses have been doing just fine without blankets, but that meant this morning they are wearing blankets of snow that make them look like powdered sugar treats.
Makes them down right irresistible.
Until I find they have been behaving badly. I don’t know if it was intentionally malicious or just bad planning, but somebody’s butt dropped a pile of nuggets into one of the slow-feeder boxes overnight.
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I bet they can identify who the culprit is. Wonder if they chastise the offender. What would we say to a member of our family who contaminated our food? I think that person would catch a lot of flack.
We’ve got something of a new routine going for serving up the daily hay. Even though the slow-feeders are working like a dream, there is no denying a horse’s love of eating freely out in the open.
I have placed the feeder boxes beneath the overhang to keep the hay protected from precipitation. It is pretty clear the horses would prefer being out from under that roof.
Recently, I had cleaned out the bottom of both boxes of dusty remains and decided to dump it on the ground beneath the willow tree. Since Hunter, the youngest and lowest in the herd hierarchy, usually has to wait for a turn at the slow-feeder boxes, he came right down and started nosing around in the scraps I had dumped.
That got the attention of one of the other chestnuts and they left the box to come down and make sure he wasn’t getting a better deal. Soon the three chestnuts were doing a comical slow dance of rotation as they moved from the ground below and the box above.
The next time I was filling the boxes, I decided to throw Hunter a bone and dropped a whole flake under the tree for him. Oddly, it is right next to the old feeder, but they like the hay down low so much better, and I was still of a mind to move their focus away from the old feeders to the new slow boxes, so I am completely ignoring them.
Our hopes with the old feeder was to keep hay off the ground where it gets trampled, peed and pooped on, so as to reduce waste. That didn’t really work as imagined, because they still spilled a whole bunch anyway. 
Now with the new boxes, waste has been greatly minimized, and it is starting to feel like we enough hay that such a loss factor is hardly a concern.
Since one of the boxes had been soiled this morning, I threw out several flakes for them while I cleaned up and refilled the boxes. All four of them were quick to show me they much prefered the unobstructed ground-hay under the tree.
Sure, until one of them goes and poops on it.
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Quarterly Meeting
We’re trying to run a business here. Sort of. Today we will be holding our first annual meeting to assess our status and document goals for the year. Here’s hoping the animals will be well-behaved and communicate their opinions clearly.
With tax documents for the previous year filling our inbox, there is an increased visibility of the paperwork and accounting that is involved with managing finances. I was reminded that our lawyer urged us to keep thorough records of meetings that reflect operation of Wintervale Ranch.
Sure. No problem. How hard is that?
We have failed thus far to follow through on even holding formal meetings, let alone properly documenting them.
With that, this morning I will blog less, and conduct business more. I’m off to a meeting in the conference room/kitchen to lay out the goals and dreams for the 2015 phase of Wintervale Ranch, LLC. Hopefully the remote transmission from staff in the paddock will be working smoothly so advice from all parties involved will be heard.
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Precious Affirmation
On Wednesday, after Cyndie arrived home from a challenging day of work, she stepped in the door and thanked me for sending love to her while she was on the job.
“What love?” I responded.
I was asking because I hadn’t told her I was going to send love, hadn’t sent a text indicating I had done so, nor offered any other form of communication beyond the love, itself. But I very purposely did send her love during the day. Thankfully, she was perceptive enough to sense my transmission.
Either that is an example of how in tune we can be with each other sometimes, or it is a testament to the power of projecting love out into the universe with purposeful intent. Maybe it is both.
It helps that we practice listening to our intuition and paying attention to our gut sense and our heart messages. Of course, those are skills we are honing in on when we are with our horses. It is in the metaphysical realm that horses pick up much of their information. They are quick to pick up on the love we send their way.
While driving through the countryside on Tuesday, I happened to pass a property that had a lot of horses. A LOT of horses. Maybe 30 or more. They were crowded into a couple of paddocks between the busy highway and a barn. The primary thing I noticed about them was their defeated appearance.
Is it possible they were all napping? I doubt it. They all looked like their spirit had been broken. It instantly caused me to feel a renewed appreciation for the facility and environment we are able to offer our 4 horses.
The place I was driving past was obviously a horse business of some kind. Probably offered trail rides and boarding. I wondered how that many horses could get along with each other in such limited space. Actually, it looked like the horses just didn’t care enough to fuss with each other.
In a moment of being all too human, I began to think poorly of the people who put the horses in that situation. The truth is, I don’t know anything about them or their operation. I caught myself and chose a different response.
I sent the horses and the owners love.
I wonder if they felt it. My gut tells me the horses did.
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In Between
Lately, it feels like things here at Wintervale are in a state of being between, in a variety of ways. In large part, I think it is a function of the time of year and the type of weather we have been experiencing. The big blizzard in the northeast of the US has been the main focus of weather-related news. Here, we have had very little in the way of newsworthy winter weather. I have been able to carry on with my daily activities relatively unaffected with needing to plow and shovel snow.
After that long cold spell ended, caring for the horses has gotten a lot more relaxed. They have required little in the way of care beyond their twice a day feeding sessions and some limited paddock cleaning. I can only do so much in the way of manure management when the paddocks are frozen solid.
My daily patrols with Delilah have begun to get a little too routine, so I have started looking for ways to mix things up for her. After already having switched up the route in every way imaginable, I tried letting her choose her own path through the thick interior of our woods beyond the trail, while keeping her leashed. That meant I needed to follow as she explored through trees that I could barely maneuver. I suppose it ended up being more invigorating for me that it was for her.
Yesterday, I decided to bring along a new toy of hers that Cyndie recently brought home. Delilah had quickly accomplished beheading it to rip out the stuffing and chew the plastic squeaker. I brought the colorful remains along on our walk and periodically dropped it out of her sight while she was otherwise occupied. Then I would stop her and give the command to find her toy using her nose.
This game of having her hunt down things we hide, by tracking the scent, is as much fun for us to witness as it appears to be for her to play. It has the added benefit of keeping her attention focused on our place and not on the neighboring properties that she would prefer to explore. Those wild animal smells she keeps picking up are coming from somewhere nearby, she seems to assume.
There’s something even bigger that feels in between for me. We are in our third winter on this property, and after taking on some significant projects to improve the infrastructure supporting our horses during the first two years, we have taken a pause. There are still projects to be accomplished, but they aren’t so urgent.
At the same time, we have delayed taking some essential steps toward formalizing the equine training Cyndie wants to offer, which remains an ultimate goal. Her hip problem was a big contributor to our reasons for waiting, and now we will be in a period of rehabilitation for a while.
We are in a time between the busy activity of our initial efforts, and the point of actually offering training sessions to paying clients. The fact that this is on my mind tells me a next new phase of planning is likely to happen soon.
In the mean time, it will serve me well to allow myself to accept this period of being between. I want to enjoy the everyday moments of apparent stasis. I expect to find myself missing this when things begin to thaw and days become filled with more to be done than time allows.
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Challenge Met
If you have been following Relative Something for a while, you may recall that in December I posted a picture of a puzzle that my niece, Tricia, gave me. It stymied me for days, and then weeks, until I set it aside and forgot about it. Often that is just the trick for solving problems, isn’t it?
I have to credit my son, Julian, for renewing my interest. He visited on Sunday and picked up the puzzle, appearing to make a bit of progress with it. That was all the inspiration I needed. Yesterday I started messing with it again and quickly reversed what little headway Julian had achieved.
Not long after that, something happened that led to some noticeable progress. Then, I have no idea how, the pieces came apart. Success! I think. If you can call it that.
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A Saturday
Yesterday was another warm winter day for us. There was a hint of fogginess out the window when morning darkness faded, which suggested that moisture was breaking loose from the confines of ice and snow. Cyndie gifted me a chance to linger in bed by tending the morning routine of taking Delilah out and feeding the horses.
I was able to return the gesture after I got up, as she laid back down to read and put herself back into sleep mode, falling into a late-morning nap. I cleaned the kitchen of the tools she had used to whip up a delectable batch of fresh blueberry muffins, and then took Delilah outside where I was planning to play lumberjack.
It was warm, and the hint of fogginess was becoming just plain fog. I had chosen an over-shirt instead of a jacket, but it was too much for me at the get go. I even opened the front of my flannel shirt to cool down as I carried the chainsaw from the shop to the woods behind the house. I was going to cut up more of the limbs of broken trees that litter the hill below the wood shed.
Cyndie has asked me to refrain from using the chainsaw when I am alone during the week, so Saturday becomes my first chance. Despite the likelihood I was about to shatter her nap, I wanted to take full advantage of my opportunity without further delay. The morning was quickly fading.
The fog was beginning to fade, too. I glanced up from my labor to catch the sun beginning to appear, looking a lot more like a typical view of the moon.
Eventually, Cyndie came out to join me and help process wood that has remained piled here for a couple of years. I now have plenty of wood ready for splitting, a chore I have permission to do when I am home alone.
By early afternoon, the air had cleared and there was so much sun and blue sky that I had long since shed the flannel shirt and the horses were laying in the snow. I got the impression they were too hot to exert themselves with any effort, and the cool snow felt good against their bodies.
It felt like a perfect Saturday scene. One that I will remember and revisit when I get back to toiling away at the splitter during the week ahead.
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Small Successes
We have been experiencing an increasingly noticeable septic odor in the area near our kitchen sink. Early on, it was vague enough to defy positive identification, so the suspected source bounced around from something bad in the trash bin under the sink to dirty dishwater left too long. We continued to hope we could avoid finding out it was an actual septic tank issue.
When you are in the house long enough, your nose learns to tune it out, so troubleshooting the source is a challenge. However, when you walk in from outside, and the first thing you notice is that smell, even though you are not at the sink, it becomes clear there is a definite problem.
Eventually, I broke down and called our septic tank company for help. The gentleman was very helpful in providing possible sources to check before needing to pay him to come out and pump the tank for inspection. He said they have found nests blocking the vent pipe and traps that have dried out as examples of causes for that odor. When he asked if we had a bathroom downstairs that doesn’t get a lot of use, my hopes climbed.
Yes, we do. I went downstairs and ran water in the laundry room, poured water down the floor drains, and then hit that bathroom, flushing the toilet and running water in the tub and sink.
Could it be that simple? We have suffered with this smell becoming increasingly annoying over several weeks. All I needed to do was run water? Apparently.
I did go up on the roof, to verify there was no nest in the vent stack. Now, after having run that water, and waiting a few days to try to sense an improvement, I am ready to claim success. The clincher was having Cyndie walk in the house when she got home from work and her not noticing any bad smell.
On top of that success, while in that basement bathroom that I never use, I was reminded that the lever on the bathtub drain plug was not working. We first learned it was a problem over a year ago when our friends from Guatemala stayed with us. I’ve forgotten about it multiple times since.
I unscrewed the lever mechanism and found that whatever may have made it work at one time (I don’t really see how it ever did work), it was useless now. A simple trip to the hardware store for a replacement and I would have it fixed in no time. Except… the new screws were too long.
Luckily, walking a few steps down to the shop for a hacksaw and vise was also very simple.
They are all small successes, but they combine to create a very rewarding sense of accomplishment at the end of a day. It reminds me that there is value to be had in celebrating the small successes of everyday.
Maybe more so when the success is one that has been over a year in the waiting.
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Hay Thoughts
We experienced a distinctly different sky Monday from that which we enjoyed on Sunday. In fact, we even received a short burst of heavy snowfall for a few minutes from the gray clouds overhead. However, the above freezing temperatures of the middle portion of the day sufficiently evaporated the fresh snow cover off of any surface that wasn’t already a snow base.
The cloudy sky kept things from being very melty, but didn’t completely stop the loss of snow cover. The ground is peeking through in multiple places, especially where I had plowed a path for walking around the back pasture fence.
At this time last year, there was so much snow on the ground that I don’t think I would have been able to keep that path open. This year has been quite a different story. I am itching to find out how our new drain tile installation will work for us in the spring. If the winter ends with below-average snow levels, I am expecting to see noticeable improvement in how the paddocks dry out. Although, it will be hard to judge how much better the drainage is when basing it on a reduced amount of melting snow from this year.
Not that I’m complaining. After the amount of wetness we endured during the first two spring seasons that we lived here, we are due for a break this year. If a dryer spring happens in 2015 and we don’t get a real test of the new drain system, so be it. I’ll welcome the break.
One of the things that would be a nice change is a chance to cut hay sooner. Our hay crop was far from pristine, as our field is long on weeds and short on desirable grasses, but our horses seem to prefer it to the bales I purchased from a farm to the north of us.
(Jack and Joanie, if you are still reading: I recently found a few bales of your hay left over that we had stowed inside the barn, instead of the hay shed. Our horses really liked your hay! We were able to feed it to them during the severe cold nights.)
I am still hoping that we will gain ground on improving our hay simply by cutting it regularly. If we can get on the field to cut it before it gets too long for a first cut, and early enough to give us a good shot at getting a second cut later in the summer, I believe, based on the yield we got last year, we can put up enough of our own hay to feed our herd through a winter. That would be a real special success.
It would be just like we planned it, back when we didn’t have a clue about any of this.
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Few Photos
Our friend, Ian, was hoping for photos of our frolicking with the dog and horses… The weather yesterday was particularly warm and very sunny, but the horses weren’t in much of a frolicking mood. It was so serene that I think they were lulled into an irreversible calm.
It was quality time for all, regardless. Cyndie brought out her camera and captured some of the action. I unclipped Delilah to play a little “Oblio and Arrow Triangle Toss.” I’m pretty sure we won.
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We then mingled with the horses.
Except for an occasional outburst from someone’s dog down the valley, it was amazingly quiet outside. The fact that the Green Bay Packers were playing in the NFC Championship game at that hour may have contributed to the absence of any outdoor activity. The barking dog was irresistible to Delilah, so to keep her from running off to answer its call, I had to reconnect her leash after we finished our play. We wandered up to the horses, who had moved to the shade of the barn overhang to get out of the hot sun.
Or maybe it was to eat hay.
I crouched down to mediate potential interaction between the horses and Delilah, then snapped a shot of the view Delilah sees when she looks up at Legacy. I can see why she is a little intimidated.
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Everyone was very calm and relaxed during our visit. I think it helped to burn some of Delilah’s extra energy before our interaction with the horses at such close proximity. It is nice to spend time in the horse’s space when we have no actual demands to ask of them. We just lingered together and that was enough.
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