Posts Tagged ‘Wintervale Ranch’
Flowing Along
If the weather predictions for today come true, we may literally be flowing along by the end of the day. Reminiscent of a year ago, when the Tour of Minnesota bike trip faced epic amounts of rain and flooding, today Wintervale Ranch is included in a flash flood watch. Remnants of what was Pacific Hurricane Blanca will be bringing us torrential rainfall with potential flooding this afternoon and overnight.
Cyndie and I ventured out last evening to contemplate our preparedness, and it became apparent there is little we can do but let mother nature have her way and react to whatever aftermath we face. I don’t have any idea yet about how we might mitigate the erosion that is happening on the hill around the barn. Heavy rain today will likely expand on the current ruts created by the last two significant rain events.
After walking the back pasture last night and surveying the drainage swale again, I felt inclined to just leave it be as is and see if flowing water will carve a path through the sediment that has accumulated in order to reach the ditch at our property border. It won’t look like the precise, wide slope of a swale that I had in mind, but I can adapt my vision.
Delilah received some quality attention in the form of a thorough brushing, which has become a daily occurrence lately in attempt to rid her of the underlying fur left over from winter. Wednesday was an exceptionally hot and humid day for this time of year and she appeared to struggle with keeping herself comfortable.
My exercise in throttling back my daily sugar consumption continues to leave me feeling tired and lacking in stamina. It has me wondering about the intense weight loss regimens that drive participants to do heavy workouts while also making strict diet corrections. I don’t think I could do both at the same time. I know the physical abilities of my former self, and right now I can’t achieve a fraction of what I use to do when I was eating unconscious amounts of sugar.
So, lacking any other strong motivation, I am settling in with a frame of mind to just go with the flow. What will be, will be.
Let it rain.
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Sophomore Slump
I don’t think sophomore slump is necessarily the best description for what I am feeling, but it is what came to mind for me. We have had our horses for a little over a year and a half now, and that just so happens to be the same amount of time for which I have experience with most everything to do with horses.
I came to this gig as a novice and have been relying primarily on intuition as my guide on how to care for them, beyond what I have gleaned from watching and listening to Cyndie, our farrier—George, and the two equine veterinarians who have been here.
If anything, I have leaned toward growing somewhat cocky over the success I have had thus far with our herd of 4, but I am very aware of how limited my experience really is. There is a lot more left to know than the limited understanding I have acquired thus far. What I’m trying to describe is that I feel like I have gained enough experience to no longer be a novice, but not enough to confidently guide my actions beyond the simple acts of feeding and brushing them out.
Yesterday, after brushing Legacy from head to toe because he stepped up and indicated a desire for it, I set down the brushes and took off my gloves to work on a tangle in his mane. With my attention on the twisted knot, I missed any hint he might be displeased with my activity. Suddenly he nipped my pant leg and pinched some flesh.
It brought out an involuntary yell of, “Ouch!” which startled all 4 of them. I angrily backed Legacy off and cut short my attention to all of them.
I am well aware that I have neglected to effectively teach Legacy to respect my space. I find myself in a bit of limbo between mastering the art of communicating with the conscious awareness I have come to believe horses possess, and the more traditional ways of repetitive lessons to establish desired behaviors in horses.
I see it as my sophomore slump that I know a little bit, but not enough to be as effective as I would like. Something tells me that if I continue to allow the horses to be my guides, Legacy will continue to have the upper hand. It’s back to the books for me, to refresh what I already know and then expand beyond that toward a new level of skills and confidence.
In no time I will find myself into my third year with the horses, and by then I would hope a sophomore slump to be a thing of the past.
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Evening Quiet
As Cyndie stepped out the door last night for Delilah’s last walk of the evening, I heard her telling me it was really nice outside. How could I resist? I hurried into my boots to join them for a stroll.
The warmth of the sunny afternoon was just beginning to slip away and darkness was making progress toward cloaking visibility. Looking back over our house to the west, the waxing crescent moon looked picture-post-card-perfect, complimented by the striking brightness of celestial bodies Venus and Jupiter, evoking a magical feeling in the moment.
It was mostly quiet, except for the odd sound that may have been a raccoon letting its presence be known. It didn’t seem to distract Delilah one bit from the rabbit scent she was ravenously exploring. The thick smoke from the neighbor’s wood burning furnace was creating a thin line in both directions, hanging low in a thermal inversion of the valley air a mile away.
I had in mind to get the gate to the arena space closed, to keep the horses out of the confined alleyways overnight. As I made my way into the paddock, Cyndie gently called Legacy to bring the herd back inside. All 4 horses obliged, with the closest two, Cayenne and Hunter, coming in to meet me before I even reached the gate I was about to close.
Legacy and Dezirea turned to come in the paddock, but Legs stopped right in the opening. Both Cyndie and I were sweet talking them with encouragement to keep them coming in our desired direction. I was trying to convey my intention to close the gate, and began moving it in that direction. Legacy took the hint and stepped far enough in to clear, and Dezirea took advantage of that opening to walk right up to me and leaned into the gate.
Dezirea in a recent daytime shot
She wanted me to scratch her itches. I wanted to grant her wish, but after I got the gate hitched. Her forwardness set me to giggling as she insistingly stood up against me in the way of my closing the gate.
I pretty much had to push her hindquarters out of the way, and there she stood, awaiting my return. With the chain clipped, I turned around and dragged my fingernails through her dusty, waxy, shedding coat.
After my week of healing from poison ivy, I know all too well of that orgasmic feeling of having itches scratched. The horses stiffen their necks and bob their heads while making funny expressions with their lips. She was loving it.
I tired quickly and glanced around at the other horses, wondering if I had started something that I wasn’t entirely prepared to fulfill. Luckily, the late hour and encroaching darkness seemed to put them all in a sleepy calm that allowed me to saunter off toward Cyndie and Delilah outside the paddock without needing to give each one a fair turn.
It was the kind of beautiful evening that had us overflowing with gratefulness for our animals and this beautiful place where we live.
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Quick Fix
I paid for my neglect.
Cyndie pointed out something yesterday in our back pasture as we were strolling the grounds toward the labyrinth, after visiting the horses with her parents and our kids. We had just enjoyed a scrumptious Mother’s Day brunch at our house before heading out into the cool, blustery wind. Rain had been predicted, but the pending arrival was moved to much later in the day.
It’s a good thing that most of the day was dry, because it gave me a chance to remedy a situation that occurred because my failure to follow through on a plan. When the drain tile was installed last fall, it was left up to me to place grids over the trenches in high traffic areas. I didn’t do anything about it in the days after the contractor had finished his work, and then winter arrived and it all became buried in snow and ice.
Honestly, I just haven’t been concerned enough about it this spring to take any action yet. Then Cyndie alerted me to how the recent heavy downpour of rain had washed away stones at the end of the line that runs into the pasture. That left some of the tubing exposed, which revealed areas where the weight of the horses had pushed through the wet ground deep enough to collapse the tube in several spots.
Luckily, the damage occurred at the end of the line where it just runs out into the pasture, and the installer had run the tubing far enough out that I could shorten it without putting the areas I was trying to protect at risk. As soon as visiting family departed, I set about installing the fix that was always meant to be in place.
I pulled up the portion of drain tube that had collapsed and then cut it off to make a new end. We had some of the plastic landscape grids available that were left from previous projects, so I just needed to do a bit of digging to seat the grids level with the ground surface, and then backfill them with stones and dirt to keep them in place.
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It was quick enough work to make me regret that I hadn’t been more disciplined about just getting it done before any damage occurred. The silver lining is that I now have a chance to protect the other high traffic areas before horses will be stomping around the vicinity.
The other spots aren’t as high-risk as this one in the field was. The area where the damage occurred is where the line drains to the surface, so the tubing was getting closer and closer to ground level. Nonetheless, I will be upset with myself it I don’t install the grids in the other locations before something happens again.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I found out the grids were on sale?
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Green Grass
Our grass is growing in leaps and bounds now, which is the time when we need to limit the hours of access for our horses. That accelerated growing is a too-high-sugar fuel for our Arabians, per the doctor’s orders. I had asked how I would know when we needed to pull the horses off the pasture, and our vet said that she uses how quickly the lawn needs mowing as a reference.
I mowed on Sunday, and there are places where it already looks like I didn’t even cut it. I don’t like to mow more than one time in a week, but when it is growing this fast, it needs mowing in 4 or 5 days. I think that using this as a reference for when to limit the horse’s pasture time will work pretty well.
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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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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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Already Behind
I recently bought a compost thermometer with an 18 inch probe to check the temperature in the center of my composting manure piles. My first test had me worried that the device was broken when the needle moved the wrong direction. I moved the probe to another spot and started to get a positive reading, so it wasn’t a total bust. I just needed to find a true hotspot in the pile.
A couple of days later I discovered why the needle moved the wrong direction. Not only was that spot not warm from actively composting, it was still snow-packed! With daytime temperatures in the 60s (F) lately, I allowed myself to be fooled about how much melting had occurred.
Only the main core of the pile really stays warm in the winter, and even that can go cold if the composting process stalls. Plenty of the accumulating pile on the fringes is mixed with snow when it gets picked up, or the entire pile gets periodically covered with new fallen snow.
When the spring thaw begins, the visible snow is the first to go. It takes a lot longer to melt piles of snow and ice. I somehow was lulled into the assumption that our low amount of snow cover would mean a complete thaw would happen almost immediately.
The transition from winter to spring is a frustrating one for me. In some ways it seems to take a long time, but in other ways it happens faster than I can react. I noticed yesterday that the landscape pond beside our deck was more water than ice. I need to buy a new in-line filter for the water we pump up to a little waterfall.
While walking Delilah, we came across evidence that moles have already begun their activity of tunneling in the lawn. I meant to buy some stinky deterrent to drive them off into the woods and out of our yard. Haven’t done that yet.
Even though we are drying out nicely, there is still a lot of soil moisture, which will be good when it comes to getting our hayfield to grow, but it means we can’t drive around on any of our machines without making deep impressions in the soft earth.
I would like to clean out the winter accumulation of manure in the paddocks, sooner than later, but that is a huge project and it is inviting a muddy battle to drive around pulling a heavy trailer this soon after the melt.
On top of these concerns is the always possible threat that we could yet receive a significant wallop of a winter storm. The example I repeatedly refer to now is the 18 inches we received on May 2nd in 2013. So even though I feel like I am already behind in being prepared for spring, the possibility for additional doses of winter weather still has a high potential to occur for another 6-weeks or so.
It’s crazy-making. Luckily, we have a trip to visit the Morales’ in Guatemala very soon. That ought to take my mind off the concern of lingering snow events for a while.
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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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Be Careful
Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
We dearly wanted to improve the muddy situation that our horses face during the wet spring meltdown. Last fall we excavated an improved drainage swale, cleared out the overgrown drainage ditch along our southern property border, buried drain tile along the uphill borders of the paddocks, and applied several loads of lime screenings on the hill around the barn for improved footing.
We have been anxiously awaiting the thaw to see if our improvements worked the way we hoped. That thaw is almost complete now, and we are standing by to see how quickly the soil dries out.
What we couldn’t control was the amount of moisture we would be forced to deal with by the weather. Our mild winter left us with a below average snow cover and we have been without precipitation for over a week. The effectiveness of our improvements is hard to gauge because the ground is already too dry!
There is still plenty of time to receive some spring rain, but for the time being, we are experiencing what the meteorologists are phrasing as “pre-drought conditions.”
We wanted dryer conditions for the paddock footing, but this is not the way we would like it to occur.
It is interesting that the changing climate seems to be putting us at risk for dryer, drought-like conditions overall, while at the same time unleashing more copious dousings of precipitation from individual storm events. We get too much all at once and then not enough in between.
I am a bit concerned about how that will impact our intentions of growing hay. Over the last two years we have been unable to get more than one cutting in a season, because the spring and early summer have been too wet, and the rest of the growing season has been too dry. We haven’t had enough growth after the first cut to allow for a second batch of bales.
This year we are starting out dry. Who knows what we’ll get in the months ahead. I’m hesitant to wish for more moisture for fear of then getting more than we can handle. Wishes are not to be waved about carelessly. We should be clear about what we want and what we don’t want.
What are the rules again? I can’t wish for more wishes, but can I wish for a precise outcome? Not less than we need, and not more than we need.
Be careful what you wish for.
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Relative Something 