Posts Tagged ‘horses’
Busy Morning
It’s the time of year when my mornings get jumbled up by live broadcasts of the Tour de France bike race. No time to play my usual morning word games. Conflicts with trying to write blog posts. And this morning, I need to prepare for the potential arrival of a crew from my asphalt company, who will be filling the cracks that appeared last winter and sealing the pavement overall.
That means I need to get the mower out early, and Cyndie needs to get her car down the driveway before they show up and keep us off the surface for a couple of days.
Enjoy this photo Cyndie captured last evening on her last walk of the day with Asher. I gotta go…
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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.
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Coping Nicely
While Asher, Cyndie, and I are able to take refuge from the extremely hot weather by retreating to the air-conditioned house, the horses must endure the blast furnace nonstop until it abates. In the same way that they stand stoically against the worst of winter’s cold, they find ways to make it through the worst of the muggy heat.
It’s a bit shocking to me that I didn’t find them the least bit ill-tempered when I showed up to serve their afternoon grains.
Later, when I arrived to retrieve the feed buckets, all four of them were out grazing in the back pasture. I thought it was weird that they were standing in the direct sunlight, as the heat had yet to loosen its grip.
One second later, Swings and Light had returned to the shade of the paddock. Out in the field, Mix and Mia were a picturesque pair. As I had my back turned, dumping a load of manure into a compost pile, Mix and Mia returned, as well.
It was a shock to step out into the open and find them standing right in front of me. It’s as if they use teleportation to cross that distance in such a short time. One moment, they are stationary with their heads down in the grass, and an instant later, they are calmly standing in the paddock before me, not even breathing heavily.
When Cyndie was out with Asher on his last walk of the evening, she found the horses mingling around in the vicinity of the shade sail, even though the sun was low enough that trees were shading the whole area. They have given every impression they are coping with the oppressive conditions nicely.
The last few rain threats have missed Wintervale, leaving us pretty dry. Cyndie spent a fair amount of time last night watering all the flowers she has planted around the house landscape. It would be great if we could get rain today and tomorrow, but not on Wednesday or Thursday.
We leave for the lake on Friday and will be gone for ten days, so I would really like to cut the grass one more time right before we go. I’ve got a routine established now with the electric riding mower that I can cover the entire property on three charges over two days.
You could say I’m coping nicely with the rampant growth that is occurring this time of year.
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Yes, Hot
It’s not just the heat, it’s the humidity, too. I started receiving weather warnings from the app on my phone sometime in the middle of last week. While at a restaurant on the bike trip, I spotted a weather map on a TV screen over the bar, and it looked like 80% of the US was depicted with a burning deep-red, indicating extreme heat was on the way.
Well, the heat has arrived. Try being a 1200-pound horse in this kind of weather.
Cyndie put out the large water trough that the horses have a history of splashing in when we intended it to be used for drinking. Now we would be glad to have them splash in it.
Mia came right over while Cyndie was filling the tub from a hose and dipped her face into it. I said she should have placed the trough under the shade sail. We may still move it there later today.
Asher isn’t taking the heat much better than the horses. Luckily, he has an air-conditioned house to lounge in. He begrudgingly accompanies us on walks to tend to the horses.
I am deeply grateful that this level of heat didn’t occur while we were biking for hours every day. If there were a choice between riding in the rain or high heat, I would choose the rain.
Unfortunately, I still have some mowing to do today. I’m going to try to finish before the hottest part of the afternoon. Not that it matters, since the temperature was 81°F with a dew point of 72° when we woke up at 6:30 this morning.
Yeah, it’s hot outside.
There is one really cool thing about today, however. It’s Elysa’s birthday!! Here is a celebratory photo of her from six years ago:
Happy Birthday, dearest! Stay cool!
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Quiet Time
Even though I continue to avoid exposure to news media, there are still enough trickles of information that I am aware of Marines being ordered to Los Angeles, where citizens are protesting. It is crazy reports like this, reflecting the many lunacies spelled out in Project 2025*, that are happening right before the world’s eyes, that reaffirm my choice to refuse to wallow in real-time reporting.
*(So I’ve read other people reporting, since I haven’t personally looked at the document; I simply voted against anyone who would have anything to do with it)
Instead, I walk outside and listen to the birds and the chirping frogs, bathe in the scenery of green growing plants and trees, and spend some quiet time with the horses.
Last evening, someone was riding a horse along the road at a slow, clop-clop pace, and it got everyone’s attention. Asher’s hackles went up, and he started barking with great purpose. While the other horses retreated to the small paddock, Mia did the opposite and headed all the way to the fence line along the road for a closer inspection.
When her curiosity was satisfied, she decided her return to the rest of the herd should happen at top speed. It is moments like this that make it easy to visualize these thoroughbreds as the race horses they once were. She did one heck of a beautiful sprint.
Long after all the excitement had faded, the horses chose to stay in the small paddock, grazing the grass growing there.
I snapped a photo when Swings was looking right at me, with the fresh branches of the once mighty willow tree on full display just beyond her.
When the evils of the current US administration have reached their peak, and people like me are incarcerated for any reason they choose, I will conjure memories of standing with these horses and the peacefulness I was able to experience at one time in my life. […that’s hyperbole (I hope) – if you didn’t sense it]
I will try not to recall the unhealthy air quality we were enduring at the time.
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Best Outcomes
One of my very favorite property maintenance projects is converting unsightly piles of tree branches into valuable piles of woodchips, and on Monday, we did just that.
It made a huge difference that we had previously staged a pile of limbs we had cherry-picked exclusively for their perfect size for our chipper. It kicks the level of efficiency for making useful chips way up when excluding small branches that can plug up the chipper and inevitably add long sticks to the chip pile.
It was pretty hot out, and I’d already snapped one shear bolt by the time we finished that stack of limbs, so we decided that would be enough chipping for the day. However, while I had the tractor out, I felt it would be a prime opportunity to mow the back pasture, and my time out in the heat got extended for a few more hours.
Over the past few years, we have waited well into the summer before mowing that field. We always hoped that the farmer who cuts and bales our hay field would also do the back pasture, but he’s made it obvious he doesn’t want to mess with the smaller field due to the short distances between fence lines. Since it will be up to us to mow it before weeds mature and go to seed, it’s to our benefit to do it much sooner in the growing season.
Knowing that the following day would bring rain made it that much more rewarding to have jumped on the chance to knock that chore off our list in a spur-of-the-moment decision.
The horses took great interest in my activities in their field and watched over me much of the time.
They are locked out of that pasture for a few days until the cuttings dry out, but I believe they will find the freshly trimmed grass to be a best outcome for their grazing purposes. It’s a nice reward when the end result is one that makes everyone happy.
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Goodbye Trails
We said goodbye to the Rails-to-Trails in the driftless region around Sparta yesterday and made our way home. I am very happy to be writing on my laptop again instead of my phone. The horses look to be in great spirits. Cyndie sent me a picture of Mia getting some nice attention from Light as they practiced a little mutual grooming.
It probably goes without saying that the grass needs to be mowed. That meant I couldn’t dawdle upon arrival yesterday just before dinnertime and had to set in almost immediately with processing the post-trip routine of cleaning and drying the tent, the rainfly, the ground sheet, my sleeping pad, airing the sleeping bag out, and sorting out clothes that need to be washed. I’ll get to the clothes later, but everything else is cleaned and dried in preparation for packing it up again in two weeks for the Tour of Minnesota biking and camping week.
With that taken care of, I hope to snatch a few precious hours this morning to mow before we set off for Savage, MN, to attend a graduation party for my grandnephew, Drew. I’ll cut what I can. We also learned that the person who was going to feed horses and Asher while we were away is no longer able to come. Sorry, Hays clan, our visit will be brief so we can get back for afternoon chores. Maybe I will be able to do a little more mowing as a result.
We have guests coming to brunch on Sunday, and Cyndie would like the place to look respectable when they arrive.
I’m still in the afterglow of the fabulous four days with Rich. Did I mention we were the only car and campers at the walk-in campground in Sparta?
We were also the only ones in the campground in Elroy (the one with the impossibly steep hill) on our first night there. Thursday night, one other campsite got claimed. After the first night sleeping in Elroy, we figured out ways to avoid making any extra trips up that incline. We left a lot of stuff in the car parked across the road so we could shower at the trailhead after riding and before heading out for dinner without climbing back up to our tents.
Yesterday morning, we were able to bring everything down in one trip, dropping it at the gate to be loaded after Rich brought the car over from the lot.
We added 44 miles to our 4-day total, riding the “400” State Trail from Elroy to Reedsburg and back before showering at the trailhead in Elroy and heading home. Brunch in Reedsburg was at Greenwood’s Cafe, a gem of a place for breakfast with a small-town feel.
The exclusive dose of gravel railroad bed trails took a toll on our minds and bodies, so if I were to do it again, I might look to add a change of pace with some miles on a few country roads. The trails plum wore us out each day. On the bright side, though, the effort should serve us well in preparation for the Tour coming up in just two weeks.
That reminds me, I didn’t give my bike a bath yet to wash off all the accummulated grime. I wonder when I’ll find the time to get to that.
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Available Shade
It’s there when they want it.
At different times throughout the day yesterday, I spotted a horse taking advantage of the shade now available. It’s hard to describe how rewarding that is for me.
It was a relief to get their rain blankets off them first thing in the morning. They were rubbing up against everything around, and I noticed one of the metal latches on Light’s blanket catching on a hay net. Thankfully, it let loose before ripping the net apart. Seeing that, I got my explanation of how in the heck they had ripped down a board the night before.
On my last walk of the night with Asher, I spotted a hay net on the ground. I picked it up and carried it back to the overhang, where I found the board it had been attached to lying on the ground. At the time, I had no idea how or why they had pulled hard enough to yank the six screws that had been holding that board. If that net had snagged on the hardware of one of their blankets, I can easily imagine them using their weight to lurch free. That’s more than enough to pop the board loose.
It’s interesting to imagine the brief drama that must have occurred, and how startling it probably was to the horses, since they were all so serenely hanging out in the vicinity as if nothing was amiss when I showed up.
They were all standing around acting as if there wasn’t a board ripped off the wall for all the world to see. None of them moved a muscle as I picked up the long, heavy board and wove my way around them to take it away.
If I were to show up carrying our Wintervale banner flag, their panicked reaction would make you think it was the scariest thing they’d ever seen.
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Probably Done
Despite the relentless drizzle saturating everything not under a roof yesterday, our contractor, Justin, showed up to complete the framing on the shade sail and remove the ground supports.
It looks a little spider-like due to the funky way I persuaded him to attach the 45° braces above and below the header boards on the four corners. I’m satisfied with the unconventional look, but wish we’d have achieved more stiffness from those additions.
There are two more things we can do to bolster the header boards, but it will take an additional lumber purchase, so I am choosing to wait and take those steps if we discover a need.
As soon as we removed the temporary lower support boards, I took down the barrier to allow the horses full access to the small paddock. They were way more interested in the grass that had been untouched for a couple of weeks than the strange canopy overhead.
Since they’ve watched it go up and probably viewed it in my head the whole time I’ve been imagining it, I suppose it’s not all that new to them.
Horses can be so matter-of-fact sometimes. Weirdly, they can also simultaneously appear somewhat flighty, so figure that one out.
I did some calculating to get an estimate of how long a braid I will need to wrap the 6×6 posts for a span of about a meter to discourage the horses from chewing on the wood or catching their tails or manes in splinters as the wood dries. I’ve completed only a third of what it will take for one post using the cut pieces of poly bale twine we have accrued.
It’s time to up my braiding game. Should have done that a long time ago.
Cyndie made use of several of the hollowed chunks I cut from the fallen maple tree.
They are becoming flower planters. I like! See why I am so smitten with her? Not just things like that, but she lets me make crazy things like the shade sail frame, and then tells me she likes how it looks when it is done.
I’m a lucky guy.
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Weather Wallop
We got smacked to a degree I didn’t anticipate yesterday with a combination of multiple inches of rain in uncomfortably cold temperatures while strong wind gusts blasted us mercilessly. We still had the small paddock closed off, which constrained the horses to having access to only one side of the overhang for shelter.
Just to keep things from being simple to deal with, on Monday, Cyndie got a COVID vaccination booster that had her feeling poorly by yesterday morning. That left it to me to tend to the horses in conditions that were teetering on completely out of control.
The poor girls were shivering desperately and very anxious to get their servings of grain to take their minds off the misery. Serving them became a crazy ad-lib as I tried to maintain some order and control while moving their serving stations on the fly to try giving access out of the rain for each horse.
Thankfully, they were moderately cooperative as they were well aware of the predicament we were all in. After doing my best to give them the bare minimum comforts available in the moment, I took Asher back up to the house for his breakfast.
A short time later, our new person from This Old Horse, Maddy, showed up with doses of dewormer for the horses. She picked up where I left off in trying to find a way to give the horses some advantage against the weather. I joined her and we decided to try moving them inside to the individual stalls.
We got them in, but we couldn’t get Mix to settle down. The other three seemed to figure out they were out of the wind and rain, they had food and water, and no other horse was trying to invade their space. Sadly, I got the impression that Mix was triggered and having a major PTSD reaction to the confinement.
Subsequently, Mix’s prolonged stress, demonstrated in kicking the walls, biting boards, and general flailing about, began to UNsettle the others. We tried changing the horse next to Mix by swapping the positions of Swings and Mia, but it didn’t make enough difference in Mix’s tantruming.
Instead of drying out, Mix was lathering up in her own sweat. We ended up putting blankets on them and letting them back outside after I strung another temporary barrier that at least allowed them access to both sides of the overhang.
A little over a week after setting up fans to cool them in high heat, we now have the horses wearing blankets in the latter half of May.
A windy, rainy, 40°F weather wallop, indeed.
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Relative Something 