Archive for the ‘Wintervale Ranch’ Category
Hunter’s Run
I finally got around to uploading the video Cyndie shot of Hunter playing with the exercise ball out in the snowy field. If you recall, I tried to capture a video of Legacy playing with the ball a while back, and all I got was Dezirea walking up and putting her nose in front of my camera. That got Legacy’s attention and he walked away from the ball toward me.
Fast forward to mid-January, Cyndie and Elysa went out into the big field with the ball in hopes of getting the horses to play with it. At first, there was a lot of standing around the ball, watching it lay there, or being more interested in Cyndie and her camera. Then, with very little warning, Hunter gives it a push with his nose and then takes off running with it, as if he knew precisely what we had in mind.
It was a joy to behold, and quite a surprise to us. It seemed even more remarkable after the fact, because when he stopped, that was it. None of the other horses showed any interest in getting involved, and Hunter just did his one run and was done with it.
The scene returned to the four horses standing around the ball, watching it lay.
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Alone Again
It has happened enough that you’d think I would be used to it by now, but it’s different for me since we added horses. Cyndie is traveling out of town for work for a few days and I am alone again to tend to the animals. As if being responsible for the horses wasn’t enough, one of our cats, Mozyr, is showing new signs of some kind of illness. Before Cyndie left yesterday, she cleaned up some of his messes and then we went down and pulled the blankets off the horses. It is going to be above zero around here for a while!
It took some coaxing, but Legacy eventually allowed me to aggressively scratch his neck and shoulders after we removed his blanket. Cyndie warmed him up to the idea when she began massaging his aura about a foot away from his body. Shortly after letting me into his space to scratch him, he took an obvious step in and turned to provide me better access. A definite invitation.
I wandered back down to see the horses after they had eaten their evening feed, to take some pictures of them without blankets on. The girls were hanging out by the hay and the boys were both uphill from them.
Cayenne & Dezirea
Legacy
Hunter
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At bedtime, when I came out of the bathroom after brushing my teeth, I spotted Mozyr using the litter box we brought upstairs for him. That’s progress! After that, he wandered into the bathroom for a drink of water from the dish we keep there. Next, he took a few bites from the dry food, and then the canned food that I had put out at dinner time. These are all good signs. The night before, he appeared to have shut down completely, and then yesterday morning he seemed worse, and was messing himself and lying in it.
We probably would have rushed to the vet if Cyndie wasn’t headed out of town. I suppose I talked her out of it when I pointed out that we won’t spend money on treatments if there is something drastically wrong with him, so we may as well wait a day to see if he can shake it on his own. He is under close observation by me, and so far, things seem to be headed in the right direction.
Since I am alone, I’m hoping that’s the only direction things go for the next few days.
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Walking Partner
The best thing I can do for my back is go for a walk, so as soon as I got home from work yesterday, I headed out with Delilah for a little stroll around the property. She is very entertaining to walk with this time of year. The snow is deep enough that she struggles mightily to make progress through areas of undisturbed accumulation, quickly resorting to leaping like a deer to pounce over, instead of plowing through it.
She is happy to follow the trails left by the deer, or where someone has previously walked, sprinting to get way ahead of me, and then turning to see if I’m still coming. She shows intense interest in the scents lingering in the footprints left by the deer, and spends protracted moments in olfactory detection. If I somehow manage to catch up and pass her, she bolts to close the gap and then leaps into the deep snow for several pounces to get around me before reclaiming the trail.
We came upon the pine tree that we picked up off the ground a few times last spring, and discovered it is showing signs of not having survived. It is one of several that aren’t looking so good, and has me thinking we should be planning to do some tree planting come spring so that we add more than we lose every year. We are already behind, because a similar pine on the front side of the house died last winter and had to be cut down.
While I was taking pictures of the tree, Delilah got in some small-game hunting beneath the snow.
She didn’t come up with anything except a face full of snow, which I attempted to capture before she shook it all off. I didn’t get much cooperation from her in terms of posing for photographs, but I think this does it justice.
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I was lucky that the deep snow tired her out enough that she reached her fill of being outside at about the same time I was reaching my tolerance limit for walking. On this day, the deep snow and my ailing back ended up balancing our walking partnership perfectly.
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Mission Creep
Initially, it was only supposed to be gutters for the back side of the barn, but when the company showed up to quote that project, they noticed the gutters on our house. I have had an inkling that there was something wrong with our gutters since last year. They were more than happy to point out the shortcomings. It was a bad design that didn’t last, installed poorly by a questionable company that also didn’t last, so we were told.
I didn’t feel the need to check his facts, because I could see that water dripped from places that didn’t make sense to me. Something wasn’t working right, so we told them to include the house in their quote for new gutters. Mark this down as another home maintenance thing that we didn’t have on our to-do list, and don’t really have the budget to afford at this time.
It’s never stopped us before.
We accepted their quote and authorized the work, which got scheduled weeks out, into late November. They finished the barn in a single day while we were both away at work. When I got home that day, I noticed tracks in the gravel and wondered who the heck had been driving around our barn. I completely missed the new gutter hanging overhead. I think it was because they did such a fine job that it looked like it had always been there and never caught my eye.
After the day they expected to start had passed, I called the company to check on the status, still clueless that they had completed the barn. That was embarrassing. The scheduler was describing the plan for the house, which was fine, but I was wondering about the barn, too.
“We already finished that,” I was told.
Oh.
Anyway, then winter weather arrived, causing the house project to be delayed. I figured that meant until spring, but I have already written here about their plan to work on it regardless the snow and ice. That may be a good thing, I don’t know. I’m sure hoping so at this point, because when they came to uncover the old gutters, they discovered other problems occurring from the ice buildup and suggested one big contributor to the problem was that the venting in our soffits was insufficient.
The project expanded to having them pull the wood to open the soffits for increased ventilation, and then refinishing it with metal fascia and soffits that match the new gutters. How are we going to afford that? Their no-interest, no-payment financing plan, that’s how. Looks like our savings for the next year won’t be going toward an exotic vacation. They’ll be socked away to pay for our new and improved gutters and soffits.
I sure hope the payments don’t end up being due at the same time we will need to pay for the fractured window replacement and the new storage room about to be built downstairs. Something tells me we should be real careful about allowing any mission creep to occur when that builder arrives to do his work.
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Cat Like
During a visit by our friend, Jane, over the weekend, she got a quick glimpse of Mozyr and asked us if he was a Russian Blue. I didn’t know anything about Russian Blue as a breed, so couldn’t say, one way or the other. It seems to me that he has an awful lot of hints of the classic tabby pattern, and is more likely just a domestic shorthair, but he does match a lot of the descriptions of the Russian Blue.
He is again showing signs of becoming increasingly bonded with me, after that brief recent spell when he had gotten out of sorts and didn’t appear to feel well. He’s behaving more like his old self now, but still is not warming up to the dog at all. He is shy around strangers and appears to have the double coat and green eyes. I think he has big feet, but I didn’t notice whether that fits a trait of any particular breed.
He has been sleeping on top of me at night, and in this photo, is lounging on me as I was reading on our bed.
Both cats are quick to approach me when I lay down on our bed. I often work on my laptop there, and that is a time when Pequenita likes to perch herself between me and the screen, totally blocking my view. It’s as if she is sending me a message that she would prefer to have my undivided attention.
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The is the view I usually end up with when I am trying to type.
Their behaviors are so cat-like sometimes. I guess that is why we like them.
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Rambling Randomly
Late Sunday afternoon we got the horses fed, ushered Delilah outside to her kennel and then set out toward the far side of the twin cities from us, to the far side of Lake Minnetonka, joining our friends Barb and Mike at their house for the Superbowl game. It seems like it should be too far to go for a short evening visit, but spending time with them proved more than worth the drive. Plus, it being a Sunday evening, there was minimal traffic on the road and we made excellent time. It inspires me to avoid letting the drive interfere with staying connected to friends.
It’s now well over a year since we moved from the suburbs to farm country and I have finally taken the steps of transferring to a local doctor and dentist. I scheduled appointments with both for checkups next week. The transformation is becoming ever more complete. Now, if I could just learn to recognize good horse hay when I see it.
We have a number of bales that are moldy. We have a lot to learn about hay. Right now we are dealing with the accumulation of bad hay that we can’t feed to the horses. Online searches haven’t easily revealed any brilliant descriptions of what to do if you discover your stored hay is moldy. I don’t know if we need to get the bad bales away from the good ones. The most common suggestion is to use moldy hay for mulch in gardens. Maybe I need to advertise that we have garden mulch for sale.
While I was outside moving firewood up on the deck and splitting logs by the wood shed yesterday, Delilah was freely romping in the snow and exploring our woods. Eventually, she appeared with a kill clenched in her jaw. I have no idea what kind of animal it is –or, was. It is interesting to witness her demeanor change when she gets possession of a dead animal. Instinct seems to take over and she slips into wild carnivore mode. When she comes back in the house, I get nervous about the way she looks at the cats.
Gutter and soffit replacement resumes on the house tomorrow. I have made their work a little easier by clearing the most recent snowfall off the eaves and away from the vents at the peak. It had gotten so deep that our vents were covered completely. I haven’t heard anything from the builder who ordered our replacement window, but that should be arriving sometime soon. As much as I want to see progress there, I think it would be best if gutter and window replacements don’t overlap.
I’m back at the day-job 3 days a week now. I think it has me rambling randomly to process Wintervale responsibilities in my head so there will be some room for work related thinking that needs to happen. Don’t know if it will help any, but I see the rambling as a valuable exercise, regardless.
Remember Winter?
This year reminds me of what winters were like when I was a kid. When the snow season arrived, it stayed all year. None of this melting to the point you could see grass in the middle of January or February, or one measly cold spell when it dipped below zero and that was it.
This morning we woke to teens below zero and it is no big deal. It’s funny how you get used to it. At first, it seems like serious cold, but after days and weeks of it, with times when it dips well into the twenties below and involves wind that drives the impact into danger zones for exposed flesh, well, you grow weary of focusing on how cold the temperature is and just deal with it. Life goes on.
Unfortunately, details of daily life activity that you are trying to just get on with start to get complicated after weeks of accumulating snow continues to pile up. Driving gets difficult because sight lines become obscured by mountains of plowed snow that get piled up where ever there is a place to pile it. Shoveling driveways and walkways become epic efforts, tossing the snow ever higher to get it over the mound created by the previous six times you just did this.
It took me until yesterday to finally finish clearing all the new accumulation that fell last Thursday. I had tried making my way out to the wood shed for a load of firewood and in one trip exhausted all my energy by trying to forge my way through the deep snow. I realized this passageway should be added to the queue of areas needing to be cleared after every snowfall. It is no longer sufficient to just trod the route to create a path.
It reminds me of what it was like as a kid. I thought maybe it just seemed like there was more snow back then because I had shorter legs, but with the return of a winter like days of old, with uninterrupted snow and cold, I’m finding it just as difficult with longer legs.
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Special Day
This day used to just be January 31st on the calendar, but a year ago someone came along and claimed it for her birthday, and in doing so, made my friend Katie a Momma. Little Lilia achieves the milestone of her first birthday today. Everybody send her love!
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Delilah sends her love, too. (And a snowy-nose kiss.)
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Happy 1st Birthday, Lilia! …Yah.
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Winter Sunset
They’re all good, the sunsets, but on a crisp winter evening when you have a chance to be outside at the precise moment it drops below the horizon, it feels like it’s the best one ever seen. It was particularly nice having the tall grass soak up the low sunlight as it bent over in the wind. Fierce as this winter has been thus far, we haven’t gone completely without a few occasional precious days.
A pleasant day amid a rash of harsh weather becomes all the more precious.
It’s funny how our perspective changes when the reference point is shifted. Compared to the dramatic extremes of polar vortex winds and temperatures, a day in the 20s(F) without a lot of wind becomes a remarkably nice day.
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Relative Something 