Archive for the ‘Wintervale Ranch’ Category
Leading Legacy
I have devised a way to check whether you are aging, or not. It is nothing particularly complicated, even though the subject in and of itself can often be ridiculously complicated. It doesn’t hurt to have the availability of someone approximately 40-years younger than you to aid in setting up for this check, but it’s probably not required.
All you have to do is go outside and engage in routine outdoor winter activities like you have done your entire life without difficulty. Next, go back inside and sit down for period of time, something along the lines of how long it would take to eat dinner. At this point, you should be well prepared to run the aging check. Simply attempt to move your body from one place to another. If you have lost the ability to move, that is a strong indicator that you have aged.
Much of the day yesterday can be described as being an acclimatization day for our guests. We had a pretty short night of rest on Tuesday evening and they had traveled all day long to get here, so they deserved a day of rest. We found a few activities to do in the snow and cold, but we also did some lounging inside, watching a movie, playing guitars, and doing some napping.
The back yard is now a series of sled runs that have been firming up all night. I expect that today will present the opportunity to crash into a few trees, as we test whether the sleds which resist being steered will follow the routes we have laid out.
Our animals seem quite pleased to have company giving them good attention. I have already learned some new skills for communicating to Legacy that although he is the “alpha” leader of the herd, he does not lead me. It was insightful, causing me to recognize where I have been neglecting to assert my authority and allowing him to behave in ways that might give him the wrong impression.
He tests his herd with some frequency, to communicate his dominance. One way he might do this is to chase them off their food. It seems like much ado about nothing to me, but the horses accept this message easily, and then just as quickly as the fracas starts, they all calmly return to eating. Message sent and received.
I have not had any such urge to chase Legacy off the food I just delivered for him to eat. It would be very horse-like of me if I did, to let him know that I am in charge. He wouldn’t hold a grudge. He would go right back to eating, message received.
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Got Company?
Our guests have arrived! Let the fun begin.
Delilah was so excited to meet them, she peed. We stayed up later last night than I have been awake for as long as I can remember. Did I even make it to midnight last New Years? I don’t think so. When we finally went to sleep, it was already this morning, that’s how late it was.
Temperatures should be mild today, so we will be able to give them a soft introduction to our northern version of winter.
That’s it. I don’t have time to write more. We’ve got company!
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Sloppy Surprise
There you go. Two days in a row, shoveling required. We received about 2 inches of powdery snow yesterday. Shoveling was easier to accomplish on Sunday, when I was home all day. I got very little of the snow cleared after work yesterday. First priority was cleaning off the front steps and walkway, then I was off to feed horses before they grew testy. Last to come was rescuing Delilah from the confines of her outdoor kennel.
I know she means well, but she caused me some real pain that I never saw coming. At this point, I don’t even recall what I was doing as I bent over in the fading daylight inside the kennel with her. I was either fussing with her leash, or picking up her water dish, which had frozen around the edges. Of course, she is always overly excited to see us after being alone all day, so she jumps on us and does circles around us as we put things in order before opening the gate to set her free.
When I walk toward her doghouse in the back end of the kennel, she runs away to the door, and runs back to me, as if she believes I must have gotten lost. Back and forth, round and round, up and down. I lost sight of her for a second yesterday, as I crouched down, and then it hit. BANG! She unleashed a sloppy wet tongue across my open eyeball. Yikes, that hurt!
That can’t be sanitary. I know people say that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a person’s, but I have seen what she puts in her mouth. That adds sting to the sting.
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Anxiously Awaiting
We are absolutely thrilled to be just days away from the arrival of our friends from Guatemala, Dunia and Marco, and their sons, Marco and Jose. Cyndie was busy all day yesterday adorning our home with decorations of the season, and cleaning rooms to set up beds with her typically fabulous flair. When I wasn’t lending a hand indoors, I was out cleaning snow off the areas of the driveway that I didn’t hit when I plowed on Saturday, shoveling the deck, clearing a path to the woodshed, hauling wood to the rack by the house, packing the labyrinth path with snowshoes, and lastly, (this especially for Dunia and family…) making the first attempt to establish a path for a 2-turn bobsled run down the hill in our back yard.
I have visions of building up a big enough pile of snow just beyond the deck after a few more storms, so that eventually we can start from up on the deck! In order for that to work, we would need some really big banks of snow at those two turns, so there will be plenty of snow-construction we can work on when we aren’t off on some other local adventure.
My driveway plowing on Saturday turned into a bigger project than I planned. It was my second chance to practice maneuvering the Griz while moving snow. The ATV is working as well as I had hoped. I am learning some things about getting it to shift easily, and apparently becoming increasingly aggressive as I gain experience. I over-stressed the winch cable that lifts the plow blade and broke it, twice! Maybe I’m a slow learner since it happened a second time, but I guessed that the first break was due to the cable being old and weakened, so I didn’t change my behavior.
After I cut off the bad portion of the cable and re-clamped a fresh end, I figured it would be as strong as ever. When that broke almost immediately, I decided I must have been trying to lift the blade beyond its stop point. After applying the fix a second time, I paid a lot more attention to the process of lifting the blade, and as a result, had no more problems the rest of the way.
Now, with all the snow cleaned and ready to entertain guests, the forecast is predicting flurries tonight and snow showers tomorrow. The difference between the two main seasonal chores of mowing grass in summer and shoveling snow in winter is that you know after mowing that you have at least a week before needing to cut the grass again, but with shoveling, you just might have to start over again on the very next day. There’s no rest for the weary.
Usually, after a snow storm, we get smacked with extremely cold air, but since this is just a small system of passing showers, it looks like our daily high temperatures will be going up! As of now, Wednesday is predicted to reach a degree short of the melting point. That will make creating the large banked turns of the bobsled run as easy as baking a cake.
Dunia, Marco, and sons, we hope you are able to enjoy your day of travel tomorrow. We are looking forward to greeting you at the airport in the evening so we can whisk you away to our Wintervale wonderland where our creatures, great and small, are all looking forward to getting to know you.
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The Man
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Who’s da man?
Are you talkin’ to me?
Don’t mess with Legs. Check out his ears. He is listening in two directions at once. The man is always monitoring his environment. Some of the time it is to be on the lookout for outside threats to his herd. Most of the time it is the herd themselves, as he executes his ongoing demonstrations of dominance by dictating when they can move, where they should stand –or more accurately, where they shouldn’t stand– when they can eat, etc.
I enjoy watching him deftly adjust his body orientation to home in on an intended target by aiming his hind end directly at one of the other three while he pins his ears back. They might have been acting like they didn’t notice him, but when he assumes that position, their immediate reaction indicates they knew full well he was sending them a message.
I’d choose him for my squad, watching my back, any day.
He’s a righteous dude.
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Stinky Story
It has been a while since I put hours in at the day-job, and as a result, I have a fair backlog of stories to share that they haven’t heard regarding things that have happened at Wintervale. Yesterday, I was waxing eloquent on Delilah’s apparent preoccupation with wildlife scat and horse manure. As I spun my tales, I came to a funny story that I realized was worth posting here, and since I don’t recall having already written about it, I’m hoping I haven’t.
During the period that I was on leave, I worked on several outdoor projects that allowed me to grant Delilah the opportunity to roam freely, off-leash. She demonstrates such elation with being able to run free that it is a thrill to watch her, but since I would be trying to get some work done, there were times when I lost sight of where she was.
That was actually part of the training we have been working on. When we notice she seems to have disappeared, we call or whistle and she needs to return. Every time she does, she is rewarded with a treat or lavish affection, or both. Sometimes it takes a long time for her to return, long enough that I have usually grown frustrated and consider it a failed attempt. That presents a challenge, because she eventually does return, after all, and seems to expect a treat, but I’m reluctant because she didn’t come the first time I called.
Often times, when she doesn’t return immediately, it is because she has wandered off our property and is overly excited about exploring the unfamiliar territory of our neighbors. The plowed field just to our north is a particular favorite of hers. They weren’t able to plant any crop there last spring because it remained too wet for too long into the growing season. Instead, it became the place that our neighbor chose to dump fertilizer. He was putting some pretty stinky stuff on there from the local area dairy farms. I am pretty sure that is why Delilah likes it so much.
One damp day, after she eventually returned from a prolonged disappearance, she came back with what looked like muddy water soaking the fur around her head. It struck me as odd, because her head was dry, but I got the impression she had stuck her face into a puddle. I wondered how she could look wet around her face so thoroughly, but not show anything on her face or the top of her head. When she got close enough to me, I quickly discovered it wasn’t muddy water. She stunk something awful. There must have been a puddle of sewage up in that field somewhere.
It smelled so bad, I didn’t want to be near her. I went back to my project and hoped she would wear it off just by running through the grass, goofing off while I worked. Hours later, when Cyndie arrived home at the end of her work day, I had honestly forgotten about the mess Delilah had gotten into earlier. We all walked into the house through the front door together and Delilah jumped all over Cyndie and her nice suit, behaving like the over-excited puppy that she is, deliriously thrilled to have momma home.
“What is that smell?!” Cyndie choked.
Oops. The afternoon of activity had not done anything to get rid of the odor. It just served to dry the foul mixture into her fur. Delilah was marched right down to the tub for a good scrubbing.
Even after the bath, it seemed as though that stink lingered in her fur for a surprising amount of time. I imagine she was probably pretty proud about that.
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Just This
I am short time to write for today. Why am I short time? I have returned to putting in hours at the day-job. I have been unsuccessful in finding something closer to home, so I have returned to what I know and do best. Unfortunately it is an hour’s drive away from home. Fortunately, my return has been warmly and gratefully received.
In place of any words of wisdom, or descriptions of my follies, I will share another image from the batch I took at dusk just the other day. Here is Cayenne…
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Animals Update
I feel like the horses have been getting short shrift of air time here lately, probably due to the severe winter weather we’ve been enduring of late. Most days it is all business down at the barn, getting hay and feed distributed before my exposed flesh starts getting burned by the cold air. Pulling out the camera in the cold and dark just doesn’t seem to happen. Of course, the fact that the flash quit working on my favorite pocket camera might have a little to do with that.
I did recently snap this shot at dusk, prior to entering the barn to feed them. That is Cayenne in front of Legacy, and if you look close, you can see Hunter peeking out from the edge of the overhang of the barn. Legacy has played hard-to-get when we attempt to adjust his blanket and I’m beginning to think that he thinks it looks cool that way. He reminds me of a teenager who wears his ball cap sideways or lets his pants hang low.
They seem to be doing well despite the harsh conditions. It is such a treat to watch them when they are prancing and dancing around in the snow. We haven’t been picking up after them in the paddocks as diligently as we used to, and now the snow is covering a lot of their piles of manure, so I have resigned myself to it being a muddy, wet manure mess out there when spring finally rolls around.
Meanwhile, I have been having a lot more interaction with Delilah during the time I’ve been home during the week. Since it was so cold, I let her stay indoors with me, and since the cats just sleep on the bed all day, I put up a gate to the bedroom and then give Delilah freedom to move around the house.
We have developed a game of chase in the house where I run after her in laps around the spiral staircase. Last night, she even initiated the game and invited me to chase her around past the kitchen counter, in front of the fireplace, back to the kitchen, around and around again. I run as fast as I can, pushing her to work hard, but I run out of breath well before she tires of the game.
I tried to get her to wear boots that Cyndie bought for her feet, and she was very nice to let me get all 4 of them on her before we went out on the coldest day. After I got her ready, I still had to get my boots and coat on, and she stood totally still while I got ready. I think she was freaked out about trying to walk in them. When I was ready, it took some coaxing to get her to move, and then she clop, clop, clopped her way to the door.
Outside, she instantly appeared to be trying to run out of them, and it didn’t take her long to succeed. I thought it was nice of her to try, but I am guessing they won’t get much use beyond that first attempt.
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Book Report
Cyndie enjoys listening to me read aloud, and we recently finished a perfect book for that exercise, allowing her to fold laundry while I recited the last chapters of author Jerry Apps’ “The Quiet Season: Remembering Country Winters.” The book was a gift from my niece, Liz. She said that reading it caused her to think about us and our place in Wisconsin. I can see why.
Hopefully, it wasn’t because the period Jerry wrote about was in the 1930s and 40s. Things aren’t that backward out here. His descriptions of chores and routines do evoke a sense of the familiar for projects we have undertaken in our first year here. As difficult a time as they had carving out their existence on a country farm (he describes winter life at a time before indoor plumbing or electricity, and very limited wood stove heating), it definitely caused me to feel a longing for the simpler time.
Since then, life has gotten a lot faster and busier.
I think the frenetic pace of modern life suits Cyndie better than it does me. Yesterday was her annual holiday cookie baking extravaganza where she converts restaurant portions of butter, sugar, flour, brown sugar, and I think, more butter, into a wide array of delectable works of edible art. Our kids braved the light snow and drove out to be here for the festivities and helped to truly kick off this annual tradition the way Cyndie likes.
They produced a dizzying volume of beautiful cookies that have the house smelling dangerously delicious, causing me to gain weight just breathing the air. Between baking tasks, Elysa fed the horses and Julian helped me shovel the labyrinth. We watched some football, sat by the fire, shared a wonderful dinner –why not? The oven was already hot– and created cookie trays for sharing at everybody’s workplaces.
Much of the day resonated for me with the spirit of the stories I had just read by Jerry Apps. Maybe that is because we almost crammed his whole book worth of tales into one day.
Thank you, Liz, for the book. It was a wonderful treat that we enjoyed very much!
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Cold Images
I am thrilled to present a photo that Cyndie sent me, taken with her iPhone yesterday morning on her way up to the house from the barn, after feeding the horses:
That sun dog hung around for a long time after sunrise for us. On her way down to the barn, despite an excruciating headache from a sinus infection, she called me and told me to get my camera and take pictures of the sunrise. I was skeptical that I would be able to get a workable shot looking directly at the sun with my little pocket camera, but I gave it a try. This is my version from about a half-hour earlier than hers:
Just the night before, I had been trying to capture how the setting sun was illuminating all the icy branches of the trees. None of my attempts were able to match what I could see with my eyes, but I did end up with a sunset shot that I like a lot.
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While reviewing the sun dog shots from the morning, I realized I had captured the sun setting on our horizon the very evening before. I think they make a nice pair.
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Relative Something 