Archive for the ‘Wintervale Ranch’ Category
Topsy Turvy
I don’t know what it is, spring weather, phase of the moon, tax return preparation, college basketball tournament upsets, or blog hosting sites putting their users through unwanted drama, but things seem a bit chaotic around here recently. It doesn’t help that I am once again on leave from the day-job due to another slowdown in business. Then, there are things like the commercial airplane disappearance, the massive mud slide, Chicago’s commuter train crash, and our dog and cats getting the throw-ups. At least the horses are fine, well… except we received a classic spring rain/snow mix that got them chilled and wet yesterday, so that we needed to move them into the barn for the night.
I captured this picture of one of Delilah’s toys recently, and when I opened it up for viewing on my computer screen, it immediately caused me to think, “That’s exactly what I feel like.”
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New Room
My builder showed up on Monday and we finally have progress on the construction of a new storage room in the basement corner where the entertainment center used to be. In a few short hours they removed the old studs, decided on a location for the door, figured out a plan for the lighting, put up the frame of the new wall, and finished stringing electrical wire. Tuesday they got the drywall hung, taped, and a first layer of mud applied. It feels real good to have another of our imagined changes finally transitioning into actual progress.
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New Hay!
Of the many blessings we have experienced in the time since we first learned about this place we now call home, the ones that involve our animals seem to have a special preciousness for us. Our horses have been with us for less than half a year, and every success we achieve in caring for them brings a welcome sense of relief, since we are pretty much figuring everything out for the very first time. Managing the hay to keep them properly fed has been one of our primary lessons.
Back in September, as complete novices in all things hay related, we didn’t have a clue about what we were looking for in a bale. Even after learning a few things, we are still humbled to discover that even “good” hay can develop some mold, or contain sections with undesirable contents. The bales we acquired from two different sources, and have been feeding to our horses all winter, turned out to have some of both problems.
A month ago, I wrote about the discovery that we had too much foxtail grass in some of our hay, which was giving the horses mouth sores. We ended up losing many large bales from our stash due to that problem. Our struggle with finding mold inside other bales has been consistent, showing up in hay from both providers. We eventually deduced that some of the hay we purchased from the unfamiliar supplier must have been what is called, “ditch hay.” The grass in the bales proved to be dusty, like grass beside a gravel road is dusty, and included bits of plastic refuse and many large sticks. 
The dustiness is not appealing to the horse’s keen sense of smell, and it confounds our efforts of identifying whether we are seeing clouds from mold spores, or not.
Recently, a reliable source surprised us with the wonderful news that they had some small bales they could make available. Their message was a blessing that couldn’t have come at a better time. Yesterday, to make room for the new bales, Cyndie and I removed the pile of moldy hay that has been tossed aside.
Within minutes of Jack and Joanie pulling into our driveway, we felt the thrill of connecting with good-hearted people and sensed the hay would be ideal for our horses. In our bliss over having good quality hay, we neglected to think ahead about how we stacked it. Chatting while we worked, Jack tossed bales almost faster than we could stack them, I tried to think about fitting the bales into the smallest space possible, and Cyndie placed them at every which-way orientation. Later in the evening, I asked Cyndie if she counted the bales.
“No.”
“Me neither.”
What that reveals is that neither she nor I felt any concern about trusting the quantity delivered. Unfortunately, our lack of concern about counting bales relates to our not having a logical pattern to the way we stacked them, which means we will never actually know how many bales remain on hand after we’ve used a bunch. Another lesson learned.
Happily, the horses seemed as thrilled with the new hay as us. I captured Dezirea and Legacy breathing in the delicious smell, while Hunter and Cayenne wasted no time in chomping away.
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Will They?
One of our current spring dramas is whether our pine trees will recover from the stress they have endured from our dry fall that was followed by the most extreme winter we’ve had in 35 years. I’ve not consulted with an arborist yet, but our trees are definitely browning from the bottom up and the inside out. This doesn’t match the descriptions I find of how winter injury or pine wilt symptoms appear. Whatever it is that is causing the problem, it’s not affecting every single pine, but it is widespread throughout our property and not confined to one spot. We are hoping for the best, but I’m inclined to believe the prognosis is not good. The die-back on many of them is over half the tree.
That isn’t our only drama this spring. We are also anxious to learn whether the maple tree we transplanted to the labyrinth last fall survived the obvious shock it endured from its being uprooted and relocated. If we witness signs of life from that tree in the days ahead, my spirit will soar and we will have much cause for celebration.
There is also concern for the number of plants Cyndie worked so hard to get established in the rest of the labyrinth. This winter was hard on everything, so even if the plants survived the onslaught of snow and long periods of extreme cold, they will now face risks from animals that are trying to eat anything and everything available to recover from their own season-long deprivation. I don’t intend to erect a 10-foot-high fence around the garden to keep deer away, but I fear that is about what it would take to dissuade them from bellying up to our conveniently situated buffet down there.
We could ask Delilah to patrol the area for us, as she would be thrilled at an invitation to chase deer, but she would likely wreak her own havoc on plants, as she demonstrates amazing reckless disregard for all living things in her excitement to chase and dig.
One last drama we came face to face with yesterday is the question of whether we will be able to continue allowing Delilah to be both an indoor and an outdoor pet. This is the first spring that she has lived with us, so we haven’t previously needed to deal with managing both spring mud and a dog before.
When we step in the door, we can simply remove our muddy boots. I wish it were that simple for her. Yesterday, a day when the temperature was below freezing, but the sunshine was still melting exposed ground, she got legs and belly covered with mud and manure-cicles. When we came inside, Delilah was rubbed down with a towel in a cursory attempt to dry her off. Later, when we had time, she would get bathed to remove the residual grime.
So much for waiting. Soon we were seeing dark spots all over the floor. The mud and manure frozen to her underside, and which toweling did not remove, was now melting at a rapid pace. Everywhere she walked in our house was becoming a bio-hazard site. Poor dog was unceremoniously evicted and sent to her kennel outside do be dealt with later.
If I thought it stood a chance of working, I’d look into mud boots for her. I wonder if she’d let me wrap her torso with stretch-wrap to keep her belly fur dry.
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Merciful Melt
Thus far, the spring thaw has been happening at a merciful pace. We get a day or two of melting, and then swing back to a solid freeze. Each day that it gets above freezing, larger percentages of snow cover are being peeled back.
The latest hazard to emerge is due to the fact that the routes most commonly tread around here are some of the first spots where the bare ground is being revealed and thawing. That means the places we want to walk are getting sloppy and muddy on the warm days. Suddenly I find myself trying to walk on the snow that remains, in an ironic reverse of the usual logic. It is a blessing when everything re-freezes and we can walk across the hard ground without the slurpy mess for a day.
Sadly, Delilah’s kennel out back is not ideally situated for optimal drainage. There is some work to be done there this summer to create a better grade at the spot we selected, so the water won’t pool as readily. There is a raised wooden house in there for her, but she seems to prefer the stuffed pad that is out on the ground, and it ends up soaking in the edge of a pool of melt water.
Yesterday we were blessed with a gloomy, cloudy day when the temperature climbed above freezing, so the melting was definitely happening, but at a measured pace. I was again intrigued to find how well my simple shoveled gullies in the gravel driveway by the barn and hay shed work to channel water where we really want it to go.
Just like priming a pump, when a puddle is given an outlet for drainage, it seems to all of a sudden pull water from above, and then flow begets flow. Soon the channels come alive with running water and the areas above visibly begin to dry out.
It works for the period of time when we are enjoying this eased pace of melting. In the days to come when the sun comes out in full and the temps really soar, I suspect my little channels will prove to be rather under-sized for the job. Long term, I am envisioning some larger-scale grade landscaping in a few areas to create the same effect for the full capacity of our entire acreage.
That’s my dream, in theory, anyway.
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Lake Wintervale
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This time of year, there’s water, water, everywhere. Can you guess where this is?
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Go ahead, click on the image…
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Spring Arrives
Today is the first day of spring on the calendar, so that means only a few weeks, or maybe a month, more of days when we might experience significant snow events. Yesterdays’ little excitement is already melting fast. I did need to plow the driveway when I got home from work, but it was relatively easy and the remnants left behind on the pavement melted quickly, leaving the driveway mostly clean after minimal effort.
Unfortunately, I was doing some cleanup with a shovel and leaned into it, sliding the snow to the edge, when a disc in my back went kablooey. It’s impressive how quickly a person can go from standing upright, to flat on their back on the mucky wet ground. It’s also interesting how blissful it can seem to be laying down with no pain, regardless the fact it was on the wet pavement. I was feeling content to lay there for the rest of the night, but Cyndie happened along and inspired me to make my way back to my feet again with the enticement of Chinese takeout she brought home for dinner.
Today is not a day for whining, it’s spring! I’ll celebrate with a shot of Cayenne posing in the bright March sunshine. Green things won’t be far behind.
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Nature’s Course
There is no getting around the fact that we are at that time of year when the weather can flip from enticingly spring-like to “as winter as ever” in a single day. It can be a tough blow at the end of a harsh winter to be walloped by storms that give the impression the weather is headed in the wrong direction. Today is expected to be one of those tough blows, but it is not clear what the precise position of the storm will be. We are on the edge of a suspected path which could swing either to freezing rain or heavy, wet snow.
For the time being, I’m going to enjoy this image of our paddock from Saturday, when the snow had been cleared off the ground and the clouds were gone from the sky. We’ll have more of this type of enjoyment in the days ahead. We just need to tolerate a small setback to a winter storm for a few days.
That’s Dezirea munching hay, with Legacy standing by, on watch.
A couple of days later and it looked like this (although, in fairness, this one was taken with my phone looking through a dirty window from inside our sunroom):
At Delilah’s desperate urging, I let her outside to chase a squirrel, or squirrels, which had been tugging mercilessly at her predator instincts while she was trapped indoors. I followed her with my eyes as she sprinted deep into the neighbor’s woods to our north, much farther than she normally explores. The unconscious chase left her in new territory, and I would have been surprised if she just turned around and came back into our yard.
She disappeared for quite a while. When Delilah finally reappeared outside our windows, it wasn’t a squirrel she had as a prize, but the bottom portion of a deer leg. It is most likely that she happened upon a carcass that was left by some other predator(s), but she looked so much like a wolf out there, gnawing on that limb in the heavy falling snow, I felt a renewed appreciation for why our cats appear so wary of her.
She’s just doing what comes natural, but it can be almost scary seeing how incredibly proficient she is about it.
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Many Firsts
In our new world of country living on 20 acres with horses, cats, and a dog, 2 tractors, an ATV, a spare pickup truck, plus 3 outbuildings, we frequently find ourselves facing tasks with which we have no previous experience. Yesterday’s ‘first’ was using the diesel tractor to clean manure in the paddocks.
Our horses arrived at the end of September last year, so this has been our first winter with them. After the fall season in which we tried to clean the paddocks almost daily, the winter weather introduced a whole new challenge to our system. The snow covers and freezes the daily accumulations and we pretty much stopped trying to do any cleaning at all.
I asked our neighbor, George, how they deal with the situation at their farm. He stated matter of factly that they just wait until the snow melts and then scoop out the entire top layer of soil and manure. I fear ours will be a muddy mess that will keep our machines out of there until summer, so I was weary of how simple he made it sound.
Last week, while out shopping for hay nearby, we drove from the east on the county road that passes just south of our place. It was the very first time I have traveled that stretch of road since we moved here. We had yet to see the view of our place from that direction in the year-and-a-half we have been here.
While we were out on that trip, we noticed a farm where they piled the manure right inside their paddock. With all our snow finally melting, the months of manure are getting revealed in our paddocks, so I suggested we consider doing the same. The mess in our paddocks is big enough that I figured we would need to use the tractor, but I was unsure about whether I could successfully navigate the challenging terrain. The driveway was melting and would be a mud pit. The snow was still deep in some areas and the wheels of the tractor might not get me through. The ice could leave me spinning in place.
While surveying the situation, Cyndie spent precious time brushing out the shedding coat of each horse. I tried raking some manure by hand, and quickly learned it was still too frozen to be very effective with that mode. It would definitely take the power of the tractor to make any measurable progress.
In hindsight, I think we picked the perfect day for this task because it was a day when the temperature stayed below freezing. The tractor was able to make good progress in scraping the top layer of accumulated manure, and in so doing removed a lot of snow. If we had tried this on a day when it was warmer it would have been a muddy mess.
We ended up with a giant pile in one corner, but that should shrink significantly when the snow portion melts away. I think we did pretty well with our first try at using the tractor to clean the paddock. It was, in fact, one of the primary reasons we anticipated needing that tractor in the first place.
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Embarrassing Excess
I am developing a complex about the number of boots, jackets and gloves that I seem to need to keep handy at our doors. Occasionally, Cyndie will clear the excess and stow it in a closet. When this happens, I try to respect it for as long as possible, but inevitably my plethora of outerwear re-accumulates, filling our entrances with my clutter once again.
This time of year is particularly difficult, because the transition from winter to spring brings a wide variety of conditions. I seem to be putting on a different boot every other time I go out. For deep snow and/or extremely cold temperatures, I prefer my Steger mukluks. However, they have a soft leather sole, and I frequently want something more robust for tasks around the barn, or with our machines.
My other options include another pair of insulated winter boots –with a rubber sole; my ankle-high muck boots; and (not pictured) my calf-high, steel-toe slip-on boots for when I’m going to be near the horses.
I really do wear them all, and often in the span of a few days. Around here, it can be almost summer-like one day, and the next, you might receive a foot and a half of snow (as happened here last year on May 2nd!).
It’s the same thing with jackets. The hooks by the door make it look like we are having a party or something, but no, two of those are Cyndie’s and the rest are all mine.
I’ve got a heavy canvas coat for the colder days, a light winter shell, my raincoat, and my favorite light jacket from Wilkus Architects. By the other door is my Columbia fleece and shell combination that is so old I decided to have it become the winter work jacket, letting it get dusted and rubbed by enough grime that you can hardly tell what color it once was.
Could I get by with just one pair of boots and one jacket? Not one that works well for all situations, that’s for sure.
Then I look at Delilah, who doesn’t wear boots at all. She goes in and out of the house, and her furry paws work just fine for every condition. Sure, we have to pull ice out from between her toes sometimes, and wipe her down with a towel when she comes in, but she makes those paws do.
I aspire to become as efficient as she is.
Although, I’ve got her beat on one thing. Her collection of chew toys and gnawed bones, antlers, and stuffed critters is ten times the clutter of anything of mine piled up around the inside of our house.
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Relative Something 