Archive for the ‘Wintervale Ranch’ Category
Legacy Captured
Looking toward the fall sunshine when I captured this image of Legacy led to a great combination of light-streak and shadow. It’s as if his inherent horse wisdom is beaming out into the world from his eye. I’m particularly fond of the motion captured in his reaching leg, mid-step, and flow of mane and tail. Alternately, the bold shadow is able to make a strong statement, yet also works in a sublime way to offset him being the center of attention.
It is a great representation of our herd leader.
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Several Spectacles
This morning we were up early to view the lunar eclipse. When I ventured to the bathroom, I was surprised to find our front motion light was on. By the time I returned to the bedroom to see the moon, the back motion light was on. It seems we were being circled. As I stood at the window, watching the fading moon, I eventually spotted the culprit creating all the light pollution. It was a local barn cat, out on his early morning prowl. I hope he was catching mice, or better yet, moles.
Cyndie stretched to reach behind my dresser to flip the obstructed switch that turned off the back light so we could get back to the lunar spectacle.
Yesterday there was a another spectacle around our place. I finally had both contractors underway at the same time. Fencers were fencing and landscapers were landscaping. It was invigorating.
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I hovered around each, occasionally intruding on their activity to consult. As pleasing as it was to be enjoying this progress, I kept finding myself dwelling on the fact that both activities were initially sought to occur 5-months ago. Better late than never is the way I’m framing it now.
Regardless, we are extremely grateful to have these folks providing their services. Wintervale Ranch is another step closer to becoming the place we imagined when we found this beautiful property.
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Helping Hands
We are feeling a new level of satisfaction today, after an afternoon of long sought progress yesterday. Sure, it was Sunday, but our fence contractor showed up and made quick work of removing the old section of fence on the south side of our hay-field. At the same time, Cyndie and I worked together on clearing overgrowth in the main ditch just beyond that fence line.
With the advantage of having more people than just me out there toiling away, a lot more was accomplished in a short amount of time than I ever achieve on one of my home-alone days. While Cyndie was using the power trimmer to clear some brush, I cut out some small trees with a hand saw. After a short amount of time, I switched to the chainsaw and went after one of the large trees.
It was already dead, and there was nothing around it to worry about, so I may have been a little casual in my attempt to bring it down. My wedge cut wasn’t deep enough and the tree leaned back away from it. Luckily, I pulled the saw in the nick of time to avoid the pinch. On my own, I would have started devising some laborious attempt to pull or push it over, but with the fence contractor right there in a skid loader tractor, the solution was a breeze.
After he pushed it down, he asked me where I wanted it. I would have needed to cut it into small pieces and drag it away. He scooped up the entire tree with the forks of the skid loader and placed it on top of my brush pile. Done! I asked him to push over two other trees.
If I cut down a tree with the chainsaw, there is a stump left over. Tom would push a tree down, drive the forks under the roots, and pop the whole thing out of the ground. After he carried the entire tree to the pile, he returned to fill the hole and drive over it to pack it down. It was magical. It was incredibly quick. Tree gone, in an instant.
With obstructions out of the way, Cyndie encouraged me to go get the diesel tractor and mow the ditch with the brush cutter. I hesitated, not used to moving this fast, then allowed the momentum to carry me away. By the time we wrapped up our afternoon efforts, the majority of the ditch was cleared and mowed.
It was wonderfully satisfying. For me, it was a great chance to enjoy a day’s work with the support of helping hands.
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Mucky Misstep?
I’m having some doubts about part of the solution we settled on for improvement of the footing in our paddocks. The water is not draining through the layer of lime screenings we added. We did not focus on packing it down immediately, thinking the process would occur naturally over time. We weren’t granted that gift of time by mother nature before the heavy dose of rainfall put our efforts for improvement to a test.
The wet screenings have taken on a consistency very similar to fresh concrete.
I’m not so sure that the water would run off the top of the surface if we had packed it anyway. It is discouraging to see standing water in all the divots left where the horses have stepped. Maybe I am expecting immediate results where the reality is that the ultimate improvement will not be perfection, but a reduced duration of muck. We can hope.
What I found to be even more demoralizing yesterday was, one of the bad spots is located above the main area that the drain tile installation is intended to help. Even after the drain tile is in place and working as designed, my impression is that the high ground just beyond the barn overhang won’t be greatly affected. I’ll be thrilled to find I am wrong about that.
On a more positive note, we are entering the winter season in a completely different situation than we experienced a year ago. Last year it was dry, dry, dry. I firmly believe that the dry fall of 2013 significantly contributed to the loss of many of our pine trees when the winter that followed was so severe. This fall the conditions are almost too wet, if that is possible. Our growing flora look healthy and happy, and should be ready for whatever winter dishes out this year.
Our animals appear just as ready. Delilah was so vibrant yesterday morning, sprinting around at full speed with a gleam in her eye and a smile on her little doggie face, looking as if the temperature had finally reached a comfortable range for her thick coat. I think her preferred seasons of the year have arrived.
Winter has always been my favorite season. Now, if I could just find a way to be as ready for it this year as our plants and animals are. First priority will be new muck boots. My two main choices of footwear have both developed leaks in them. The recent rains have been good for making that known to me.
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Same Story
It’s the same old story around here lately. We’ve had three days of rain, totaling over 2.5 inches for the period, and the paddocks are a mess. It’s ironic to have the loops of drain tile tubing and the pile of pea gravel here, but it has been too wet for the landscapers to do the work of getting it installed.
They now hope to start on Monday. I am wary of what they will run into when they start digging. If they dig a scoop out of the ground and the hole fills with water, like happened to me when I recently tried to dig a post hole, will they be able to proceed? Since they are ultimately digging a trench, maybe they can dig all the way to the drainage swale and see if the water flows. It would be a good test of the concept, I expect.
If we have to wait much longer, the ground is gonna freeze. We were already threatened with snow overnight last night —which I slept through if it actually happened. It was sure cold enough. For the second night in a row, we let the horses spend the night in their stalls in the barn. The rain, wind, and cold temperatures are too much for them this soon, as they haven’t yet fully grown their winter coat.
Cyndie moved them in late, after we finished watching a movie. She reported that they were eagerly staged at the barn door, waiting and hoping to get inside.
I have been spending my time between rain showers the last few days cleaning up the last of the old hay-field fence in preparation for its removal. Doing so has affirmed my decision to spend the extra money to have this done when they come to install the fence we’ve been waiting for all summer that will enclose the pasture beyond. The posts of the old fence had really begun to lean. It is a metal fence and we hadn’t been able to electrify it because there was no isolation from ground, so Legacy had taken to messing with it, too. That’s behavior we prefer to discourage.
It will really clean up the look of that south side of our property. I’ll need to keep it clear of overgrowth, but that works to our advantage because we will then finally have a riding path available that we have long envisioned around the perimeter.
We left the horses inside this morning, awaiting the arrival of our neighbor and farrier, George, who will trim their hooves again. He tells me somewhere around 8-weeks is the period to shoot for. It always looks to me that they need it a little sooner than that. Probably because the nasty conditions they endure in our paddocks.
Here’s hoping their footing improves greatly out there in the near future. We’re tired of the same old muddy mess, over and over again.
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First Test
Yesterday we received a steady rain that coincidentally arrived on the day work was supposed to begin to install drain tile above the barn and paddocks. 
Instead of making a muddy mess by bringing in digging equipment, they limited their effort to delivering the tubing and pea gravel. It was a bummer that the project I have been pining for all summer was delayed one more day, but it was great to have our water problems vividly visible in real-time for the guys who are about to install a system to mitigate the flow.
Meanwhile, although it was a bit sooner than I hoped, I witnessed the first real test of our newly defined drainage swale. The grass seed I planted at the end of last week has barely had time to germinate, so I fear a good percentage of it was probably set in motion down stream by the flowing water.
There are some wispy visible sprouts making an appearance at the far end, so I’m hoping all is not lost. The good news is that, despite some of the minor undulations that concerned me, the water appeared to make a nicely controlled flow the full length across the pasture into the ditch on our south border.
I declare that we successfully passed the first test!
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Unwelcome Interruption
The morning had been routine thus far. All the animals were fed and my breakfast was complete. It was calm and quiet when I headed off to the bathroom for my usual morning answer to nature’s call. While in the midst of my task, I heard something tip over and then, the sound of water running. The water kept running.
I was thinking fast to assess the urgency of my response. I was home alone with the dog and cat. Could they have knocked over something that somehow turned on the kitchen faucet? I could hear water pouring. Whatever it was, it needed to be addressed, and I was the only one home to deal with it.
I executed a rather hasty end to my bathroom visit and stepped out to find a vase of flowers laying down on the table in front of the couch, with water pouring out of it. It was pooling on the short round table, then running down onto the rug below. When I first saw it, the water was beading up on the rug. There was a LOT of water.
Amid a flurry of curses, I ran to the kitchen for towels, tossed them on the puddle, then headed out to the garage for a wet/dry vac. I needed to open it up and remove the filter before using it to vacuum water. By the time I got back in, the water had soaked into the rug. I sucked water out of that rug for quite a while.
Not once did I spot Pequenita this whole time. When I came upon the scene, all I saw was Delilah licking water off the table, making her look awfully guilty. She received the brunt of my angst, even though the odds are much more likely that the cat was involved somehow. The green leaves show evidence of being chewed on by ‘Nita.
I re-filled the vase with water and set it on the counter by the sink, …which, now that I think of it, is probably a more dangerous perch from which it could be tipped. I’m guessing that it might have been interaction between the dog and cat that led to the accident on the short table, so if the cat gets after it while it is up on the counter, at least she won’t be bothered.
It took some extra effort to get over being frustrated by the incident, but eventually, I was able to “get back to grazing.” However, the day never did fully return to the calm and quiet routine that had been so rudely interrupted.
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Small Steps
There was a surprise rain shower yesterday morning that saved me from watering the newly seeded drainage swale across the south pasture. It was a little victory for me. I checked the weather radar and spotted the small band of precipitation sliding across the region, but it was not clear that it would pass over us, and didn’t reveal how much rain would fall. In the end, it was more than I expected, after I reconciled the fact it was going to rain on us at all.
I turned over a couple piles of composting manure under the cover of trees until the rain started to fall in earnest. Then I puttered in the shop, putting a new blade on the trimmer in preparation for work clearing growth along the hay-field south fence. That is one of the projects that is currently a priority. I spent a little time in the barn, methodically dumping bags of feed into the bin as the ebb and flow of the varying rainfall rattled the metal roof.
The morning just seemed to disappear. I contacted the fence installer and the landscaper in hopes of initiating their work for us. Both hope to start on Wednesday, but only one said, “Rain or shine.” Another little victory, because the forecast is for rain.
After lunch, some sunshine started to break through, and I headed down with the trimmer to clear along that fence. It wasn’t a big victory, because I only got a short distance, but the progress was worth claiming as a little victory. The going was slow. There are a fair number of downed branches that lie out of sight beneath the tall grass and weeds.
It is surprising how much strength it takes to pull a branch from the grip of blades of grass. It’s like velcro times a thousand. For that matter, pulling an entangled branch from among others is like separating super-strength velcro. When I look back to see what is stopping progress, and it turns out to be the simplest of angled growth hooked on another branch, it seems so unlikely. In this case, it is the branches that seemed to be enjoying little victories at my expense.
The work becomes exhausting. Progress is slowed because it must be made in smaller doses. By taking extra time to cut branches where they “Y” out, I will end up pulling shorter pieces with less entanglements. By cutting smaller strokes with the trimmer, I can reduce the number of times I hit wood or dirt and extend the life of the blade.
When we had the brown-post/4-wire fence installed initially, we stopped short of replacing that existing fence along the southern run. Now we intend to extend that portion. For a variety of reasons, it makes sense to make the improvement complete, not the least of which is, Legacy messes with that section when we let the horses out there because it is not electrified.
If I am able to get the full length of that southern run cleared today, and ready for removal by the fence contractor, I will be happy to claim a BIG victory. It just takes a compilation of many small steps.
Small steps, I can do.
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Monday Ponderings
We opened our home to guests this weekend and were richly rewarded. Once again, we enjoyed evidence of how Wintervale comes alive with the addition of visitors. I, in particular, enjoyed the chance to talk with new acquaintances.
The weather was spectacular. Warm as a summer day, but with the lower angle of sunshine that late September offers. Our maple trees are peaking their color change to fluorescent orange. This time of year, days like this offer a chance to absorb every last possible feature to our core, in hopes it might somehow provide extra ballast for enduring the winter months when they arrive.
On Saturday, I met some folks (and their families) that Cyndie now works with at her (relatively) new job. Sunday, our precious friend, Melissa and her daughters came to spend some time. During their visit, our daughter, Elysa, and her friend, Anne, walked in the door, to our great joy and surprise. Later, I spotted the text message from Elysa, informing us of her plan.
The two days served to re-energize us and provided inspiration to keep after our dream of making Wintervale always be a place that will inspire others. With all the leftover food treats that remain from Cyndie’s bountiful spread, I could use a lot more visitors right now to help keep me from ultimately consuming it all myself.
Today, I get back to work trying to make appreciable progress on at least one of the 4-or-5-various projects I have started that deserve timely attention. If I am lucky enough to have landscapers or fence installers show up, that will be a bonus that determines the immediate priority. If I can’t decide, there is always watering to be done for the new grass seed I put down. That’s an easy way to consume a couple of hours.
I’ve turned over mole-control to Delilah. She seems to enjoy digging up the spots where they have created tunnels in the lawn. It’s not actually effective, in terms of controlling the population of moles, but it does serve to keep her out of other trouble for a reasonable span of time.
Happy Monday, one and all!
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Morning Sky
A few days ago, as Cyndie was stepping out the door to head to work, she hollered back to me that I should look at the pre-sunrise sky.
It looks like a wild-fire is raging just over the hill. Well, I guess it is a raging wild-fire, but it’s not just over the hill. It’s about 93 million miles away.
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Relative Something 