Posts Tagged ‘paddock’
Sitting There
.
From my spot in the grass outside the small paddock, I took two pictures of what I was seeing.
.
I like them both.
Framing the primary subjects of Cyndie and Mix in the background between the two boards of the fence in the foreground produced a result that I am very pleased with. The added features of the two metal gates being aligned so perfectly parallel, and the visible weathered textures of the two wooden boards, add a lot to the appeal for me.
Asher’s distant stare with his stoic posture from his position in front of the barn was definitely portrait-worthy. The propped-open door contributes some life to the image with an implied reference to ongoing activity underway. He is not alone, but he is in charge of himself in this moment, free from the constraints of a leash.
And I was just sitting there, close to them both, taking it all in. It’s a tough life, but I’m doing what I can to get by.
.
.
He Scores!
Inter Miami and Lionel Messi came to the Twin Cities to face our MNUFC Loons yesterday, and Cyndie had a chance to be at the game with a friend.
The Miami team is loaded with talent and performed impressively, holding possession for many more minutes than the Loons could, however, Messi only scored one goal. The Loons scored four. Well, three plus an own goal.
Before the game started, I put up the hoakiest-looking temporary fence in the small paddock. I seem to be in a mode of remission from my habit of perfectionism lately. The horses spent a lot of time just staring at the new monstrosity now cutting their space in two. I think they all noticed it was a pretty wacky-looking barrier, but at least they didn’t demonstrate a need to defeat it.
Not right away, anyway.
I spent the first part of the day risking my health due to tick bites by crawling around in the leaves to weed out more volunteer tree sprouts around Cyndie’s strawberry patch. After finding three ticks on me in the three previous days, I somehow escaped getting more yesterday, even though I was doing everything wrong in terms of tick avoidance.
By the time the soccer match got underway, I was safely back in the house to watch it. We got everything we wanted out of the game, seeing Messi score and the home team getting the win handily. It was the best of both worlds.
Speaking of best… a shout out of “All the Best!” to moms on this Mother’s Day! You know who you are.
We are headed to a brunch shortly for a celebration with our kids and Cyndie’s mom. Moms RULE!
.
.
Topped Off
In preparation for the pending installation of a shade sail in the paddock, yesterday, Cyndie and I cut off the last of the big branches on the dying willow tree. This is what it looked like before I started cutting:
Despite a strong, gusting wind and ridiculous footing due to the saturated heavy clay mud all around the tree, all three large limbs came down without a disaster occurring.
If I had needed to make a hasty exit due to an unexpected twisting or a limb snapping where I didn’t intend, there is a good chance I would have needed to leave a boot behind, suctioned in the muck, to pull my foot out and dive clear. Thankfully, no evasive action was required.
I am very grateful that Cyndie was able to act as a spotter and offer smart advice to cut portions at a time but not make more cuts than necessary. She also carried more than her share of heavy loads in the clean-up work after the main cutting was done.
We made good use of all three of our Stihl chainsaw tools to complete this exercise. The little hand pruner is priceless for cutting all the small branches off the main trunks. I needed to use the big saw to cut the large limbs into pieces we could carry. It only required three trips with the trailer behind the ATV to haul away all the debris and leave the paddock and surrounding area looking better than it did before we started.
The result was more dramatic than I anticipated it would be. Removing all that height of branches towering over the small paddock created a startling difference in the ambiance of the entire area. My first impression is that I don’t like the change. However, it won’t be long until the next phase will happen in the form of the shade sail, and I think that will go a long way toward compensating for the loss of the tall willow tree branches.
We are expecting delivery of the canopy by the end of today and the lumber is due to be delivered on Thursday. I am meeting with a local contractor on Wednesday afternoon to negotiate his support to rent a post-hole auger and then supervise or assist as needed in getting the frame erected. I saw his company advertised on the Nextdoor app, offering professional help to lay people trying to accomplish DIY projects that stretch just a little beyond their abilities. It seemed like a perfect fit for this endeavor. It sounded like he felt the same way in our initial email exchanges.
By the end of this week, we should have a good idea of when the groundbreaking will occur. I can’t imagine the horses have any clue about what’s in store.
.
.
Suddenly Blades
They appeared days before our daytime temperature reached 73°F. The mound of manure I have been creating all winter in the large paddock, just a short distance upslope from Lake Paddock, has sprouted blades of new grass!
The cracked grains we feed the horses don’t all get fully digested. There are also scraps of hay that get mucked and tossed on the pile that could contain seeds.
It adds proof to my theory that I can get grass to grow without even trying, in places where it is not intended. It’s a completely different story if it’s a bare spot in the middle of our yard. Then, abject failure. Yet, blades sprout through the asphalt of our driveway.
Maybe I should pave over the bald spots in the lawn. 😑
.
.
Slow Death
In my lifetime, I’ve watched a lot of trees die a slow death. The willow in our small paddock was a beautiful tree when we moved here. When we fenced it in, we knew the risk we were taking and tried to protect the bark with a variety of barriers to prevent horses from chewing on it. That battle was not going to stave off the inevitable because the combination of heavy hoof traffic and standing urine puddles in that very wet soil was killing it from the ground up.
2013
When it became obvious the tree was dying, we removed the protection from the trunk and let the horses have at it. For two growing seasons, I have been shocked by how much green growth was still sprouting amid the tangle of dead branches. Today, the lean is obvious, and I’m not sure the tree will be standing long enough to find out if any new leaves will show up at all this year.
The horses have seemed to enjoy chewing away at the base of their favorite shade spot.
At this point, it hardly offers much shade at all, but they still frequently hang out beneath it, maybe out of habit.
Soon I will have to cut it up and haul the debris away and the horses will have nothing to stand under except for the overhang of the barn. This has me dreaming again of a sail shade for them. I think that would be pretty slick.
I also think it would be pretty expensive to pull off. I have my doubts about such a feature working in our climate year-round and wonder how long a life expectancy a sail would have under relentless UV rays, occasional high winds, and periods of heavy snow. However, in the simple terms of shade on a sunny day, I think it would be a really neat solution.
Maybe we should do a feasibility study on the idea. If it ends up not being a sensible way to provide shade for the horses, there are other possibilities we could consider. Coming up with something that will take the abuse that horses can dish out tends to complicate the search, but by looking for ways other horse folks have solved the issue, I’m sure we could find a reasonably affordable method that beats a dying willow tree.
.
.
Talkin’ Sh✴︎t
Not really talkin’ shit, but that was an irresistible two-word title. More accurately, I’m talking compost, but since it is made from horseshit, that’s not far off. In the many years that I have been experimenting with ways to compost and reuse the horse manure produced by the herds living with us, I’ve developed a pretty reliable system.
The main variable that I have neglected to control effectively is the moisture level of my piles. The area I have chosen for composting piles is not covered by a roof. If it rains too much, my piles can get so wet it disrupts the thermophilic decomposition.
My composting methods are far short of academic control of the carbon/nitrogen ratio or covering the piles with a tarp to control moisture. Honestly, the primary goal is to reduce the volume of manure by getting it to break down. The fact that it produces wonderfully fertile soil in the end is a welcome bonus.
By simply piling the manure and turning it as needed, I’ve been achieving desired results.
Throughout the summer months, I create individual piles in the spot just behind the barn, visible in the photo above. Yesterday, I moved out the last of the season’s composted piles, leaving two active piles in the back and plenty of space to dump more if needed over winter.
Once the winter freeze sets in, I look for alternate places to dump the wheelbarrow since the manure piles won’t break down and shrink, and there have been years I’ve run out of space. One place I have resorted to has begun to produce more impressive black dirt over time than any of my individual piles ever have.
There is a spot in the large paddock where the end of the buried drainage tile from the spigot in the barn comes to daylight. After trying several unsuccessful tricks to keep the horses from stomping around in the area where the drain tile is close to the surface, I got the brilliant idea of covering it with a mound.
The most readily available fill material we have is horse manure, so I piled up frozen wheelbarrows full during winter months and left it throughout the year to settle. The horses can’t leave anything alone so their curious kicking around on the pile through the summer helps break it up and conveniently aerates it.
Every time they mess with it, I rake it back into shape and make sure the deepest part of the mound stays over the drain outlet. This week, I’ve started adding to the mound again because the piles in the composting area are bound to stop being active soon, and mornings have been freezing the manure.
Adding fresh manure to the pile made for a sharp contrast to how very wonderfully soil-like the previous seasons’ dumpings have become. If I keep this up, that little mound will become a fine horse-compatible rise offering safe cover to the drain outlet.
Ain’t that the shit!
.
.
Eaten Tree
There was a time when the willow tree was happy and healthy inside the space that we fenced off for our small paddock. Knowing full well the threat livestock pose to trees within their confines, we tried several versions of barriers intended to keep the horses from chewing the bark. It was fine with us that they munched the hanging branches. It gave the tree a look of being well-trimmed at all times.
After the first few attempts to protect the tree trunk proved insufficient –read: the horses just chewed up whatever we tried using– I chose to wrap the tree with hardware cloth. In time, even that protection broke down under the constant rubbing and biting from the horses, but it no longer appeared to matter by then. The tree was beginning to fail from the compression of the soil around the roots and we suspect, the heavy dose of horse urine that stagnated there as well.
Even when provided two years free of horses in that paddock, the gorgeous willow tree continued to show evidence of an ongoing downward spiral. Based on that, when we found out that new horses would be coming to live with us, we decided we would no longer do anything toward protecting the trunk of the tree.
This is what unobstructed access to the trunk of the tree looks like after two years:
I’m a little surprised by how interested the horses are in the roots. They’ve almost chewed more roots than bark at this point. At the very top of the image, you can see the horses also like to reach up to chew well above their shoulder height. Since we’ve given up on the tree, I see the chewing of tree bark as taking away some of the pressure on the boards and fencing around the overhang.
.
.
First Sighting
After all the years of hearing them and losing chickens to them, yesterday I finally saw my first coyote on our property. It was mid-morning and I had tethered Delilah to a small tree while I coaxed the horses back into the paddock from the pasture. Actually, Mix and Light were already in by the barn.
Swings was close to coming in but decided she still should kick into a big run, which helped energize Mia, who was much further out in the field, to also accelerate into a run. It saved me from needing to trudge all the way out there to get her. I hustled behind them to close the gate before they might decide to keep running and loop right back out again.
That’s when I noticed the odd-looking gangly juvenile coyote standing in the paddock near the waterer, all ears with spindly legs and an ugly long tail. It didn’t seem very jumpy but looked like the rush of horse energy showing up was enough to convince it to take a walk.
I tried to hurry my latching of the gate chain and rush back to get Delilah so we could add a little convincing of our own to show that intruder it shouldn’t be here. I’m sure that Delilah was clueless at that point, but she definitely picked up my urgency and gladly rushed off in pursuit of anything just as fast as she could drag me.
As we rounded the backside of the barn I caught a glimpse of the lone young coyote moving beyond the hay shed toward the north loop trail. Its pace wasn’t the least bit threatened which led me to feel it was acting with a rather cocky level of self-confidence. Too bad I couldn’t move fast enough to allow Delilah to close much distance on the trespasser.
When we reached the road, I saw the rather mangy-looking youngster trot across the neighbor’s lawn across the street. It looked back to check on our pursuit once before disappearing over the horizon.
I wish it hadn’t looked so comfortable in the paddock before leaving. I take some solace in knowing it won’t find any chicken dinners here for the time being.
.
.
Wanting Green
The horses are starting to seem a little hangry with the amount of grass surrounding the paddock that is turning deliciously green.
I’m wondering if they will be so excited when we open the gate to the back pasture that they will take off running as if they were in a race like they did last year. The other option, which I’ve witnessed more often than not, is that they will take one step through the gate and start munching grass like they may never get another chance.
At present, they are twisting their necks to reach under the bottom boards of the fence to nibble any blades they can reach and then they look at me like I must be thick-headed not to understand they want out.
I tried cleaning up manure before the next series of predicted rainy days and made it about halfway through the paddock before the wheelbarrow was full and I was out of time. I see again more evidence proving an off-handed comment our fence installer made about the ground being high along old fence lines.
My mind tried to imagine why there would be a build-up of earth along a fence over the years but now, having heavy animals, I see they compress the dirt everywhere except under the fence, leaving that as the higher ground.
The horses pack the ground so densely that it’s hard for the grass to grow. Never mind that grass seems perfectly able to grow through our asphalt driveway.
Even when an odd tuft of grass does overcome the compacted soil and start to grow, the horses kill it by munching it down to a nub.
Given enough evolutionary time, I wonder if horses could learn to leave enough grass growth that it doesn’t all die so that they always have some fresh green blades to eat.
I suspect they’d prefer to not be confined to a paddock or any fenced boundaries so they wouldn’t have to worry about overeating in one limited space.
Won’t be too much longer before we can open up the pasture for them. I offered to drive Cyndie down along the path around the back pasture so she could watch them in case they take off in a gallop again. Even though she is making good progress a week and two days after her knee replacement surgery, she isn’t ready to walk the uneven surfaces of our property yet.
Her first physical therapy appointment was last Tuesday and the therapist gave her permission to take a stroll outdoors on our driveway with her walker as soon as the weather takes a turn toward warm and dry. It was a pretty safe grant to make since Cyndie is healing well and the weather shows little sign of improving for quite some time.
She’s going to get a little hangry herself, waiting to get out of her post-surgery confinement so she can walk outdoors again.
Soon, I say.
Relatively, that is.
.
.
Spider’s Nest?
There is a corner of our large paddock where the grass has grown pretty tall that I wander by frequently when pushing the wheelbarrow during manure management duty. I recently came upon what looked like a well-shaped hole formed out of the surrounding grass, almost like some burrowing animal was making a nest.
Being a person with no interest in getting surprised by a snake, I am hesitant to make close inspections in areas of tall grass. I didn’t see anything obvious at the bottom of that hole in the grass from my safe distance of slightly leaning forward.
A couple of days later, the hole seemed even more well-defined, and this time, there was an obvious occupant present.
Looks like a garden spider to me.
Does anybody know if the spider might have created that “hole” or is it more probable she was simply taking advantage of an excellent location somebody else had already made?
If it wasn’t the spider that made that nicely rounded nest in the grass, was it a bird or maybe a rabbit? Seems like all the birds around here prefer to make their nests in and around the barn ceiling and eaves. If we still had chickens, I’d expect to see that hole filling up with precious eggs, based on past experience.
I think it was the spider, but I have no idea if that is even possible.
Anyone out there have knowledge of the capabilities of Argiope aurantia?
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 