Relative Something

Also called Curly Dock, we learned of sour dock from a local farmer who was supplying us with small squares of hay back when we had the Arabian horses. He pointed out that it was the only weed in his hay and that horses didn’t like it. It’s toxic for livestock, so I don’t blame horses for not liking it.

Yesterday, Cyndie and I took a crack at digging up the larger sprouts around the paddock, since they are too much for the string trimmer to chew through.

Some of the stalks are beginning to swallow our fence wires. While we were working, the horses wandered over to inspect our progress.

Cyndie had been putting the stalks into old feed bags, but they filled up so fast that she went back and got a wheelbarrow. Mia came over, grabbed a mouthful, and pulled a bunch of them back out of the bag. I thought she was going to eat some, but no, she just dropped them on the ground. She knows sour dock is toxic. I think she was just messing with us.

Then the mares turned around and formed a line to graze the short grass in the paddock.

Each time I finished digging up one plant, I would find another one nearby. Soon, I realized that this would become an endless task. Our two big fields may not look like there is a lot of sour dock at first glance, but wherever there is one, you can find another close at hand.

The weed is difficult to pull up because the main root is carrot-shaped and can reach ridiculous depths. I wish our attempts at growing carrots looked as good as some of these.

We filled two wheelbarrows full and are now left with figuring out where to dump them so as to avoid any possibility of spontaneous regeneration. It does enough of that on its own.

Away from the fence lines, we resort to mowing the fields to disturb the cycle of growth. The back pasture is more than ready for me to bring out the big tractor and brush hog to knock down the weeds and shorten the grasses to a more enticing blade height for the mares.

The front field we let go until the guy who grazes cattle on the neighboring field has someone cut and bale for feeding his cattle in the winter.

It was so fun having the horses come mingle with us as we worked that we’ve decided to find other activities to do in their spaces that might add a little excitement to their day. Their life of retirement is pretty much filled with napping, grazing, and waiting around for feed bucket servings.

They could benefit from occasional disruptions to their routine, triggering an urge to satisfy their curiosity.

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