Posts Tagged ‘round pen’
Carpal Punishment
After two days of wielding hand tools, I’m paying a price of numbness in my hands. Regardless the prescribed wearing of wrist braces while I sleep, the numbness that morphs into a pain that wakes me in the earliest hours of the morning broke up an otherwise fine sleep last night.
Takes a bit of a toll on the typing, too.
I pushed myself a little beyond my limit yesterday, because I was getting closer by the minute to completing the trench and berm around the round pen, and a storm was building fast on the horizon.
Holy cow, was that a lively thunder-boomer! Delilah was in a constant state of alarm over the flashing and crashing. Wind blew and rain poured, but we were spared the dangerously large hail listed as possible in the warning from the National Weather Service.
We figured it would be an excellent test of our efforts of the last two days, but had no idea whether we were going to be bombarded with epic amounts of water or something reasonable. It seemed last night like it was pouring pretty hard, so we prepared ourselves for any outcome.
Turns out, we were spared any extremes and received a reasonable 1.25 inches overnight. Cyndie took a picture of the minor amount of residual standing water in my new trench outside the round pen. Other than that, things held pretty well.
Good for those things that held. I wish I could say the same for me. I’m finding it hard to hold much of anything today.
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Group Effort
Under a strange sky on a day when rain wasn’t predicted, Cyndie and I planned to work on improving the landscape around the round pen to stop the sand from getting carried away in runoff every time it storms.
The passing disturbance in the sky overhead dropped some intermittent showers that were light enough that nothing became soaking wet, so it didn’t interfere with our efforts.
While Cyndie worked on the low side of the round pen, reclaiming sand that had spilled out when 7 inches of rain poured down on us last Wednesday, I prepared the soil on the outside perimeter by pulling our ABI rake/grader behind the Grizzly ATV.
It was working perfectly until impact with a rock sheared the bolts holding the hitch on the Griz. With towing done for the time being, I picked up a shovel and went to work shaping a trench and berm combination in hopes of preventing the water from flowing directly through the round pen.
If I got the slope shaped right, the water should meander around to the low side where it can make its way harmlessly into the drainage swale, minus our precious sand.
Obviously, this is effort that would have best been done before we brought in the sand, but we were in a hurry to get the footing in the round pen improved in time for the training sessions that had been planned.
With Delilah off-leash and the horses free to mingle, we had a lot of “helpers” that were keeping us company while we worked. Between her bouts of barking at the horses for no good reason and wrestling with their exercise balls that she thinks are her toys, Delilah took time to stop by and help me while I dug up the sod. I would toss a shovel-full to the perfect spot for building up the berm, and then she would grab that piece of sod like it was a piece of steak, carry it away, and tear it apart heroically before coming back for more.
Seriously, she took three of the best pieces I had placed in a short span of time, but I didn’t have the heart to dissuade her, as she seemed to think she was doing the greatest job of helping me. That berm better not leak at that spot or she is going to be held permanently responsible.
The horses were also inspired to participate in their own way. Shortly after I got started, Hunter grazed his way so close to me that I didn’t have room to work the shovel. At that point, he was standing on the area I hadn’t dug up yet, so he was packing down the soil I had just churned up with the grader. At that proximity, he also ended up sharing the cloud of flies that were all over him.
They have my full sympathy about the flies. They went up my nose more than once which can really make one irritable. I considered trying on one of their fly masks, but figured the fit might not work out quite right.
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Legacy and Dezirea wandered over to inspect my progress and test out the trench. It confirmed for me that they would have no problem navigating the altered footing in the vicinity of the pen. I think it met with their approval.
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August Rainsaster
The predicted October-like storm, with potential for record-setting low pressure for this time of year, unleashed the greatly feared torrents of flash flooding rain on us yesterday.
It revealed several areas where we need to improve our water management if we hope to withstand the ongoing onslaught of gully-washing downpour events that keep happening with increasing frequency.
When I got home from work and went outside to check on things, there was 4.5 inches of water in the rain gauge. I knew from that amount that the round pen would not have fared well for losing sand, so was prepared for the worst.
In spite of the heartbreaking mess of runoff sand, it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. I could see where some of the worst spots were for the water running into the round pen, and quickly went to work with a shovel to dig channels for draining water around, instead of through.
I also dug several pathways to encourage water to more quickly flow out of the paddocks, before it pooled up and drained toward the round pen.
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Back up at the barn, where our gutter upgrade has yet to happen, the old system was failing brilliantly. I needed to pull the downspout to clear an obstruction, soaking myself in the process, and then discovered fixing that just transferred the overflow to the bottom where the downspout enters the buried drain tube. Something, either the recent dump truck activity or simple horse traffic, appears to have impeded the flow down the buried tube. That will be a doozy to fix.
While walking down to check whether anything was flowing out of the bottom of the buried tube (—it wasn’t—), I saw that an old drain channel I had created to entice flow out of the small paddock was flowing like a raging river. Yay! A success!
But when I reached the fence line, where the ditch opened to my main drainage swale (I thought), I found that the water was curling and flowing back into the paddock, traveling along the inside of the fence down to the bottom corner by the round pen —just the area I was trying to avoid.
It was now raining hard again at that point, and I was about as wet as could be. I was tired, saddened, and feeling entirely defeated. Dragging my sorry soaked self up toward the house, I checked the rain gauge again to see that an additional inch had fallen while I was out.
I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat.
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Incredible Focus
Horses are experts at paying attention. That is one of the reasons they are so good as facilitators of our learning exercises. They don’t miss a thing.
During preparations for an exercise in the round pen, all 4 horses stood in close proximity to the participants, whether they were involved or not.
At one point during the afternoon, I spotted 2 of the horses turned around and facing the other direction. There was something in the distance, not visible to us, that the horses had alerted on from two different positions. Their heads were positioned identically, and moved together as if they were connected.
While they stood watch, the other two remained calm and kept their attention on our activity, feeling safe to entrust their well-being to the two sentinels. Whatever it was that had gotten their attention must have disappeared shortly thereafter, and they rotated like a compass needle, to point back at the round pen.
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Wish Granted
Pretty much from the very first day that we assembled the fence panels of the round panel, Cyndie has been wanting sand on the ground in there. We are darn close now. She’s got sand, finally, just not quite enough.
Our source of lime screenings for our paddock, and sand for the round pen, is an excavating company that delivers by dump truck. Yes, that’s the very same company that did the initial damage to our paved driveway over 2 years ago with their heavy truck.
We’ve gotten over that, and the driveway, intentionally neglected ever since, has reached a point where further heavy traffic on it doesn’t seem to make any significant difference. The paddock, on the other hand, suffers quite an impression from the heavily loaded truck.
To save money, and because the excavators don’t have time, we opted to do the spreading ourselves. Their truck can fit through two of our gates to get close to the round pen, but not through the last one, so he dumps it just short of the target.
I was able to leave the day-job early yesterday and quickly jumped onto the tractor seat for my exercise in frustration. It isn’t quite as bad as I make it out to be, because I do move a lot of sand in a reasonable amount of time, but I just haven’t mastered the art of getting that big machine to do exactly what I want, when I want.
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There’s a lot of physics involved when you add a full load in the bucket on the front, which causes the tractor to handle in mysterious ways sometimes. I have a penchant for spinning my wheels more than I like. That ends up creating divots of my own, which I then repeatedly roll into in the process of scooping up subsequent loads. That complicates my attempts to adjust the height of the bucket when approaching to pick up a load, as the up and down of the front wheels alters the level of the bucket.
Repeatedly, in my attempts to scrape the bottom of the pile off the top of the ground, I ended up digging down into the paddock dirt, when all I wanted was sand from the pile. It wreaks havoc on a person’s perfectionism, I tell ya.
With Cyndie’s help on some ground work, I got the bulk of the pile moved inside the pen. It still needs to be spread out better in there, but the pile has been cleared out enough that there is room for them to drop another load that is needed to finish the job.
After that, I moved on to distribute a pile of lime screenings that had been dumped right inside the gate of the paddock. We needed additional lime screenings to fill in the rills that the rain has created on the slope beyond the barn roof. I had to get that pile moved to make room for the dump truck to back in again toward the round pen with a second load of sand.
If we can get that to happen, Cyndie will have the rest of her wish finally granted, and the horses will finally have a layer of sand to do laps on in the round pen. It’s turning out just like we planned!
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Custom Workout
A while back we spread a thin base layer of gravel in the round pen and I drove on it with the 4-wheeler, hoping to pack it down. I’m not sure it helped. The turn radius that was required seemed to disturb the surface about as much as it packed it. I’d call it a draw. We let it set for a week or so, walked the horses on it some, then decided it was good enough. Time to move on to putting down layer-two: lime screenings.
It has been dry enough lately that the dump truck was able to back all the way through the paddocks up to the gate that opens to the round pen. I made a couple of test runs with our wheelbarrow to move material in, quickly deducing the tractor would be the more effective method. That meant I needed to remove a panel from the round pen, but that can be accomplished with a reasonable amount of effort. Tasks like that are why I don’t need to go to a gym and lift weights to maintain my chiseled physique.
Trying to maneuver an object that is too tall and almost too heavy to lift, while being careful to protect myself from exacerbating problems with degenerating discs in the lumbar region of my back, is an amazing workout on the rest of the body.
To be successful, there is a point when the too-tall object slowly begins to lean in an undesired direction that a person needs to give up trying to hold it upright, and let it gravity have its way. I pick my battles. It is a way to survive, allowing me to pick it back up and finish moving it where I want.
Strangely, I find the effort of moving the pile using the loader on the tractor almost as tedious as, and much less satisfying than, using the wheelbarrow. I suppose my unskilled technique with the machine is a primary reason. I expect I’d enjoy it more if I was proficient at it, but I don’t enjoy using it enough to spend the time necessary to master the nuances that currently evade me. Maybe in time…
When the entire round pen was covered with a thick layer of lime screenings, I experimented with a few methods of packing it. The tamper worked really well, and it was another great workout for the arms and shoulder, but I couldn’t justify spending the time necessary to do the entire surface by hand like that.
Dezirea made a gesture toward assisting me as I worked, but then chose to pack only a very small area by standing still for the majority of her visit.
I switched my energy to dragging a metal fence section across the surface, which gave it a nice appearance, but didn’t contribute a whole lot to packing it. Today I will bring in the 4-wheeler again to gently drive around, and drag that fence section. We’ll let time pass to help the surface settle and then order the delivery of sand to finish off the surface.
I’m mulling over how I will spread the sand with the tractor without disrupting the lime screenings at the same time. It will be a chance to practice taking my machine skills to a new level.
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Big Strides
Today we have reached a milestone of 2-years since the day we stood in the suburban Verizon store making a purchase of a mobile device to provide internet access at our new home. I know that because our 2-year contract ends on the 17th. That step was the first of many we would be making to transfer our lives from Eden Prairie, MN to rural Beldenville, WI. For some reason, I have a solid memory of that Verizon event, probably because it was the first. Most of my other memories are much more vague.
With the daytime temperature yesterday soaring into the 70s, it was a banner day to get things done around here. I finally finished getting the bird feeder re-built and re-installed in its old location outside the sunroom. It feels great to have that off my list.
I spread out just enough of the pile of gravel in our driveway to see there would be enough to put some down as a base in the round pen. That is another goal we have wanted to achieve for a long, long time. Cyndie is home from work for a couple of days and she was able to help distribute the gravel that I was bringing with the tractor.
She also asked for my camera and took some action shots while I was manning the controls. You can see I left the wood chipper attached to the back, to serve as a counter-balance, but that was a nuisance because it inhibited my maneuverability inside the limited space of the round pen.
Luckily, she didn’t get pictures of me panicking at the start when I realized I left a gate open and the horses were getting into the area I intended to work. I had removed a panel from the round pen and laid it down, and then propped open the gate into that pasture area. Then I headed off to get the tractor. As I was driving over to get access to the gravel pile from behind the barn, I spotted the horses milling about in the area I was planning to work.
I stopped the tractor and rushed over to remedy the situation, but did not check my energy. They picked up on my anxiety right away and started their own mini-panic. Two of them reacted correctly and rushed back into the paddock. The other two turned the opposite direction, extending my problem. I didn’t know which way to go, back to close the perimeter gate I had propped open which would give them a complete escape, or to the paddock to contain the two who had moved inside where I wanted them.
My hesitation allowed the two in the paddock to come rushing back out where I didn’t want them. In their hasty flight, they cut right through an area of composted manure I had spread to create a viewing plateau. Legacy slipped in it and smeared his entire right flank with a huge tattoo of blackness, but kept his momentum going and continued on with the rest of them.
I eventually restored order and got on with my task, but they were all amped up and continued to sprint around the hay-field and back into the paddock a few times before finally settling down again. Cyndie said that they were getting some good exercise out of it.
Between their energized running and our finally accomplishing the goal of getting a base layer down in the round pen, it was a day of truly big strides.
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Momentary Bliss
We had some blissful moments yesterday, working in the paddocks and round pen with the horses grazing around us. Cyndie decided to allow Delilah to accompany us, off-leash. That exercise went surprisingly well, until it didn’t. More on that, later.
Like happens so many times around here, I set off with one project in mind, and then found myself drawn to work on another. I was intending to cut down some small trees in the recently cut field north of the driveway where the brush cutter wasn’t able to mow. I never made it out there. The allure of the herd was just too great.
I needed to stop by the paddocks, because I had offered to bring in the wheelbarrow for Cyndie to harvest the latest crop of fertilizer. That’s when I noticed that Cyndie had included the gate to the round pen when she opened up the gates to grazing fields after she fed the horses earlier in the morning. While we have been busy with other things, the dirt of our round pen area has been getting overgrown with grass. They have been grazing the area around the pen, but the grass inside was untouched. Horses to the rescue!
Cayenne was the only horse inside the pen, when I showed up. I decided I wanted to pick up where I had left off last week on the task of turning over the soil in the round pen while the horses were around. It didn’t take long for the other horses to notice my presence, and in no time, I had 4 helpers. With all 5 of us inside the round pen together, Cyndie came over to take a picture:
After a break for lunch, I moved just outside the round pen to cut down growth that had sprouted from a stump left over from last fall’s project to clear that area. Delilah was with me, alternating between being entirely fascinated with piles of poop she came across, and digging and chewing on the stump and sprouts I was cutting.
Once again, the horses moseyed over to graze right beside where I was working. I looked up at one point and paused to absorb the bliss of Delilah nosing around in the grass among the four grazing horses, beside Cyndie and I toiling away on our respective tasks. Delilah had had a spectacular day off-leash. Cyndie had walked her up and down the driveway, practicing commands and rewarding her with treats. Delilah had stayed close to Cyndie, following her commands, when Cyndie was cleaning the paddocks.
At one point, Delilah and Hunter greeted each other, nose to nose, with no adverse reaction from either of them. Cyndie and I instantly shared the same hope that those two might somehow become fast friends. Delilah continued to receive treats rewarding her good behavior and the horses remained calm despite the dog wandering among them. We were enjoying things working the way we envisioned they could.
I have no idea what changed. Maybe it was that Delilah still has a lot of puppy in her, and just couldn’t hold herself any longer. She wanted to play a game of chase, and the horses make such irresistible targets. While Cyndie and I hollered at Delilah, the pursuit spun around the outside of the round pen fence. With me brandishing a shovel and Cyndie, a rake, we eventually collared the dog to put an abrupt end to the disruption, and an instant revocation of Delilah’s off-leash liberties.
Realizing how quickly things can go awry is probably why the moments of perfect harmony seem so incredibly blissful.
New Pen
We set up the first round pen yesterday. Cyndie purchased panels online and had them delivered here. We stacked a few at a time into the pickup truck in order to drive them around to the far side of the paddock, to the spot we prepared. It took some adjusting to get them all to fit, but they are easy to connect to one another, and other than some heavy 2-person lifting, it was one of the easier things we’ve tried to do around here.
It looks good, except for the fact it creates another echo of the fact we have no horses here yet. They can’t be far off now. We still haven’t secured the proper insurance, but requests have been made for quotes. We need to get the ground around the waterer in the paddocks rocked to create good surface for the heavy traffic that will occur there. With luck, that will happen this coming week.
Horses by Labor Day? Maybe just after. It was Labor Day weekend, last year, that our offer to buy this place was accepted.
What a year it has been.
Relative Something 