Posts Tagged ‘hay-field’
Tiny Bites
We took a stab at digging into the largest pile of unturned manure to loosen it up for transport to the hay field. At this point, it looks a little pathetic due to the small amounts I’m moving at a time with the trailer behind the ATV. We’re just taking tiny bites of a much bigger pie than our trailer can carry.
We ran three loads before it was time to quit and clean up for a dinner date with our friends, the Wilkuses. I was filling the trailer and driving up to the high point of the hay field, where Cyndie helped empty it, staying to spread the goods while I returned to the compost area to fill the trailer again. We have enough to eventually cover a large percentage of that highest portion of the field. Then we hope the next rain will soak nutrients in and/or run them downhill in every direction.
There was a chance of some rain last night, but I didn’t hear anything. We have another shot at it this afternoon. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Some less-desirable critters have been taking tiny bites of leaves around the grounds. Anybody else facing voracious Japanese beetles in their gardens?
Cyndie read that a local flower gardener had taken to hand-picking them off her plants and exterminating them. I watched my partner-in-crime practice similar lethal justice to test its effectiveness. I fear their numbers are too great to make a dent in them that way, since they are spread out all over the place.
Between my manure-spreading exercise and the Japanese beetle infestation, we are dealing with imperfect-scale operations.
Last night, the horses were finally taking tiny bites of their own out on the freshly cut hay field.
They have been spending the majority of their days napping on their feet under the barn overhang, so it was a bit of a thrill when we got home after dinner and found them out there on the grass.
If anyone is interested in a fun-energy neighborhood pub on the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River, we were in Afton at The Lumberyard Pub. It was a great evening to be on their patio. Great service, good menu options, perfect pub-quality food.
It was also nice to catch up with Barb & Mike. The four of us shared tiny bites [as in, snippets] of our latest life adventures (if I can get away with abusing that title phrase one too many times) and caught up on family news. I am officially jealous of their new metal roof on the cabin.
For the record, I took too many not-so-tiny bites of my Crispy Chicken Caesar Wrap and have no one but myself to blame for my middle beginning to expand beyond my comfort zone. I’m afraid my caloric intake has been exceeding my calorie burn for too many weeks in a row.
Will our hero muster the commitment to reverse the trend starting today? Stay tuned to find out. We all know that weight reduction is a long, slow process. “Smaller portions” would be a good mantra for me to start with if I’m serious about doing something about the situation. That, and maybe… smaller bites.
.
.
Extremely Dry
It feels like our spell of extremely dry conditions has caused some plants to end their growing phase a little early in the season. A few of the sumac leaves are losing their green color and turning red already.
The trails in the woods are opening back up as leaves and stems are starting to wither. The trees that drop their leaves early have started to cover the ground with shriveled and twisted brown leaves.
Even though the hay field was hardly lush with growing grass, it was greatly in need of being mowed to knock down Queen Anne’s Lace and a variety of other bothersome weeds and tree sprouts threatening to take over. Cyndie looked up suggestions for improving our field and learned that the most effective thing we can do, if we are intent on avoiding chemical spraying, is to mow it regularly.
I dread mowing the 5-acre hay field with our relatively small brush cutter because it takes so dang long. I spent over 4 hours making pass after pass on it Friday. It was also frustrating to see how many times the tall weeds simply lay flat under the tires as they rolled by, so that the rotating blade passed right over them without cutting.
The horses didn’t seem to care.
From a distance, the field looks pretty nice. It could probably fool a passerby into thinking I used a finishing mower instead of the brush cutter with a really dull blade.
While I was stuck on the tractor seat for hours on end, I watched Cyndie using the string trimmer to cut beneath the fence line. Boy, does she work fast. It made my slog back and forth in tight little lines feel like it was taking even longer.
I failed to notice her getting stung in the ankle multiple times by a wasp. When I got back to the house, she had her foot propped up and was icing it.
Asher added a little of his own excitement as we were headed down to feed the horses later in the afternoon. I noticed him intently focused on a spot under a pine tree, just staring. When I looked back a second time and found him still frozen in the same position, I had a good sense of what was coming next.
Sure enough, he reared up and pounced, driving his snout into the dusty, dry soil with two quick paw-swipes and came up with a mole. What always follows is a protracted pacing around the property for the perfect place to bury his catch. He looked so lost that I commanded him to come bury it behind the barn, where we could keep an eye on him. He deemed that an acceptable option.
A few minutes later, he was back in the barn, regally reclining like the great and successful hunter that he is.
.
.
Bucket Loads
Today is Asher’s and my last full day managing the ranch on our own. The house has been cleaned by professionals whom Cyndie hired before she left. This girl thinks ahead and knows my ability to endure dust and dog hair is different than hers. Tomorrow, I drive to the airport to pick up the pair of travelers and all the Norwegian souvenirs they collected.
I suspect that Cyndie will be excited to see the changes that have occurred at home since she left. In case you ever wondered why we call our front field the “hay field,” this image serves as a clear example:
They started raking the grass into windrows in the early afternoon, and when I came out of the house after a late lunch, there were already four large round bales parked in the field. That round baler machine sure makes short work of the task.
Conversely, I was making long work of the job of moving loads of lime screenings up to the barn overhang. I opted to use a wheelbarrow to move 15 shovel-fulls at a time, because I was working with the horses surrounding me the whole time.
It will go much quicker when I can use the loader on the big tractor, but I need a helper to manage horses and gates, and be my eyes on the perimeter of the bucket I can’t see from behind the steering wheel.
I got most of the north side of the overhang covered yesterday.
They didn’t wait for me to finish before christening it with the first dump of manure. I’m not sure if that was a message relaying an opinion or simply a show of acceptance for the update.
I would love to get more done today, but we are about to get hit with a thunderstorm that has put any agenda I had for the day on hold. I should probably be thinking about how I’m going to keep the floors clean for a whole nother day for Cyndie. Wet weather usually translates to dirty paw prints.
Not that I tend to notice, though.
.
.
Screenings Delivered
A week ago Friday, I called to order 16 yards of lime screenings and was told they needed to check for availability and would call me back. I didn’t think that would take very long. By the end of the day on the following Monday, I texted a query asking if they had learned anything. Crickets.
This isn’t unprecedented, so I decided to be patient and trust they would get to me as soon as they were able. Well, yesterday, after waiting a full week, I texted simply: “Screenings?” hoping to renew my request. This time I got an answer almost immediately. He said they could deliver in the afternoon.
That’s what I was wishing for a week ago, but I’m not going to complain. They have been delivered. I had them drop the pile directly into the small paddock. Now I need to spread it beneath the overhang and area just beyond. I’m not sure I can do it alone, but if the horses will accept being trapped in the back pasture for a few hours, I could open multiple gates and maneuver around with the diesel tractor to spread bucketfuls with the loader.
A week ago, I didn’t know that the hay field would be mowed. Now both things have happened at about the same time.
I was able to take care of cutting the grass around the edges of the hay field with the Greenworks electric mower, so that goal has been achieved. That mower continues to outperform reasonable expectations since I replaced the blade motor that kept overheating. I’m shocked at how well it works at cutting field grass that should be too tall, too thick, and on ground that is too uneven.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It looks like lawn grass where I mowed what the hay cutter didn’t reach. I think the horses are going to like this when we can open up the field to them again after the hay has been baled and removed.
Hopefully, they will also like having a fresh layer of lime screenings to stand on beneath and around the overhang.
It’s a special honor to be able to give these rescued Thoroughbred mares royal accommodations.
.
.
Nonstop Mowing
When the order of the day involves cutting the grass or trimming the sides of our trails, there isn’t much in the way of adventures to write about. It was hot in the direct sun, the mower worked perfectly, I accomplished a little more area than I thought I would yesterday, and I still have over a day’s worth left to finish. That’s not counting the fence line trimming that usually takes several days to fully complete.
Even though I have so much groundskeeping work to do, we won’t get anything done this morning because we have a brunch date in River Falls with some old Eden Prairie acquaintances. To my family and old EP friends, the names Herzog and Westerhaus might ring a bell. You never know who you might come across in life after a move to the country like we did over twelve years ago.
That’s about it. Since that’s all I’ve got, I’ll throw in a photo Cyndie took of the horses grazing in the freshly cut hay field.
One added note: Cyndie just described a successful exercise with Asher off-leash while she was trimming small branches from the large oak limb that fell. (We don’t see much of each other on days when I mow and she is busy with other projects. I hear about her adventures later.) She said he busied himself exploring the woods for a while as she worked, then eventually wandered over to sit upright nearby on the trail and waited until she finished.
Good dog.
.
.
Independent Streak
It would be fair to say that each of our four horses demonstrates a bit of an independent streak on occasion, but Mix often stands out from the others for more reasons than just her coloring. She doesn’t seem to need the others’ company as often as they choose to maintain a tight proximity. It came as no surprise to me yesterday when Mix came back to the overhang when the other three ventured out to graze in the hay field.
Since I was lingering to watch from the half-door of the barn, I surmised that Mix might be coming back to check on what I was up to. When she started trying to find a firm edge to rub her muzzle against, I stepped out to see if I could provide some hand scratching to soothe an itch.
She didn’t want my hands on her head but seemed to appreciate my robust scratching everywhere else on her body.
When she’d had enough, Mix moved slowly out of my reach and then moseyed down the slope toward the hay field gate. I continued to lean on the gate in front of me to observe.
At the exit of the paddock, Mix suddenly broke into a run toward the other horses with a dramatic pounding of hooves on the turf. None of the three even flinched.
Arriving with all that energy, Mix trotted around them some, shook her neck, and looked to see if she had inspired any of them to match her excitement.
They continued to basically ignore her.
Mix gave up and lowered her head to join in the grazing.
A short time later I noticed Mix rolling around on her back in the grass. I wasn’t around when they returned from the field but the next time I looked in on them, they were all standing around together in the small paddock.
When I showed up for their second feeding of the day, Mia was the one showing some independence from the herd. She was grazing grass along the outside of the paddock fence while the other three were under the overhang.
It’s never a concern if they are not in the immediate vicinity when we show up to feed them. I busy myself with housekeeping duties beneath the overhang, raking up spilled hay, scooping poop, and sweeping off their placemats. At some point, I turn to find (in this case) Mia standing right next to me. We are always amazed when these thousand-pound beasts demonstrate the ability to close distances swiftly, yet silently and suddenly startle us by showing up at our shoulder without warning.
.
.
More Wet
This may be the legacy of our summer of 2024: wet and more wet. It probably will be overshadowed by Joe Biden’s announcement of bowing out of the 2024 campaign for President and Kamala Harris rising to take over the cause boosted by an impressive groundswell of support. Compared to that, our water-logged trails, sloppy paddocks, and fast-growing plant life will likely become barely a footnote.
It was mostly dry when we got home yesterday afternoon. The puddle that we like to call, “Paddock Lake” near the bottom of the larger of our two paddocks was just a little muddy in the middle and the drying edges were already cracking. The one-and-a-half inches of water in the rain gauge explains the standing water in the tractor tire tracks in the hay field where 14 large round bales were transferred out on Friday.
The fact that the excess water in the paddocks appeared to be quickly drying offered some hope that we may be reaching that point of the summer when the ground is able to absorb the rain as fast as it falls. That might work if the rain didn’t keep falling again and again as if it was still the month of April.
Shortly after dinner last night, our weather apps began to ping messages of impending rain and warnings about lightning.
We received a good soaking. Whatever had started to dry out yesterday was freshly wetted again.
I’ll be wearing my wet boots to walk Asher and tend to the horses this morning.
.
.
Fields Cut
Finally. When it rains so frequently that you have to wait until the second week of July to cut hay, it makes for some tall growth. We have been anxious to have our fields cut because we don’t want the weeds to mature enough to go to seed.
When I came out to see how the cutting was going, I found the horses milling about along the paddock fence. They appeared to be taking an interest in the goings on.
I spotted the red Jolly Ball that was missing from the paddocks. The mower rolled over it and left a little of the orb visible. We’ve rarely seen the horses play with it so it was a surprise to imagine they had carried it out into the field. Either they did or some other animal suddenly took an interest in it.
We left the double gates open to the back pasture in hopes the farmer might cut and bale that field too, but he didn’t take the bait. Last year they told me that area was too small for his rig to be efficient. When he finished cutting the hay field yesterday and drove away without hesitation, I knew I would need to cut that back pasture myself.
So, I did. As soon as he left I hooked the brush cutter mower to the Ford New Holland diesel tractor and knocked down everything the other guy skipped. Rolling through the tall grass for a few hours produced a lot of grass seed on the tractor and me.
I sure hope more grass seeds than weed seeds will take root out there next year.
It feels pretty good to have both fields cut on the same day. I hadn’t really planned on immediately cutting the back pasture after confirming my suspicion it wouldn’t be included in the hay baling project. Somehow, I just acted in the moment. How unlike me.
Having it all done now is very rewarding. In a couple of days, we will be able to allow the horses to graze the back pasture again.
That will make all of us happy.
.
.
Weed Control
We had two primary goals in mind when we plotted a strategy for what we would focus our efforts on yesterday. The first was something I hoped wouldn’t take a lot of time to accomplish. There were two tipped trees with upper branches hung up in surrounding trees. Using knowledge gained by watching the tree professionals who worked for us last spring bring down similar “widow-makers,” I readied our chainsaw and headed into the woods.
With my mind focused solely on the task at hand, I failed to take any pictures of the leaning trees or the keen aftermath of my success in bringing them down. The big poplar near the road took a lot more time than I anticipated. After five successive cuts ultimately eliminating the lower trunk that had been leaning at a 45° angle, the remaining upper portion of branches stood vertical and was still tangled in the branches of surrounding trees.
I needed to go back to the shop to get our pole chainsaw to finish the job. By the time we finished cutting trees, the day was more than half over.
The second goal was to get the hay field mowed, a job that I knew would take more hours than I really wanted to give to the task.
The growth wasn’t excessively tall but there were plenty of weeds maturing and we didn’t want them going to seed. I finally finished around 7:00 p.m. after almost 5 hours out on the tractor. At one point, feeling like it was taking too long, I tried running in a higher gear to speed up progress. The bouncing and jostling were a bit too much and the high gear made backing up hard to manage. All I could do was plod along at a steady pace in the lower gear and keep making passes until the entire field was finally cut.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Cyndie took pictures as I headed toward the gate upon finishing. For a relatively small field, it sure is bigger than it seems.
The horses were relegated to the unmowed back pasture for the day. They are doing a fair job of grazing the good grass in that pasture but there are enough unwanted weeds in that field that it will need to be mowed soon as well.
In a day or two, they will be allowed back on the grass in the hay field. Then I will spend the better part of a day mowing the back pasture.
As much as I dread doing the mowing, the fields sure look great with all the weeds knocked down. For now, in our minds, mowing is our preferred method over chemical applications for reducing weeds that are toxic to horses. It may not be as effective, but mowing doesn’t leave a weed killer residue in our soil.
I can live with giving two afternoons of my precious time to bouncing along on the diesel tractor a couple of times a summer.
It’s easier than chainsawing widow-makers!
.
.
Summer Progress
The last few days have felt very much like classic summer days. I guess it is right on schedule as we now find ourselves in the Independence Day holiday weekend. Cyndie headed up to the lake with her mom yesterday and I stayed home to tend to our animals. We weren’t successful in securing coverage allowing us both to be away over the 4th of July weekend this year.
One classic sign of summer for us is the sight of our field converted into hay bales.
This year, Brad, who grazes cattle on our neighbor’s land, had his guy cut our hay field when cutting fields adjacent to us. A win-win for everyone as we wanted our field cut and hoped someone could use the hay, it was conveniently located for them to cut and bale, and it gives Brad a little more hay supply than he would have otherwise had.
Meanwhile, our horses have the back pasture for grazing. Yesterday evening, Delilah and I wandered out into the pasture to pull some weeds and the herd showed up to munch nearby.
The sound of the methodical biting of mouthfuls of grass as the horses torque their heads to break the blades and chew is a wonderful summer soundtrack backed up with songbirds, and the calls of frogs and crickets. It provides a soothing, meditative mood that nurtures my soul.
In contrast, serving up pans of manufactured nutritional feed pellets in the dry, dusty surface under the barn overhang can be a little irritating when things don’t go smoothly. I wish I didn’t so frequently find fault with the conditions as being either too wet and muddy or too dry and dusty. The days between those two states are way too few.
Since we allow the horses some autonomy –usually temporarily separating them into two groups of two– they are able to wander over and check out what the other horse was served, triggering a back and forth movement that foils the soothing sounds of contented munching we so enjoy.
Of the four horses, Light is the most prone to stepping into her feed pan, often tipping it rapidly and spilling the contents. In attempt to avoid them trying to eat the spillage out of the sand, which is not good for their gut, we have tried serving Light’s pan on a rubber mat.
I think we’re gonna need to use a bigger mat.
.
.
Relative Something 