Posts Tagged ‘horses’
Drying Out
Ground moisture has changed dramatically in the last 36 hours, which bodes well for my planned post-burying project scheduled for next week. The current 10-day forecast continues to show nothing but sunshine until next Thursday, the day after we intend to auger post holes. Color me eager to get that next milestone accomplished.
I had a little episode yesterday that felt like my brain might be drying out because I couldn’t find two things in the barn that I knew had to be there somewhere. After much searching for my tape measure and one of the 6” turnbuckles, I gave up and moved on with an effort to tighten the snugness of the shade sail hanging inside the barn. While moving a ladder from a rarely visited corner, I spotted the turnbuckle hanging on a hook near where I had been making adjustments a week ago.
A few minutes after that, something clicked in my brain, and I realized I had left the tape measure in the hay shed when I was cutting wood blocks for the posts. I guess it’s good to recognize that there is nobody else to blame for my missing things, but I’m a little sour about the evidence of gaps in my memory about them.
Is it possible the dry conditions are putting a bend in one of the posts waiting to be raised for the shade sail?
I noticed the bend going sideways yesterday, so I turned the post to see if gravity would make any difference in the amount of curve. If the bend remains, I figure we can use it to our advantage against the pull of tightening the sail if we install it just right.
The trickiest part of this installation for me is definitely going to be achieving the proper dimensions, which is why I contracted a professional for assistance. Well, that and the operation of a power auger to drill holes as deep as I want them. Oh, and whatever the mechanism is to get header boards attached at an angle 8-to-10 feet overhead.
We are getting closer every day to the point where I want to put up temporary barriers to block the horse’s access to the space where we will be working. It’s a balance of trying to minimize the disruption to their environment, but give me adequate time to do as much preparation work as possible before next Wednesday. I don’t know what the ideal number of days is. I’ve been going through the steps I think will be involved in my mind repeatedly, but that has yet to help me definitively decide when to start.
At this point, I figure I’ve thought about it enough that the horses already know exactly what is about to happen, so I probably don’t need to worry about them at all. I expect they just want me to get on with it, give them the shade, and be done with the whole project.
If that is true, then it just shows we are of like minds. I would like to be done with it, too.
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Horses Unconcerned
One day after that hilly adventure with Rich on our bikes, I found myself greatly lacking in my usual get-up-and-go. After a forced effort to plant some grass seed, in which we later discovered we didn’t have the seed we thought we had, I came back to the house and conked out on the deck for an impromptu nap. Neither Cyndie nor I ended up completing plans we had discussed at breakfast by the end of the day, but we still chipped away at a few tasks.
I’m particularly pleased we finally cut back the Japanese Silver Grass shoots from last year in all four of the places they are now established around our property. We walk past them every day, and I’ve been looking at that job needing to be done for weeks. That triggered me to cut some grass in those same areas, and while I was there, I decided to haul away one last pile of branches we had skipped the last time we were working on that project. Those are all tasks that provide rewarding visual feedback in our frequent jaunts along our many pathways.
While I was in the woods between the house and the back pasture, I spotted evidence that our trillium is alive and well for another year.
The fawn lilies and bloodroot flowers will soon have some competition.
All that was well and good, but it all got eclipsed by the drama after sunset. Cyndie had taken Asher out for his last walk of the day, and suddenly, I received a phone call from her about a fire at a neighbor’s property. I found her and Asher down by the horses. She was very disturbed by the sight of so much flame, but I immediately recognized the visuals of a controlled burn of their field.
I thought it interesting that the horses didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by the unusual sight.
The neighbors had chosen an evening of absolutely perfect conditions, as we are just now starting to dry out around here, and the undergrowth is still damp, and last night there was no wind. Cyndie decided to spend a little time giving the horses massages, and I stood with Asher and watched the flames in the distance.
At least they won’t need to do any mowing in that field for a while. As I stared at the spectacle, I noticed myself feeling some envy.
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Between Showers
We received rain in several waves that lived up to the weather forecast for yesterday. Despite the precipitation, we pulled off a few good projects on our to-do list for this week. First off, the horses had a morning appointment with the farrier.
Heather reported a significant amount of growth in hooves since her last visit. The horses were reasonably well-behaved throughout each of their trimmings. Mix was unnecessarily fussy about the confinement we forced on her for all of an hour and a half, but stood well when that was required for Heather to do her thing. The herd returned to calm as soon as halters were removed and gates all reopened. They didn’t waste much time getting back out on the fresh grass.
For my next project, I decided to set up under the hay shed roof to cut some blocks of wood for the shade sail posts going into the ground.
The plan is to screw these blocks onto the 6×6 posts to add a ledge that will resist forces pushing upwards. I decided to get fancy and cut angles in the bottom side of each block so there won’t be a flat surface to push against from below. Since these blocks will overlap on one end all the way around the square, I made one additional cut at a compound angle to mate the slant of the adjacent block.
Go ahead and try to picture that in your head, if you can figure it out. It was all rather experimental for me, having no experience with this level of carpentry. I’m understandably chuffed that I achieved the result I was after and only needed to cut one extra block due to a mistake.
For reasons that escape me, the horses came back to the paddocks and hung around nearby as I worked. You’d think the repeating loud buzzing sound of the saw starting and stopping would drive them off, but it was just the opposite. It made me happy to have them linger in the vicinity while I was in production mode.
When I was finished with that project, I looked at the radar and saw that time was limited until the next batch of rain. I decided to take a crack at mowing the labyrinth between showers.
I made it all the way through the labyrinth and cut a lot of the surrounding area before it started to sprinkle again. It was light enough rain that I was able to keep mowing until I finished everything I wanted cut.
For the first time in several years, we are expecting a dry, sunny day for World Labyrinth Day tomorrow. We are not in the best climate zone to show off our Forest Garden Labyrinth in early May, but we make due. It’s a little like having a flower show without any flowers. That doesn’t mean a person can’t enjoy taking a meandering stroll down the curving path while meditating on global peace, but it would be that much more inspiring to have leaves on the branches and flowers on stems.
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Different Surprises
My day started with a most rewarding surprise yesterday, compliments of Swings. Cyndie and I have been listening to “The Telepathy Tapes” podcast, which has made me more conscious of all the chatter and earworm songs going on in my mind when I’m with the horses. With Cyndie’s past experience hearing communication from horses telepathically, I’ve long believed it is likely that the animals end up tolerating the constant noise in my head.
Yesterday, I put effort into calming my mind, focusing on telling the horses I love them in my thoughts as I scooped poop among them under the overhang. I wasn’t aware that Swings was paying any attention to me until her face was right on my ear. I assumed she wanted to exchange breaths in their common method of greeting, but before I could act, she surprised me with the most precious, gentle boop on my nose instead.
Cyndie came out of the barn and found me grinning and giddy and asked what was up. Just the power of horses to melt our hearts, that’s all. I got booped on the nose by a horse! How cool is that?
An hour later, I was on my way to the dentist for a cleaning appointment. I expected a quick and harmless session, but instead, I was given the news that I would need a filling. It was my lucky day; they could fit me in right away, so I didn’t need to return another day. Oh, joy.
I left for home with a numb face after a much less welcome surprise of the morning.
After a little rest to allow my nerves to wake up, Cyndie and I took on the work of bringing the landscape pond out of hibernation. Putting a net over the pond to capture fallen leaves has been a great way to make spring clean-up easier.
Then, Cyndie did some vacuuming while I pulled out the dead reeds from last season.
There is still a lot of rock arranging I’d like to do to call this job complete, but we got the pump and filter installed and started the waterfall at a minimum.
We left it at that to go feed the horses, and I did a little mowing with the push mower before dinner.
Work on the shade sail posts has been rescheduled to next Monday, in hopes the ground will be a little drier by then. As far as surprises go, it’ll be a good one if the holes we drill turn out to be dry at the depth we hope to achieve.
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Just Observing
I was watching part of a climate-themed exposé on Public Television last night where two men were having a conversation, obviously in front of cameras, although those were out of sight. There were different cameras aimed at each person’s face, allowing directors to edit it so the view constantly alternated back and forth as they spoke.
Since I was not fully engaged with the topic of their conversation and wasn’t really listening to their words, I found myself thinking about the apparent sincerity of their exchange, while their peripheral vision must have been filled with a camera lens and the person holding it. Reality shows have so normalized scenes of people purportedly behaving normally despite the presence of camera crews that it begins to feel like we should be able to watch everything happening at any time, anywhere in the world.
Saturday evening, I witnessed something in real life that wasn’t recorded. Asher and I were relaxing on the observation knoll at the high spot of our undulating driveway, watching the horses graze near the road in the hay field while the planet rotated our view of the sun ever closer to our horizon. When the unique loud buzz of a couple of dune buggy-styled side-by-sides came racing down the road from the north, it startled the horses. They took off like the race horses they once were. It is a spectacular sight.
Beyond the pure beauty of a thoroughbred sprinting at top speed, there was also the sound of pounding hooves from all four horses.
Yesterday, Asher and I were sitting there again, watching the sky.
It looked like it was the air that was racing this time.
Cyndie was on her way home from the Cities, and called to ask if I had seen the waves of clouds in the sky. She stopped and took pictures, which looked a lot like mine.
I like the fact that we were seeing the same thing and that we both decided to take pictures of our views.
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Spring Grazing
We are trying something different this year. Instead of confining the horses to the paddocks for a few weeks to protect new growth in the fields, we have left the gates open. The horses are getting a natural, gradual adjustment to fresh grass grazing this year instead of the controlled exposure we have done in the past, where we increase their access time in small increments each day.
At this point, it’s hard to see if this might negatively affect our fields in the way literature on the subject warns. I’m happier letting the horses’ digestive systems adjust to the transition from dry hay to green grass without our needing to control it.
I also like that they aren’t suffering the stress of confinement when they want to be out grazing in the fields.
For these thoroughbred mares who have been rescued from some dire situations in their lifetimes, seeing them so completely contented now is deeply rewarding.
Cyndie and I are heading out to a pancake breakfast at a local maple syrup producer this morning to purchase our annual supply of the sweetness. We bring our own wide-mouth Mason jars, and they fill them at a discount. We first learned this practice from the people who designed and installed our fences. They had to stop working on our property one day to go to the limited-run event and offered to bring us back some syrup.
I felt like I was engaged in some illicit activity when I met them at the end of our driveway, and they passed me two large, unlabeled jars filled with what looked like dark moonshine liquor or something, and then drove off. After one taste, we realized this was something that we needed to make a priority every year.
This morning, we are meeting the couple, Tom and Sue, at the pancake breakfast to catch up on each other’s lives and also reminisce about those months when they got to know us as the suburbanites making a leap into their world in rural Pierce County, WI. They taught us a lot at a time when we didn’t have a clue about how much we were about to learn.
It’s going to be sweet, in more ways than one.
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Barn Afternoon
We recently learned that the new liaison to This Old Horse was only fulfilling the role temporarily, and yesterday he showed up to introduce us to the person taking on the job in his place. While waiting for her to arrive, we puttered around the barn and talked about horses and my new shade sail project. I’m planning to put up a short temporary barrier to keep the horses away while work is underway, and Jeremy offered some good ideas on how to achieve that.
We put out a water trough as an alternative to their usual automatic waterer because that will be blocked by the temporary fence.
The horses were briefly disturbed when I brought it out, but quickly went back to their feed buckets and ignored me while I held the hose to fill the tub. Mix was a little jumpy about investigating it closer, but she soon dipped her snout and got a little drink. Later, I watched as Mia was eyeing the new feature in their space, and Mix walked right up to it and took another drink. That was fun to witness.
While Cyndie was introducing our newest liaison, Maddy, to the horses, I puttered about with changing my kludged rigging of the shade sail inside the barn. I’ve been trying to more closely position the anchor points to simulate the way we hope to mount it on new posts in the paddock.
I finally got frustrated as dinnertime approached and decided to stop and sleep on it. I’ll take another look today and see if a good solution materializes for my fresh eyes.
In the middle of moving around in the barn, I found that Asher was sitting on the cool dirt he had dug up without proper authorization. It’s hard to get upset with him when he is looking so damn regal and self-satisfied.
Cyndie had filled in the hole already once before I found him like this. Before I called it a day, I filled it in again, knowing full well he will likely dig it again next time he gets a chance.
Cyndie spent time installing new mesh curtains with magnetic closures in the frames of the barn doors so we will be able to leave doors open for air circulation without worrying about hordes of pigeons coming in.
With an enormous number of projects currently deserving springtime attention, it felt nice to get away with neglecting them for one afternoon while we busied ourselves in and around the barn.
All things in due time.
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Easter Feast
Cyndie performed her magic once again and produced a feast of epic proportions for members of her family and our kids, too. Like all good gatherings in a home, the kitchen was the primary hub of conversation at the start.
After they were kicked out in the direction of the seating around the fireplace, Cyndie set out the wide array of brunch choices she had prepared.
After the feast had a little time to settle in our stomachs and stories had been shared, a visit to the barn to see the horses was offered to anyone who hadn’t closed their eyes for a nap.
We brought a bag of carrots for the mares and found them to be wonderfully social and welcoming of our visit. The expected precipitation held off until everyone had departed for the afternoon with plenty of lovingly packaged leftovers.
As evening approached, I was able to spend a little extra time in the barn after feeding the horses to make some adjustments on the shade sail. In addition to tightening the tension to continue stretching out the creases from the folds of the shipped package, I changed the anchor points to better represent the way it will ultimately be hung.
I’m hoping we will be able to figure precise positioning of the four new posts based on measurements of the corner brackets of the sail in the way I have it suspended in the barn. The challenge I discovered while trying to remove ripples via the less-than-ideal anchor points tells me that exact post locations are something we don’t want to take lightly.
It will mean a lot to me to get it right on our first try.
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Everything Arrived
Thursday started with a morning delivery of the lumber I ordered for my shade sail project. The truck stopped on the road, and the driver used a three-wheeled forklift to move my posts and boards up the driveway.
Having never done anything like this before, I’m uncertain about a lot of the details. I’m feeling confident about the overall concept, and I have purchased everything I think I will need, but I’m haunted about how it will all work out in the end.
I have decided to install a header around the top of the posts to bolster the stability of the whole frame against the pull of the canopy hardware and the pushing guaranteed to happen from 1200-pound horses with an itch. Watching how the 24-foot-long 2 x 6 boards flopped like noodles, it occurred to me that those probably should have been a beefier dimension.
I’m not used to dealing with such long dimensions in lumber, or anything else, for that matter. It’s hard for me to visualize where 24 feet of something will fit. Even the forklift driver needed to make some tricky adjustments to barely fit between the hay shed and the wood fence with the boards balanced on the forks. There was a little squeaking as the boards rubbed against the metal shed as he eked his way through.
By noon, FedEx had delivered a box with the shade sail canopy on our front steps. Cyndie and I tried to unfold it in the loft, letting it drape over the railing to get a feel for the size. I didn’t realize how big 18 feet is. It doesn’t seem like that much out in the paddock, but in the house, we couldn’t find space to stretch it out.
I opted for the barn.
It took me several tries to rig up attachment points that worked, but we eventually got it stretched out enough to take up slack in the metal cable sewn into the outer edge all the way around.
There was no way we could have done this outside yesterday with gale-force wind gusts howling all afternoon, leading up to a robust thunderstorm just before sunset.
I’m aware that maximum tension is the key to getting the shade sail to perform optimally, but my initial rigging in the barn showed me there are a few little details to achieving my goal that make this project a lot more complicated than it seems like it should be at the start.
My new contractor friend, Justin, will stop by today to take exact measurements to determine where we will place the posts.
We are getting close to finding out how much the horses are going to freak out over the strange new feature appearing in their midst. So far, the flapping labels on the lumber outside their paddock kept them on edge for much of yesterday before I pulled everything off the wood.
If only they knew what was going to happen next.
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So Rewarding
Yesterday, our daughter, Elysa, brought friends for a day of Wintervale exploration, a day that had been planned for weeks. Cyndie and I have been watching the weather forecasts which consistently reflected a chance of rain. Instead of precipitation, we were rewarded with a fair amount of afternoon sun.
We had spent an afternoon sprucing up the labyrinth in preparation for their visit, trimming bushes, re-balancing stones, and removing accumulated leaves.
It looked pretty good, which rewards us every time we walk past.
There is already enough grass growth happening that it could use a mowing to keep it looking well-tended. I will certainly need to cut it before the arrival of World Labyrinth Day in three weeks.
I’m looking forward to that day because of my plan to measure the circumference of the transplanted maple tree in the center circle of the labyrinth annually on the first Saturday of May. Last year was the first time I measured it, establishing a reading of 7.25 inches as the initial reference dimension.
After the five guests finished walking the labyrinth, they made their way to see the horses, where we were rewarded in several more ways. First off, simply the fact that the horses were in a very social mood all day was a big plus. The horses rarely seem bothered by groups of talkative strangers and all the added energy they bring.
The herd was on their best behavior. They all took turns lingering at the fence for scritches or treats being offered. Most rewarding for me was seeing Mia, the mare most easily startled, stay engaged at a fence gate to receive hands-on attention even after a couple of flinches when something spooked her.
That is uncommon for her.
Elysa was reaching to untangle some fairy knots in Mia’s mane until Mia had had enough. Instead of stepping away, Mia simply reversed her orientation and gave up her other side for scratching.
The most timid horse showing such self-confidence warmed my heart.
Once again, it is visitors who truly bring Wintervale to life. That is a reward we will never grow tired of receiving.
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Relative Something 