Posts Tagged ‘paddocks’
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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Sail Up
The next milestone on the shade sail project has been achieved; the sail is up in the small paddock, hanging from 4 new posts. We aren’t finished with the project yet, as there are currently extra braces in place, and we plan to add some 45° angled supports to the header boards and then cut off the extra length of each header. At that time, we may also trim away the extra post height at the top of the two posts where the sail attaches at a lower point.
Leaving all the extra lengths is just a precautionary decision in case we decide we want to make adjustments to the geometry for any reason. We are leaving the temporary supports in place to allow time for all the earth we dug up to settle around each post.
At first, the holes appeared to be dry at the bottom, but we soon saw water flowing into them. More evidence to Cyndie and me that either the water table is pretty high here or we have a natural spring in the vicinity, about 3 or 4 feet below the surface.
The goop coming out of the holes was like the vintage 1960s playset, “Silly Sand.” That made it a challenge to get the holes as deep as we wanted.
We even tried a sump pump to remove standing water, just long enough to establish a base of concrete blocks and gravel fill. Pumping was only moderately successful.
When all four posts were vertical and Justin got the eyebolts in place, it was time to retrieve the sail from the barn.
I just unhooked one corner at a time and said, “Cyndie, hold this,” for each one. Soon, she had the entire sail in her arms.
Even though there was a slight wind to contend with, the outdoor connections weren’t troublesome to make at all.
A shout-out to the heroes who contributed greatly to my attempt to bring this vision in my head into reality:
- My son, Julian, for his technical expertise in creating a virtual sail for me to play with and see how the shadow would move as the sun crosses the sky.
- Architect (mostly retired), Mike Wilkus, for his willingness to listen to me describe my thinking and offer counsel on possibilities.
- New online connection and friend, Emily Pratt Slatin, for her engineering insights from her career in the Fire Department, dealing with equipment tolerances and code enforcement.
- Contractor, Justin Schneider of HomeWorks Consulting, LLC, for the hands-on skills, tools, knowledge, and experience I lack in this otherwise DIY project.
We are relying on the header boards to counter the pull that the tightening of the sail will apply to the posts. It will clutter the super cool visual of the hyperbolic parabola of the sail, but I chose to angle the boards to offer support to that twisting look. If I change my mind after a few days of looking at the structure, there is still an option to square up the header boards around the top and leave a clean visual of the sail geometry below them.
It was a really long day in the hot sun, which made it all the sweeter when the sail went up, providing some very welcome, precious shade. I think the horses are going to find this to be a very nice addition to their living quarters.
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Asserting Myself
It is rare that I feel a need to get aggressive with the horses. Yesterday morning was one of those rare moments. To do this story justice, a little background should be understood, so please bear with me as I prepare the scene.
First off, the wooden fenced area we refer to as the paddocks can be split in two by closing gates. Two of our horses get a larger serving of grain than the others, so we pair them up with Mix and Mia on the small paddock side of the barn overhang and Light and Swings on the large side.
They understand the routine well enough that if they aren’t already in the designated positions when we emerge from the barn with feed buckets, they usually adjust in short order. Up at the overhang, there is a short alleyway between the two paddocks that is passable most of the time. When they are in position to be served grain, we swing two gates 90 degrees to block the alleyway.
Since we will be moving in and out of each side multiple times, usually with our hands occupied, it helps if we don’t need to secure the gates with chains each time. To solve that, we conveniently park the wheelbarrow across the alleyway between the two gates so the horses can’t cross, but we can step our skinny little selves around the gates with minimal difficulty.
Mix and Light in a rare moment of sharing a hay net as if they were BFFs. Whaaat!? Not usually.
I’m usually busy filling the wheelbarrow with manure at this point while Cyndie is serving feed buckets and filling hay nets.
Are you with me so far?
One more thing: each paddock has a gate to the hay field that we leave open. If they want to, the horses can get to the other side when we have the alleyway blocked by walking down past the waterer, out one gate and in the other to disturb the horses eating on the other side. It’s not usually an issue these days because they tend to remain occupied with their own buckets, and walking all the way around isn’t really worth the effort.
It all works like a charm until the horses decide they have a different agenda.
I’ve been on my own for a week, and the horses are well aware of my routine. They’ve been patient with my being able to only do one thing at a time. When I popped out of the barn for the first time, they were all in the right spots for feeding, so I closed the alleyway, cleaned off their placemats, and went inside to prepare the buckets of grain.
When I emerged again, Light and Swings had taken that long trek down and around to now be standing on the wrong side and in the way of Mix and Mia. A power move, for sure, but I was not going to help them at all. I served their grain buckets in the regular spots and left Mix and Mia’s on the ground by the door. All the four horses could do was stare at the grain in frustration.
Light and Swings didn’t take the hint and stood their ground defiantly, so I just busied myself sprucing up their side and filling their hay nets while horses fussed. I was not about to re-open that alleyway for them. They chose to go down and around; I felt they should go back the way they came if they wanted to eat.
When I ran out of things to do, I decided to help them understand what we were all waiting for. I stepped around the gate and energetically pushed them to get the heck out of there and go around. All four horses got riled up at this dance, but it was very easy for Mix and Mia to see that they were not at fault as my attention remained solely on the other two.
It took a couple of loops down around the dying willow and back up before Swings and Light figured out they could get away from my pressure by going through the gate I was directing them toward. As soon as they did, I served Mix and Mia their buckets, and in a blink, everyone was calm and back to grazing.
I think I successfully made my point. For the record, no shenanigans occurred at the evening feeding. ‘Nuff said.
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Intentional Avoidance
We are headed into a late January thaw this week, so we pulled the blankets off the horses yesterday afternoon. They seemed just fine with that.
Since we haven’t received new snow in quite a while, the intentionally avoided areas in the paddock have become ever more obvious.
The horses are staying off Paddock Lake in the distance, and the icy area in the foreground, except for that one time it looked like one of them might have slipped and fallen on it. Otherwise, all the little paw prints in those spaces are probably made by coyotes.
There might be a few less coyotes roaming our neighborhood after Saturday. There were at least six trucks, many with hunting dog cages, patrolling our vicinity, and all that activity had Asher in a tizzy. Poor dog isn’t able to ignore things over which he has no control.
My intentional avoidance of political news has proved rather effective for my mental health over the last couple of months. I’ve detected a notable uptick in messages and comments online in the last week that hinted at an increase in the nastiness I seek to evade. I’m finding it hard to imagine I could somehow keep this up for a full four years minimum, but since it’s worked well enough thus far, I plan to keep practicing this intention for all I’m worth.
Whatever will happen is going to play out whether or not I’m looking and listening. I prefer keeping my attention on the beauty and wonder of our immediate surroundings, where I have plenty of influence to make improvements and foster love.
Feel free to join me by practicing making a positive impact in the local communities wherever you live.
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Watching Steps
We now have just enough of a snow blanket to conceal areas where ice has formed from hydrostatic pressure pushing water to the surface. There is a short curve in our North Loop Trail that gets frequent use, and it has become rather precarious as a result.
When surveying the variety of tracks in the paddock, I noticed that the horses are keen about staying off Paddock Lake.
Yesterday morning, I was looking around the mound that protects the area where drain tile from the barn reaches the air. Just beyond that, a broad span of ice builds up from runoff. It is not entirely clear what happened there, but my first thought was to question why the horses would have risked walking on that mound of ice.
It looked like somebody had laid down there. My second perception involved the possibility it was an unintended lay down as a result of a slip. Yikes. Happily, none of the horses showed any sign of injury.
On the other hand, we do have Mia behaving unusually. She doesn’t seem like she is in any pain, but something seems different. She is more distant than usual and becoming more solitary, isolating herself from the others more than normal. We haven’t seen her drinking water recently, but she was eating more normally yesterday. There is no evidence to lead us to believe she isn’t drinking when we’re not around to observe.
Last night, Cyndie went out to check on Mia after dark. With the sky clear, the moonlight was brilliant and Cyndie took a picture of her in the hay field.
The streak of light is a passing car on the road.
We are hoping the warmer weather expected over the next few days will reinvigorate Mia and dispel any concerns about her overall health.
We would welcome a break from the nagging feeling there is something more we should be doing for her.
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Eagle Visit
It was a cold morning yesterday and if we had any pumpkins there would have been frost on them. We do have a lot of leaves, though.
The temperature dropped far enough below freezing that the surface of “Paddock Lake” developed a layer of ice.
Since I’ve been pondering our role in the ongoing rescue of our four thoroughbreds, I took a few pictures of them in the early sunlight as they were gobbling their mix of cracked oats and corn.
Swings with her fresh application of mud.
Mix’s nose.
Mia
Light
Eight hours later, we showed up for the afternoon feeding. I was out scooping manure, and Cyndie was inside, measuring portions into their buckets. Mia was halfway down the slope toward the waterer, munching hay from one of the nets hung on the fence. Suddenly, I noticed Mia had flipped around 180 degrees and was standing on alert, looking to the south.
I scanned the distance to see if I could find what was grabbing her attention. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, my eyes moved back toward Mia, and that’s when I spotted what she was reacting to. A very large bald eagle was standing about five feet in front of her on the shore of the now iceless Paddock Lake.
It’s odd that I hadn’t noticed it when I looked around the first time. The eagle’s bald head stood out with its bright whiteness, and it was so incredibly tall compared to all the little pigeons that are about to get their own zipcode due to a population explosion.
I couldn’t be certain how long it had been there, but because Mia had just noticed, I’m guessing it hadn’t been very long. I don’t even know if it had enough time to drink because, as Mia approached the eagle took off.
Luckily, I had gotten Cyndie’s attention quickly enough that she came out just in time to see the big bird’s departure.
A huge eagle landing in our paddock while we were milling around felt like a nice ‘hat tip’ of appreciation from the universe to let us know things are good here.
It also tells me I’m not the only one noticing that little puddle seems to be forming into more than just a puddle. I’m feeling all the more justified in granting that watering hole a real name.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Relative Something 