Archive for the ‘Wintervale Ranch’ Category
Got Fertilizer?
It didn’t take long for Cyndie to step in it. The horses are here!
What an amazing experience. We enjoyed a flawless delivery. The herd quickly adjusted to their new home and went right to grazing. What a joy to behold. These 4 make a perfect group. Since there was no reason to break them up, we decided to remove the gate between the two paddocks and let them have full access to both.
The horses are Arabians. We have two mares and two geldings. Dezirea was a brood mare. Cayenne is her daughter, but is larger in size. (I’m told the father was a big horse.) Hunter is a gelding who grew up with 
Cayenne. He got kicked in the head when he was born. He is a bit slow, as in, it takes him longer to learn things, but he is a gentle giant. Those three are all chestnuts. Dezirea has one white knee-high sock. Hunter has one white anklet. Cayenne has no socks. The remaining horse is Legacy, and he is a gray. He is the leader of the herd.
For the most part, they appeared very relaxed with their situation, but it was apparent that they were on alert to sounds or actions. They were very easy to startle.
After a short time of just letting them graze freely, we used carrots to entice them to come check out the automatic waterer. When it would turn on to refill, they would jump back in surprise, but it didn’t take long at all before they accepted it as a harmless noise.
When we went to check on them after dinner, in the early evening darkness, we found them up near the barn overhang. They seemed to be hovering there, but not really coming in under the roof. We turned on a light and stepped out to see them, and discovered they were hesitant to 
step on the strip of rocks that protect the drip-line of the roof. Our presence seemed to give them strength, and Legacy crossed the barrier. Once he did that, they all followed suit.
It was hard to say goodnight at the end of the day.
And what a day it was.
.
Great Anticipation
Today is the day. After years of preparation, starting way back when we hatched this crazy scheme, we will finally have horses. It is the culmination of our vision, and it is the first step into a new normal. What an amazing change this is from our years back in Eden Prairie.
It should be a busy day today. First thing in the morning, I am expecting a visit from a log home professional who will quote the job of sealing up our home and preserving the logs for the coming winter season. After that, we will be watching for friends coming to visit, the delivery of bales of hay, and then the arrival of our herd of horses –not necessarily in that order.
We’ve got some things to do yet, prior to their arrival, so we hope to get one or two chores accomplished before we enter the phase of just standing and staring, which I expect will consume us for the remainder of the day.
I hope they will be happy with the grass they find here. They are coming from fields that have been over-grazed, so our long, thick grass will be a significant change. I also hope I will remember what I learned at the Epona seminar I attended with Cyndie in Arizona.
“Breathe.”
I will remember to breathe.
Final Preparations
I took advantage of being home on Monday and whittled away at the list of things we want done before the horses arrive. Cyndie had to work, so I was left to choosing tasks that I could accomplish alone. One of the big ones for me was to finish preparing the area we have set aside for manure management (just in case the 4 horses happen to produce any manure).
We selected a site last fall, and did some initial clearing. At the time, it seemed like the perfect location, if only we could remove some stumps. We cut into the bigger of two that were right in front, to see if it might come out with minor effort. It didn’t. Elysa’s friend, Anne, volunteered to work on it, because cutting out a stump appealed to her. She made great progress at the time, cutting through all the roots around the perimeter, but the stump held fast.
Early in spring, when Cyndie initially began cleaning out the stalls in the barn, the old sawdust and wood chips got dumped behind and beside the stumps. We ended up ignoring the area for most of the summer, and it grew tall with weeds and some grass. Yesterday, I brought out the chainsaw and made all the stumps disappear, both front and rear (sorry, Anne). Now we are set to dump manure from the front side, and remove it from the back side.
It is another one of our visions realized.
It will be easy to access the manure composting area off the new road that comes around the back side of the barn. Turning around from the view of the [future] manure pile, I took a picture of what the back side of the barn looks like.
We’ve got some spare gates remaining, which will likely get used in a next phase of fencing, whenever that occurs. Speaking of gates, my next project was getting chains installed to latch all the gates in the paddocks. That was definitely a priority to be done before the horses arrive.
When Cyndie got home, she helped to roll some big rocks into the bucket of the diesel tractor. The semi driver scouting our layout said he could back down toward the barn if the rocks weren’t there. We’d been meaning to move them ever since they were dropped on that spot at the start of our re-landscaping project, so we promised him they would be gone.
Now the rocks are back by the labyrinth.
In the evening, before we turned out the lights and closed up the barn, we turned on the electric fence to confirm everything was in working order, and then proclaimed the place ready for horses.
Today, I will mount some hardware to create tie-points where Cyndie wants them, to secure horses during saddling or other tasks. I will pick up some grain from the feed store. I will bring our collection of pallets down to the hay shed, to place under the bales of hay.
We are one day away from the planned arrival.
Counting Down
Okay, I’ll finally admit it. We are now counting down the days until horses arrive here. I have purposely avoided writing about it, in case something interferes with the plan, but now we are close enough that I am breaking my self-imposed silence on the subject. Four Arabian horses have been identified, two mares and two geldings. This fact woke me in the wee hours of Sunday morning, and I wasn’t able to get back to sleep until after I made a list of all the things that were flashing into my mind that remain to be done.
I think I came up with a list of 12 items. After both Cyndie and I were up and talking in the morning, the list grew to 31 things to be done. Yikes! On second review, I was able to convince her that many of the tasks could wait until after the horses arrive, but there are still more things than can probably be accomplished. We’ll just have to prioritize.
Yesterday was a beautiful day to get a lot done, but we struggled with hitting our high gear. We knocked off some things that were on our list, but not the one that will take the most time, which is unfortunate, because time is now in short supply. It was a beautiful day, sunny, breezy, and the temperature was perfectly comfortable. There was no reason we shouldn’t have gotten a lot done, until our first visitor of the day arrived.
George, from our neighboring CSA farm came over by horse-drawn wagon to deliver this month’s share of meat and eggs. We had a wonderful and valuable chat, but it extended well into time we can barely afford. It is a tough thing to balance, because on the one hand, such interactions are priceless. It is very close to being the very essence of living in a rural setting like we do now. On the other hand, it keeps us from finishing what we start.
Normally, it wouldn’t be such a challenge, but yesterday, it happened twice. The second time it turned out to be the person who will be delivering a semi-load of hay with the horses. He was scouting the route to our property and wanted to check the layout of our buildings and driveway in order to be prepared. He turned out to be another very talkative person, full of knowledge about things pertinent to our endeavors here. Another priceless meeting and exchange that we are blessed to receive, but which knocks us off our list of tasks we want to get done. This took us into the dinner hour, and standing in the cool evening breeze brought on a chill that had both Cyndie and me happy to call it a day.
We ended up building the first fire of the season in our fireplace and Cyndie made soup and heated some french bread for our meal. More things to love about September.
That, and the pending arrival of horses…
Idea Realized
Carrying on with yesterday’s theme of ‘before and after,’ this time I compare my design concept with the actual end result. Last night, I searched out the images I created back in February to mock-up what our idea for a hay shed and new driveway loop might look like. I see now that I didn’t put enough attention toward getting the scale correct.
If you were following along back then, you may recall that my first mockup attempt had the shed at the wrong angle. You can see that one on the right.
When I realized that mistake, I took a second shot at it, rotating the shed, bringing the size up a bit, and then adding some fence. In the end, we didn’t use the two-tone wall that the barn has, but we were able to match the colors close enough so that the two buildings look like they belong together. Unfortunately, the seasons don’t match in these two views, but otherwise, I think you can see that we came pretty close to achieving our vision for the hay shed and driveway loop.
Stay tuned to see the realization of some of our other visions in the days ahead…
Before After
I searched my archives for an image of what the area behind the barn looked like last fall when we arrived here. Do you remember when I discovered the eagle statue that had been hidden beneath brambles? That was right on the corner of the barn. Actually, it was the excavator who pointed out the eagle to me, when he was surveying the area for the project we had in mind.
The new access has turned out very much like we hoped and imagined. Success!
That pine tree in the “Before” image on the left is now back in our brush pile to be burned. We had thought about trying to save it and relocate it, but then the 18″ snowstorm we were smacked by on May 2nd tipped it over and broke the roots. That was the only “keeper” tree sacrificed for this project, and the storm made the decision for us. I cut out a bunch of sumac and trimmed up that butternut tree quite a bit. Of course, the different seasons make the images a less than exact comparison, but you get the gist of it here.
Before
After
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Here is a shot from the day we were working on clearing the brush out in preparation for the arrival of the excavator:
Deflating Balloon
You just never know what you might discover when you step outside your door. After dinner, we headed out to tend to a few last things before the sunlight disappeared completely. I had just moved my car down to the shop garage to load up a batch of cardboard to be recycled, when I noticed a surprising sight on our horizon. A fully inflated hot-air balloon was one field away, just beyond the tree line. It was surprising, because we hadn’t noticed anything at all, and then suddenly, BAM!, there it was, in all its colorful glory. It seemed as though it was on the ground, but not having seen it coming or going, I couldn’t tell for sure what was going to happen next.
I didn’t have time to even get my camera pointed when it became obvious that it was being deflated. I took this shot as fast as I could, catching but a hint of the shrinking balloon, and a pair of moons in the fading light.
Pet Pics
Maybe I am compensating in advance of getting horses, (because I expect to be taking a lot of pictures of horses in the near future) but I found myself taking a fair number of pictures of the dog and cats this past weekend.
It is not uncommon to find the cats napping on our bed in the afternoon. Most of the time, they pick their heads up when we enter the room, but every once in a while, they are so zonked out they fail to stir, even if we are being noisy. That happened Saturday, and I was in and out of the room several times when I decided to grab the camera and capture Mozyr with his paws all curled up. On the second image, he managed to open one eye to see what was going on.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Delilah was being a fun playmate and playing tug-of-war with me. I prefer chasing her when she plays keep-away, because she always gets me laughing, but she often morphs that game into tug-of-war by finally running right at me and getting me to grab whatever she has clutched in her jaws.
We continue to exercise her to condition her to come when called. For the most part, she appears to be responding well. That doesn’t preclude her from still wandering into the neighbor’s field if we lose track of her for too long. It makes doing chores a little more complicated, because when she is off-leash, we need to pay almost constant attention to what she is doing.
She tried to be all innocent, on one occasion when she took a long time to return, but her feet smelled so bad from the manure that had been spread on the field, it was a dead giveaway as to where she had been. That earned her one of several baths she ended up getting over the weekend. I captured a shot of her in the sun, revealing some of the wave her coat gets when wet.
It’s Sunday
It is Sunday, and we’ve got more things on our mind to accomplish today than there is time to achieve. It is both wonderfully exhilarating, and frustrating. Luckily, we are pretty used to this scenario, and tend to roll with whatever pops up, consciously choosing to not let it frustrate us too much when we don’t get it all done. Not being able to get it all done is one of the reasons it has taken us this long to get where we are.
At the same time, we frequently hear messages that we have accomplished a lot in the short time we have been here. It is a relative perspective, eh?
Last night, Cyndie got a text from her niece, questioning whether we had gotten horses yet. No, not yet.
I’ve been dabbling with getting a web site created for Wintervale Ranch and creating a logo. I know what I want, but need to learn more of the functional manipulation of vector graphics and using Adobe Illustrator, which somehow Cyndie has on her computer. I think that is funny, because she has no idea how to use it. I know just enough to quickly get entirely frustrated (gee, there’s that word again) over not knowing how to achieve the outcome I can visualize in my mind.
I need to learn how to properly manipulate files to load our Wintervale site with pages. Time in front of the computer screen is time away from the work that remains to be done on the property. (And time on the computer doing Wintervale web site work is time stolen from composing Relative Something posts…)
Yesterday, Cyndie brought home additional panels for Delilah’s outdoor kennel. We want to expand it to give her enough space to be comfortable relieving herself in a spot that is away from her “living” area. Currently, it appears she waits all day for us to let her out, which really defeats the purpose of her having an outdoor kennel.
Delilah is doing great, by the way. We have mostly kept her leashed since her run into the neighbor’s field where she found the carcass that kept her from heeding our commands to return. We are exercising her on returning to our calls, providing treats and praise when she obeys. Repetition, repetition, repetition. She is a great dog, and excellent companion, so it is well worth our effort.
The cats are less enthralled with a canine companion, but they are making the best of the situation. Since the dog is mostly confined to the front room of the house, I am always surprised when I find her balls in the bedroom or bathroom. I think the cats enjoy being able to confiscate them. I have caught Mozyr eating out of Delilah’s food bowl more than once. When the dog’s away, the cats do play.
We have noticed evidence of a bat in the house (droppings and scratching in an inside wall), but have not seen any in flight, lately. As the season continues to shift toward winter, I wonder if the dog and cats will deter the likely onslaught of bats and mice, in case we get anything like what stormed our fortress last year.
It’s Sunday. I’ve got to get out and join Cyndie in some work. Hope you enjoy your day!
Relative Something 