Posts Tagged ‘horses’
Mixed Blessing
I am struggling a bit to come up with something for today that is worthy of following yesterday’s wonderful guest post by Brooke. That was a big hit, noticeably increasing the number of views by almost double what is normal for Relative Something. It sure was something, and Brooke is my relative, so there you go.
My desperate efforts to accomplish everything I dreamed of doing before we get to leave for Guatemala are being complicated by the fact that I was still needed at the old day-job for yesterday and today, and by the little spring snow storm that paid a visit. They are both mixed blessings.
For helping the old company, I will be rewarded with a bit of unplanned income, so although it has eaten into my time for preparing to travel, the money helps to finance our trip.
The snow is nice because it provides much-needed ground moisture and will soak in, as opposed to just run off. Unfortunately, it also created the additional burden (which I have little time for) of needing to move the horses indoors overnight. That creates work the following day, because I need to then clean out the stalls.
I just spent hours over the weekend tending to the composting manure piles to clear some space for new dumping while we are gone. That space has become significantly less available now after having dumped 4-stalls-worth of manure and urine soaked wood shavings there.
When we return home, I’m going to have a lot of manure waiting to join that pile. I sure hope the composting restarts as soon as the snow and ice all melt.
Meanwhile, I have decided to plan on not posting while we are away. I could use a break from my self-imposed daily grind. However, that doesn’t mean there won’t be posts appearing each day during my little vacation. I have scoured the archive of my Words on Images files and selected a variety that I think deserve a re-showing here.
I hope you enjoy seeing them again. I plan to get back to live posting after we return (if we return) during the first week of April. Holy cow. April.
I’m sure I’ll have plenty of new stories to tell by then. Ta ta for now!
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Brooke Writes
Guest Post
Today’s post is a contribution from my niece’s daughter, Brooke Friese, age 11. Brooke and her brother, Drew came with their mother for a visit last Friday. I was thrilled when she accepted my invitation to write a guest post about their day.
I went to my great aunt Cindy and uncle John Hays’ Wintervale Ranch. It was one of the best days of the week!
They have a beautiful (and furry dog) named Delilah that loves to slobber all over frisbees when you throw it :). They also have an adorable cat named Pequenita; we also have two cats which are twins. Pequenita and my two cute cats are very alike. They are both small and they both are tortoiseshell cats, the only difference between them is my cats have more black and Pequenita has more brown.
Anyway back to Delilah and Pequenita (‘Nita for short), Delilah, being a dog, obviously wants to play, chase, sniff, and lick ‘Nita until she runs and hides meowing at Delilah all the way.
We also went on a walk through the beautiful (but very muddy) woods; we passed a fallen tree that Uncle John has nicknamed “The Brooke tree,” we walked down to the labyrinth, it was super cool!
I can’t wait to see it in the summer! My brother and I followed the winding trails to the middle and then back out again.
Then uncle John led us to the barn where we said hello to the horses. Legacy, (a beautiful snow white horse) acts as the boss of all the other horses (Hunter, Cayenne, and Dezirea) he pulls back his ears and jerks slightly towards the horse(s) that is bugging him.
Dezirea acts as the mother, making sure everyone is fed before she eats, and makes sure everyone is using manners at all times, but she will never scold Legacy, after all he is the boss!
Then we headed over to the hay barn, I wasn’t expecting much, I mean it’s called “The Hay Barn,” there’s bound to be a few stacks of hay . . . oh no, when I walked into the hay barn I was surprised.
I saw tons and tons, two huge piles of hay both stacked in the form of stairs. My brother and I had fun climbing and exploring on the huge mounds of hay (with Uncle John’s permission).
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After my brother and I were exhausted from climbing on the two piles we walked over to Uncle John’s compost/molding horse manure piles, there were three piles of manure covered in thousands of flies. Along with the three piles was a still frozen compost pile that was now almost dirt, and wheel barrel full of more almost-dirt-compost, (My brother, Drew also pulled apart the poo with his bare hands so he could see what it looked like inside! Delilah also ate some manure! Ewwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!) Then Uncle John shifted the manure with a pitchfork, and the moldy compost started to steam! Uncle John measured the heat of the manure and it was around 130 degrees! Wow it was only around 50 degrees outside!
After that we headed inside, we played a hide and seek game with Delilah where we hide a ball and she had to go and sniff it out, it was awesome! My visit to Wintervale was super fun and exciting from Ellsworth’s cheese factory to Legacy’s bossiness. I can’t wait to come back! 🙂
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Count Down
It’s beginning to feel like minutes, not days, until we depart on our travels to visit friends in Guatemala. Cyndie has done a heroic job of rallying to tend to details both necessary and convenient. I was a bit surprised to see her organizing kitchen utensil drawers before we go, but it was a gesture of thinking about making things convenient for those who will be house-sitting for us while we are away.
Our friend and soon-to-be hostess in Guatemala, Dunia, has been calling and sending photos to prepare us, to inspire our glee, and to share their excitement over having us visit. I need to practice staying in the moment so I will be able to fully absorb every minute we have with them, as I am already sensing how quickly our stay of limited days will pass.
Of course, both Cyndie and I have been heard to tease with our family that we will be gone for only a week and a half, …if we come back.
I am noticing mixed feelings about our preparedness to leave the care of our property and animals to a variety of people, some who have had nothing more than one brief visit to inform their managing of our place. I have no doubts about their abilities to take good care of Delilah, Pequenita, and our horses, but I fret over the complications thrown in by weather events that spring is known to unleash here.
After working frantically yesterday to take advantage of the dryness of the upper levels of the paddocks, raking out the divots created when it was soft and wet, the moisture is due to return today with more than an inch of fresh snow. In the days ahead, our animal sitters will need to think about bringing horses in from the cold and wet. That means creating additional amounts of soiled bedding in the barn stalls that will need to be disposed of in the compost pile.
Yikes! There isn’t much room left in the compost space. On Friday I worked to create space at the front of the compost pile so it would be easier to dump manure while we are gone. There is only one small section that is actively breaking down right now, visible on my new thermometer. I will work to ‘restart’ the other zones of the pile after we return from Guatemala, but until then, the pile is just going to grow.
We have some temporary piles established inside the paddocks to reduce the need to haul manure out while we are gone. If the weather doesn’t get too wet and messy, the cleanup should be manageable. I can hope!
Today, while it snows, I will be trying to figure out where my summer clothes are so I can pack for our trip, while simultaneously struggling to compile the last of the necessary tax information to drop at our preparers office before we go.
The minutes are dwindling, and we couldn’t be more thrilled!
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Stopping Snapping
To most of you who have known me for a long time, my transition to ranch hand and horse wrangler (I’ll hold off on claiming any prowess with a dog for now) over the last two years may seem a bit surprising.
Personally, I feel a bit more amazed than surprised, partly because it all has come rather easily to me. Yesterday, without a hitch, I breezed through a fence repair that had me marveling over how familiar it seemed, for someone having no fence experience whatsoever a short time ago.
With the temperature swings from hot to cold that we’ve experienced lately, our wire fences are looking a little less taut than usual. After long hours at the (now temporary) day-job, followed by a stop at our health clinic for a pre-international-travel checkup, I stepped out to feed the horses and found a wire tension ratchet arcing.
Snap! Snap! Snap!
I think it bugs the horses, so I try not to neglect tending to these when they begin to arc. Oftentimes, oddly enough, moisture seems to bring it on, but this case was caused when the tension reduced over time and the electrical connection from wire to metal ratchet degraded. That results in arcing with creates a build up of carbon, which then reduces the connection even more.
To fix it, I start by turning off the charger and then loosen the ratchet. That allows me to get access to the place where the coated wire runs through the hole in the ratchet. The original installer saved time by not removing the coating from the wire, but the downside of doing that is the likelihood of future arcing. I strip off the coating altogether, creating a connection that is bare wire to bare metal. Works like a charm.
When I finished yesterday’s repair and turned the charger on again, that junction was completely silent.
It was so quiet that it enabled me to then hear a different spot farther down the line doing a quieter version of the same snapping sound. I decided to wait on that one, since it was out on the hay-field where the horses don’t have access for the time being.
Maybe it will be one of those that goes away on its own.
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Hooves Trimmed
Taking full advantage of the quick-dry we are enjoying this March, I was out raking the lime screenings on the upper slope around the barn and picking up the never-ending crop of manure the horses like to deposit there. 
As I often choose to do lately, I had Delilah tethered to an outside hook on the paddock fence where she was doing her best to behave like she was an integral participant in my project.
For whatever silly reason that only dogs can understand, she picked a perch that looked like she was claiming ownership of one of the piles I was trying to pick up.
I was hoping to get the area cleaned up in time for the scheduled appointment to have our farrier/neighbor, George Walker, give the horses their routine periodic hoof trimming.
We are starting to get the hang of the process and for the first time since he has been coming to do this, we prepared by getting a halter on each of the horses and tethering them up near the barn in advance. I give Hunter credit for this bit of wisdom, as he always played hard to get when it was time for his turn. George would be stuck waiting while tried to quickly talk Hunter into cooperating.
Quickly cooperating is not something he is inclined to do, especially when it is our agenda and not his.
Case in point, just getting him into his halter yesterday took 3-times longer than it did the rest of the herd. Having done so, the 4 horses were in an out of the hoof trimming station in record time. The only thing that slows down the process is all the precious gabbing we end up doing while George works.
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Horse Models
Wow, the days sure seem short when you spend 10 of the waking hours commuting and working. When I arrived home in the afternoon, I freed Delilah from her kennel and took her for a short walk to check on the horses. They were calm and serene, which rubbed off on Delilah and she was surprisingly patient while I fed and then cleaned up after the herd.
We found Hunter all dressed up in his favorite colored wet lime screenings for our visit. It looked like he was wearing a work of art.
When chores were done for the horses, I grabbed a rake and walked Delilah up to the high gate into the hay-field. Inside the electric fence, I can let her off leash to get exercise on her own while I work on breaking apart and spreading piles of manure.
The high ground has dried nicely with the last few days of sunny breezes, and we took full advantage of the conditions. Delilah was totally compliant and roamed freely while I worked. To finish off our time, I pulled out a couple of squeaking tennis balls that she loves to chase.
I think she made up for being stuck in her kennel all day during that short exercise, running herself ragged with a noticeable smile on her face and gleam in her eyes.
When we passed back by the barn I found one of the horses missing. Everyone but Cayenne was under the eave munching hay. It is very uncharacteristic to find just one of them so far off on their own, but she was away in the distance, out grazing in the late afternoon sunshine bathing the back pasture.
The other three stepped out to see what I was up to with my stopping by again, and I was able to capture a shot of them with Cayenne in the distance. Don’t they look choreographed? Hold that pose!
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Amazing Journey
I used to live in a city neighborhood and I used to live in a suburb. Now I live in a rural setting. The differences are dramatic, as well as subtle. The common element of each is, me. Obviously, I bring my perspective to each setting. The different environments influence me, yet I interpret each place through my personal filter.
As a human being, my filter is basically similar to all the other humans interpreting their environmental influences. I feel what everyone feels about each of the three habitats. As an individual, my perspective is not identical to all others, but specific to me. We can generalize about the hectic pace of crowded places and the mellowness of open land, but individuals have the capacity to find their own mellowness in a hectic environment, or excitement over all that is found in being alone and outdoors.
People have the ability to compartmentalize their lives, and as such will become isolated and detached from that which is less familiar. For most of my life, horses were a mere blip on my radar. I knew of people who were horse lovers, but I was not so inclined. I married a person who was interested in horses, but she was far from consumed with a focus on them, so the impact on me was negligible.
Now I have a close relationship with a herd of 4 horses. I have become another person in a huge group of people with strong interests in horses. I am new to this group, and I bring my unique perspective, but I expect that I appear to the rest of the world as just another horse lover. On the surface, that is accurate, but there is more depth to all of our stories and I am inspired to figure out what about mine I should be endeavoring to tell.
Some days my amazing journey leaves me speechless. Oftentimes, I simply write about what I do, putting one foot in front of the other and tending to daily chores. There is more to it, I know, and I have a sense it is percolating within me in preparation for being told.
I’m letting it simmer a bit, while continuing to embrace and savor the breadth and depth of my wild ride.
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Melt Begins
In a short few days we have moved from below-zero bone chilling cold to above freezing high temperatures. On Friday I removed the blankets from our horses and brushed out their shedding coats. The prediction is for a string of days with high temps in the 50’s° (F) this week. For each day that new bare ground becomes exposed due to loss of snow cover, the odds improve for the air temperature to increase.
That snow on the ground acts as a natural cooler, so even though the sun shines bright, the breeze flowing across the white landscape remains chilly. Once the snow is gone, the ground warms significantly and the air then follows suit.
The horses were quick to soak up the direct rays after their blankets came off, which put them in serious napping mode. I think Hunter was planning on getting a drink, but then just fell asleep when he got to the waterer.
Our friends, Barb and Mike arrived Friday afternoon for a sleepover visit, making the weekend feel like a holiday to us. We consumed massive amounts of all too sweet calories (think, Cyndie’s gooey caramel rolls and puppy dog tails, along with some birthday cake and chocolate covered strawberries), walked the labyrinth and wooded trails in the moonlight, communed with the horses, and enjoyed an extended visit with neighbor, George Walker.
We wanted to connect George with Mike so they could talk “flight-speak.” George is working on getting his pilot’s license, when not trimming horse’s hooves or tending to their CSA farm. To the rest of us, much of their conversation sounded like a foreign language with the acronyms and specific phraseology.
I was able to enlist Mike’s adventurous energy to help work on cutting down a long-dead tree limb that was hung up in the “Y” of an adjacent tree. We got most of the easier portions down, but the main trunk turned out to be too much for the rope-saw I was trying to use.
When George heard about our plan, he suggested we borrow his friend’s “state-fair chainsaw.”
Huh?
He said it is a “chainsaw on a stick.”
We couldn’t get the rope-saw to orient over the trunk correctly, teeth down, and in our unsuccessful effort to forge ahead with hope it would eventually get a bite and right itself, the connecting cord between the chain and the one handle began to fray. All we did to the tree was rub the bark off that spot.
I went to get my pole-saw and we took down the smaller branches we could reach, leaving the main trunk for another time. Probably a time when I talk to George about borrowing that state-fair chainsaw.
Today we are off to visit Elysa’s house to help with a bit of spring cleaning. I won’t be around to witness how the second day of big melting progresses. I expect to be shocked at how much ground becomes exposed, though that will be thrilling, too. I need the ground to warm enough to thaw out the drain tile we had buried last fall.
That has my full attention this spring, in hopes of learning whether we will achieve the improvements we seek.
Happy (grumble, grumble) Daylight Saving Time day.
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Grand Unveiling
Our master plan has come another step forward toward possibly actually playing out someday. We now have a logo for Wintervale Ranch.
Based on your perception of us, gained through reading the ongoing adventures I have chronicled here, or if you’ve known us longer than I’ve been blogging, how well do you think this fits us? Can you see Legacy in that face? He was the model.
Guess it’s time to crank up the marketing campaign and splash our brand all over the target audience. I wonder what our Superbowl commercial will be like next year…
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Goodbye February
Regardless my wonderfully slow-paced daily routine on the ranch, I cannot keep up with the days flying by that become months sailing away. February just started and now it is over. Humans may not have invented a time machine yet, but who needs it? We are living in one.
We have been experiencing a string of below zero (F) overnight lows the last few days, but since it wasn’t windy, we left the horses outside to deal with it. Cayenne was able to show off her awesome eyelashes with an icy white highlight in the morning during breakfast.
I have been working to prepare for the possibility that someone other than me would be doing the animal chores around here, on the chance that Cyndie would successfully find enough animal sitters to allow me to join her on a visit to our friends in Guatemala.
The person that did the job for us over New Year’s weekend was no longer available. Thursday night, with our children’s precious acceptance to figure out a way to fill the few holes in coverage that remained, we made a commitment and purchased airplane tickets.
Look out, Dunia and family, here we come!
So, I’m hoping to make it as easy as possible for our animal sitters to maintain some semblance of cleanliness in the paddocks. It is not easy to pick up manure that first melts, and then re-freezes into the frozen snow and ice packed on the ground everyday. After the struggle to get it up, hauling it to the compost pile is another battle. I have started to create piles within the paddock where it can be temporarily stored.
I brought Delilah with me yesterday to work on the project. She is still confined to a leash when I am unable to give her my constant attention, so I tethered her to a hook on the outside of the paddock fence. There she is able to squeeze under the lowest board and feel like she is not entirely excluded from the action.
Unfortunately, she can’t restrain herself from periodic antagonistic barking and snarling fits at the horses when they are close. For their part, the horses seem entirely nonplussed by the big show she puts on, but are complicit in their repeated decision to wander over close to her if she has been calm and quiet for too long.
I really delight in seeing them serenely coexisting, which happens for brief glimpses, so in contrast, her sudden outbursts are a jarring disruption to the tranquility. While I was raking away, I glanced up to see what looked like a zen exercise Legacy was employing to convince Delilah to mellow out.
Legacy looked like he was sleeping, except that he was also very subtly decreasing the space between them. I think Delilah was feeling the closing proximity and would make her own adjustments of position. The problem with this game was that Delilah was tethered and was moving further into the paddock to the end of the reach of her leash. Legacy, whether intentional, or not, was closing in on her escape route.
To her credit, Delilah didn’t give in and erupt on her own. It took me becoming alarmed and hustling over to set her off to barking at him. I was continuing to rake while keeping and eye on them, until Legacy got close enough to reach her leash and got it in his mouth.
I figured nothing good could come of this and dropped the rake to hustle over there and intervene. Delilah barked, Legacy startled, and the game was over.
Hopefully, prior to all the excitement, Delilah absorbed enough of Legacy’s zen-like message to practice staying calm when the horses wander over to say hello.
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Relative Something 