Sticky Sweet
Our three chestnuts had their heads out when I visited the barn on Thursday. Legacy was turned around with his butt to the door. We are so grateful to have this barn with stalls. It is obvious to us that they are, too. We have never once had any of them make a fuss over being confined inside.
Yesterday, everyone was back outside in the sunshine, after the fog burned off. Cyndie surprised me with a last-minute suggestion that we go out for breakfast before she went to work. It was the first day of a local syrup farm’s open house event, and they were serving pancakes with fresh blueberries!
They also provide free maple-syrup sundaes, so I had ice cream for dessert first thing in the morning, too. It was pure sticky, sweet goodness.
We learned last year that you can bring your own containers and purchase syrup at a discount. We bought a gallon in two Ball jars, brought from home. It’s that good, and it’s easy to keep. Since it wasn’t sealed in these containers, we’ll refrigerate it.
We are still “new” folks here, meaning we weren’t born and raised in the area, and that shows when you attend an event like this where everyone else knows each other well. Since it was a weekday, the primary crowd we encountered were retirees and their parents. I’m sure we appeared out of place, but we were doted on just the same.
After pancakes, Cyndie dashed off to work, leaving me to chat about the syrup season (it was average), and the art and science of knowing when to start tapping trees. If you try too early, while time passes until the sap runs, the tree will have been busy healing the spot where the tap was inserted. If you start too late, you miss some of the sweetest, best sap for syrup.
I killed a little time in the morning, working indoors while waiting for things to dry out as much as possible, then headed out to see if I could mow more of the fields. It was borderline, as some spots still have standing water.
I forged ahead regardless and ended up cutting what I could, working around the wettest spots. Based on the forecast, it could be my last chance to mow for quite a while…
Just as predicted, the rain has brought out the greenest of greens in the lawn and portion of the back grazing field where I did the first cutting last week. It makes it look like the areas cut yesterday don’t match, but I’m confident they will come around soon enough. I was concerned that these remaining areas all had thicker grass already, and that is causing more piles of cuttings that get left behind. This should become less obvious before long, though.
I’m all about the aesthetic impression aligning with my goal of better grass. I believe this will improve the forage in our fields, but at the very least, I would like it to look like improved forage. If nothing more, I would enjoy having that justification for spending all this time out there trying to mow farm acres with a lawn tractor.
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Significant Soaking
For all those many days of last July through October that left our land under stress from drought, I wish I could capture the current thorough soaking and redistribute it later this summer. This is what spring is all about though, and all the growing things will be happily slurping this up, soon to burst forth with explosive growth.
I captured a shot of the rain gauge showing that we came just a fraction short of a full inch-and-a-half over about a 24-hour period. It was the perfect ongoing precipitation, able to soak through the top layer and saturate everything very completely. In fact, it seems wetter now than at any previous point during the recent melt of the full winter’s-worth of snow.
Another difference from then and now is that there are worms coming up out of the ground all over the place. If that doesn’t feel like spring…
We took a chance of leaving the horses out in the overnight rain on Wednesday evening, and it turned out to be the wrong choice. Cyndie went out into the soaking rain early yesterday morning to feed them, and found them all shivering drastically and begging to be let inside. They were crowding so tight at the gate that she couldn’t manage getting Legacy through alone, although he was the only one she had a rope around. All four horses came in at the same time, and with no hesitation or funny business, they each walked directly into their appointed stalls.
Message received.
I checked on them several times during the day yesterday, and they seemed as happy as could possibly be. I topped off their water and when the rain stopped late in the afternoon around their dinner time, I opened all the outside doors for them while I delivered feed and fresh hay. Not one of them gave a hint of being anxious to get out of the barn. It’s a good thing, because even though the rain had stopped falling, the runoff was still flowing and every last hoof print in the paddock was filled with water. There was not a dry place to stand anywhere outside.
I spent the rest of my day trying to be productive in the office of our house, organizing files and putting documents away in places where we just might stand a chance of finding them again should we need them. Delilah alternated between lounging around, napping, and demanding to go outside and get soaking wet in order to come right back in and get dried off so she could beg to be let back outside to get soaking wet so she could come right back in to get toweled off again. I started to wonder if she didn’t just want to be rubbed with a towel over and over.
Today should be a different day altogether. We expect to get some sunshine and reach reasonably warm temperatures. Will it dry up enough to mow? I doubt it, but there are other outdoor chores available. If nothing else, I can always get another kind of soaking, bathing in the warm solar rays while watching buds appear on tree branches. This is spring!
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Grass Management
There is an ebb and flow to managing a 20-acre property and animals in a rural setting that on the surface is significantly different from my old life in the suburbs. From my perspective, it’s not as dissimilar as one might think, beyond the obvious increase in scale.
I was thinking about how it feels like I pay more attention to the weather now than I ever had before, but that’s not really the case. I’ve always been fascinated by the weather. I fretted about the dilemma of either too much, or not enough precipitation impacting the growing things on our suburban lot, just not on the same scale as I do now. Back then, it didn’t get the same degree of attention from me, I suppose because there was less at stake.
I’m sure I had the neighbors chuckling over my activities yesterday, as I rode my little lawn tractor to mow part of the big hay-field beside our driveway, racing to beat the rain. The back field looked so darn nice that I overcame my hesitation to look foolish, and cut as much as I could before time ran out. Just like we had done two days before, I started by pulling a rake behind the Grizzly ATV to scar the surface to be seeded, switched to the lawn tractor to pull the seed spreader, then set about mowing as much of the rest of the field as I could.
Most of what I was doing was in sight of the horses, and they seemed to take great interest. This is the field where we let them roam for most of the time since they arrived last fall. I expect they are feeling a bit frustrated to not be given access now that the snow has melted. Our plan is to graze them on other fields and to grow this space for hay.
I only cut about half of the field before the precipitation started. I think it will be a challenge to get the rest done, because what’s left is thicker grass to start with, it will be wetter, and the new moisture will help trigger a growth spurt. I had wanted to get the field cut before spring growth started, which is the reason I was using the lawn tractor in the first place. It is light enough that it can work before the ground is dry and not leave wheel ruts.
If I’m not able to get that second half mowed, it could provide comparison to show the difference mowing made.
Whether our plan to improve the grass in that field works instantly, or not, it sure looks better right away. It is likely the improvement toward getting good quality hay will be incremental over a few years. I’m okay with that. I spent a lot of years slowly transitioning our suburban lot from a lawn to a natural, leaf-carpeted forest floor.
By the way, word has gotten back to us that the folks who bought our old place are changing it back into a lawn.
Such is the ebb and flow of grass management.
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Chillin’ Nearby
After spending most of the day on Monday working on the lawn tractor and getting the field mowed, I needed to spend some quality time in the paddocks yesterday, while it was still sunny. Today is predicted to be the beginning of a two-day soaking of rain, and those paddocks are miserable to clean when it is muddy.
As it was, they weren’t much better than miserable in the corner I was hoping to rake. There are still large areas where the ground remains saturated with water, which results in many deep hoof divots, the continued build up of manure from winter, and almost impossible footing for trying to do anything about it. The task involves trying to remove months worth of accumulated manure that is soaking wet and stuck into the mud, raking it across a terrain that is filled with pot holes that serve as perfectly frustrating traps.
I have to be mindful to avoid allowing that frustration to fill my thoughts, because I don’t want that to become the message our horses pick up from me. I have yet to master the art of literally “hearing” what they might want to communicate to me, but they definitely are conveying something by means of proximity. Legacy will walk towards me and pause, continually closing the distance if I neglect to stop what I’m doing to meet him. Eventually, he will come right up into my face, so that I can’t not stop what I’m doing.
Yesterday, I met his gaze and did my best to let him know what I was thinking, and we had a bit of a stare-down. Then we each “went back to grazing,” he, literally, and me, by getting on with raking.
Just as often, it seems, Hunter is my companion when I’m cleaning the paddock. While I was raking that same area yesterday, he wandered over and just stood next to where I was working. He wasn’t looking at me, but just standing beside me. After a short time, he decided to lay down, right there on that same spot. It is the closest I’ve ever been to a horse that was laying down, so I decided to take a picture.
It warms my heart to know he feels that comfortable with me, and that Legacy will behave respectfully when standing as close as he was. Obviously, we are communicating something.
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Field Work
Even though it rained a bit yesterday morning, the rest of the day turned out sunny, warm, and breezy. I think we even made some small additional progress toward the ground drying out. I may be rushing things a bit, but we are driven to try to get the earliest start possible on preparing and improving our fields for hay and grazing, so I worked tenaciously to get out and do some cutting while the weather was good. We want to cut off weeds right away and give the grasses a head start toward dominating.
That meant I needed to finally complete the project I started months ago, of cleaning the bottom of the mower deck. I pulled it out into the sunshine, where I was unfortunately better able to see how much had been missed of the portions I already scraped. I sprayed it all down with a potion to inhibit grass from sticking and then mounted it beneath the lawn tractor. I was ready to mow.
The growth in this field was just a bit more than suits this mower, but it performed heroically. The two fields we want to use for grazing this summer have been left to grow wild for some time. When we got here they were 3 or 4 feet high with grasses, weeds and volunteer trees. For the past two years, I have knocked them down in the fall using the brush cutter pulled behind the diesel tractor, but I was hesitant to make a real close cut. Part of the reason is the sticks and branches that lie tangled and hidden in the grass, and part is because the terrain is pretty rough in spots.
I settled on using the lawn tractor because the ground is still too soft to drive the big tractor on without the tires cutting deep ruts. It seemed dry enough to support the lawn tractor without the wheels causing damage, and we’ve tried to pick the obvious sticks out, so it was time to see if the lawn tractor could navigate the bumps and heavy growth.
After a tentative start worked okay, we went all in and cut a pretty big section. That area also included a bald spot where we had burned a couple of brush piles, so while Cyndie finished the mowing, I got the Grizzly out and dragged a rake over the dirt/mud. Then we hooked up a seed spreader to the lawn tractor and laid down some pasture grass seed.
I looks mighty fine out there after just a few hours of work, but one thing leads to another, and now it’s time to figure out how to fence that area to contain the grazing horses we are working so hard to accommodate.
It is pretty clear from their behavior, they would like that to happen very soon.
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Chances
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looking back
through years of chances
meaningless
missed chances
to choose
a different response
than the one
that determined an outcome
like an artist
creating a view
laughing tearfully
causing a sigh
pausing to realize
the vision
keeps fading in and out
blurring
evading capture
circling
beyond the lines
waiting
patiently
in queue
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Balance Restored
The wind blew all day yesterday, helping greatly to dry things out. Then it rained. This morning, the horse blankets and rugs that Cyndie had washed and hung out to dry, all got a second rinse and are in desperate need of some spring wind and sunshine to assist with the re-drying.
Oh well, that’s balance for you. Wet and dry, a little of both.
I found my balance again yesterday when my idea for a way to drill and file the off-center holes worked like a charm and progress resumed on Cyndie’s new double swing. All that I have left to do is figure out the gaps in the instructions where they failed to clarify locations for the remaining screws. Why do they provide pilot holes in some places, but not all?
Meanwhile, I worked on restoring order on the deck, driving raised nails back down where they belong, so I could bring out the deck furniture. That was a chore I have been avoiding since we got here, because it reveals the truth about how bad some of the rot is on several floor boards. Deck repair and/or replacement has now moved up on our list of priorities.
Why is that chair sitting out in an odd location? Because I don’t want anyone to step on the spot it is covering. I have already needed to overcome my natural inclination to move it, twice, when I remembered why I put it there.
Our kids and Cyndie’s brother’s families are visiting for the afternoon, so the morning will be filled with cleaning and preparations, then the rest of the day, eating and entertaining. Nicely balances out the usual daily demands of non-stop work on projects. The paddocks won’t receive much attentions, but the horses will probably enjoy a fair share of treats.
All is well today at Wintervale.
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Seeking Balance
I enjoyed a chance to sleep in this morning and awoke to a blustering spring wind. I hope it will help dry out the fresh mud created by last week’s inch and a half of rain. It is a frustrating thing to need moisture for the trees which have been weakened by drought, yet to desperately want the ground to not be so saturated that we can’t walk or drive vehicles without sinking and creating ruts. We need to have just the right balance.
Is there such a thing? Probably not a static state of balance, but everything is constantly flowing toward equilibrium. It is why there is so much wind this morning.
As Elysa and I were chatting to solve the world’s problems yesterday while breaking up manure piles remaining in the big hay-field, it was balance that we concluded was needed. I’ve been repeating something regularly since I learned of it, that horses demonstrate a brilliant ability to quickly get over conflict and “get back to grazing.” That gives rise to a natural flow toward balance.
We put the horse’s balance to test yesterday, by haltering just two at a time and taking them for a little stroll around the property. Each time, the remaining two demonstrated quite a bit of separation distress, working themselves into a frenzied anxiety, whinnying and running the fence line and occasionally slipping dangerously on the sloppy mud. Our herd has become so bonded that they over-react to being separated. We will need to increase the frequency of these little excursions to help them become more balanced when being apart.
I had my own opportunity last night to practice reclaiming balance after coming upon a frustrating problem while trying to assemble our precious new double glider swing we bought online. Previously unbeknownst to me, Cyndie has a strong connection to memories of a double swing her grandmother had. In the middle of our new storage room construction, Cyndie presented me with a set of plans she purchased for building a swing like she remembers, asking me to see if the guys working downstairs would be interested in making one for us. She hadn’t been able to find the right one for sale locally, so she figured we would have to build it ourselves, or find someone who could do it for us.
I did present the idea to them, but I also checked online myself, coming up with a variety of possibilities. Most enticing was one made from cedar logs, which would match the single swing we already have out by our outdoor fire pit. That is the one I am now trying to assemble, meeting with a variety of sadly typical problems I run into on all projects such as this.
First, it was getting a screw stuck before figuring out the best angle and method to get it to work as described in the instructions. Now progress has been halted by the manufacturer’s poor quality drilling. Three out of eight holes are off-center to the point I can’t align threads to start an eye-bolt. I’m going to have to try to elongate one of the holes (3 times) to get back to progress.
Let’s just say that I was finding myself a little out of balance when I finally had to give up and put away tools with my cold hands, putting things on hold for the night. It’s a chance to practice my own skills of “getting back to grazing.”
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Farrier Visit
The horses finally received their long-awaited hoof trim; the first since they arrived here last fall. I learned a few more new things to add to my long list of “firsts” since we moved here. The quarter-inch of hoof that was cut off after over 6-months of growth will be about the same amount that gets cut off in 8 to 10 weeks.
The hair and hooves of a horse are linked, in the sharing of nutrients for growth. In the fall, when the energy shifts toward growing longer, thicker coats of hair, the hoof growth slows. In the spring, with reduced need to grow the extra hair, and the change of diet to include grazing fresh grass, the growth of hooves increases significantly.
I was intrigued to see how the farrier, our neighbor, George Walker, held the horse’s leg between his knees while he worked. That takes some strength to do. I wasn’t all that surprised to see that Delilah loved having new chew treats from the discarded portions of trimmed hooves.
We were lucky to have Elysa visiting at the time of the appointment, giving us another experienced horse handler to assist with wrangling the 4 members of the herd. One issue we didn’t really plan was that the appointment for their “pedicure” (hoof-icure?) was happening about a half-hour before their usual afternoon serving of feed.
If horses know nothing else, they know routine, and they have a keen perception of when it is time for grain. Their anticipation grows into a bit of restlessness if the feed isn’t being served when they expect it. As it was, we were already throwing in the unusual circumstance of haltering one at a time and bringing them into the barn.
Since the barn is where the feed comes from, they grew a bit more perturbed by all this activity in the barn, with no feed being served as a result. As Cyndie and Elysa worked to separate Dezirea, the last horse to have her hooves trimmed, the herd crowded the gate. When Cyndie headed in, Elysa got trapped between horses and Hunter took the opportunity to jump the line and head into the barn, untethered.
I had left the big barn doors open for extra light, but that meant Hunter was entering space where he could easily get loose. The only thing in his way was, me. I put a hand at the base of his neck, just above his chest, and held my ground while Cyndie worked to calm Dezirea and Elysa reclaimed authority as gate-keeper. I was eyeing the gear hanging nearby, hoping for a quick, handy lead rope, but just moments earlier I had taken that rope for use as a leash to lead Delilah out from underfoot.
The situation resolved without further incident when Hunter made the good decision to turn around on his own and head back out to the paddock. Luckily, Dezirea didn’t freak at the uncontrolled activity playing out in confined space, because the dance of people and horses left me squarely in her kick zone as I moved with Hunter’s turn.
At that point, the relatively easy decision was made to give the three outside horses their pans of feed, and allow Dezirea to nosh on her share from a hand-held bucket during her turn with George. Calm was restored, and the next thing we knew, the first farrier visit to Wintervale Ranch was in the books. Done!
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Darling Delilah
For a reason that is beyond me, there are times when our dog, Delilah, will circle an unusually large number of times before finally choosing to lie down in some random spot. Last night, it was a towel spread on the floor for her. I’d love to know what that thought process is all about.
In case I have neglected to mention it, Delilah has made great strides toward mastering the art of behaving well unsupervised, off-leash, and roaming free on our property. She performs charmingly well as my cohort in a variety of chores and exploits around our land. When I am raking or digging, she is all in, usually un-doing progress I have accomplished, but very obviously well-intentioned toward assisting with my tasks.
In a simple trek down the driveway to pick up the mail, she is a cheery companion, trotting ahead a short distance, turning to check my progress, then romping off to the side to explore the enticing smells left by critters large and small.
From the mindset of not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone, I want to be aware of how much she adds to our experience here. Caring for her can be a lot of work, demanding our attention at times when it seems we can least afford it, but having her in our lives makes it well worth the effort.
Now if she can just learn to avoid baring her teeth and barking at the horses when it is time to be calm. We put the horses in the barn last night because of the cold rain, and at the critical moment when Cyndie was vulnerable between two horses who were anxious to get in, Delilah starts into a snarling, growling-bark to antagonize them. Another case of her “helping” in a way that absolutely does not help.
We think she and Pequenita are making great strides toward becoming friendly, respectful house-mates, but there are still too many times when Delilah will be amped up beyond reason and pursue the cat with too much exuberance.
Between moments of seeming to nap last night, she jumped up at the presence of Pequenita and upon my hearing what sounded like uncharacteristic amounts of hissing and meowing in protest, I was disturbed to discover a bit of fur on Delilah’s chin.
“Did you bite her!?” I exclaimed with startled upset.
I suppose it could just as easily have been a piece of Delilah’s own fur that Pequenita had dislodged with a swipe of her claws. I checked ‘Nita, who had parked in front of her food and looked no worse for the wear. In fact, in a page from the horse’s mode of behavior, both dog and cat were back together in minutes and appeared to have disregarded the previous interaction, appearing as if they were “going back to grazing” with no apparent angst carried over.
How could we love darling Delilah any more than we do? We lucked out in a big way when Cyndie uncovered the surprise availability of a 9-month-old Belgian Shepard Tervuren at a breeder not too far from us. Since then, she has grown into a beautiful, perfect dog for us.
In this case, we do know what we’ve got, before it is gone.
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