Posts Tagged ‘Wintervale Ranch’
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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Commuting Again
I’m going to take a little sabbatical from the full-time ranch management gig and go back to the old day-job for a couple of weeks to help them process a large volume of orders they have received. I wonder if I remember how.
I expect the change of environment might reveal how precious my work on the ranch is to me. Being able to spend every day, all day, tending to projects and caring for our animals is a very rewarding experience. Just like everything that becomes routine, it gets easy to lose perspective of just how special that routine can be.
Even though I am often bothered throughout my day with responding to the constant demands Delilah puts on me, I expect that she may be one of the things (that doesn’t sound right, she’s not a ‘thing’) I miss while being away at the work-place.
Yesterday, I needed to make a run to pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy, and I decided to bring her along for the ride. She doesn’t usually ride in the car with us, unless on a trip to the vet. To keep from putting her in the kennel (since unbeknownst to her she will have some day-long stints there starting today), I chose to give her an opportunity to ride in the car when it didn’t end up with a vet visit. She got a bonus when the pharmacist tossed a couple of dog treats in with the drugs.
Here’s hoping I am able to help the work-place get caught up, our animals will do okay with me being gone again, I manage to stay awake while driving to and from work, and that I discover how unconscious of my exceptional situation I have grown in the time since I first made the transition back in July.
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Draining Now
It got warm enough to melt a lot of snow yesterday. I was happy to see the drainage ditch we put in last fall is working just like we hoped it would. It’s a bit harder to know how much the drain tile is helping, since it is buried. I don’t see any obvious flow out of the ends yet, but I would assume the ground is still frozen down that low and water isn’t making it into the tubes.
Once all the snow is melted, I expect to be able to see the ground drying out quicker. That will be my evidence that the drain tile is working for us.
Even though I tried to be careful about where I piled snow when I plowed and shoveled this winter, a fair amount accumulated in the areas above the paddock, but downhill from the buried drain tile. The water from that melting snow will flow right into the paddocks. Once all that snow is gone though, there should be little in the way of additional melt-water keeping the ground in there saturated.
The amount of snow we had on the ground this year when the warm weather arrived was much less than we were forced to deal with last year. I consider this a pretty genteel test, in comparison, and am expecting to see good results. Although, there is also a risk that we will end up enjoying paddocks that are too dry, as a result of drought conditions, not just due to our drainage work.
It would be a case of getting too much of a good dryness thing.
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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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Horse Talk
There aren’t a lot of people who gush over their dental care team, but I can’t help myself. I went for my regular 6-month check up and cleaning appointment yesterday and as always, had such a great experience that I wish I didn’t need to wait 6 more months for the next one.
Early in the exchange of pleasantries with the hygienist I was meeting for the first time, I revealed that I care for 4 horses. Soon, horses became the main theme of our staccato conversation, carried out in the brief pauses between my mouth being filled with hands and dental tools.
She told me about wild horses that still roam the outer banks of North Carolina. She briefly visited the area to attend a wedding, and never got a chance to see those horses. It would be an awesome sight to see wild horses running along the shoreline.
I shared bits of my brief history with horses and received a response of such amazement that it caused me to see anew the remarkable story I’ve been living for the last few years. Since I have heard myself tell this tale over and over, it can seem a little worn out with each new telling. It is refreshing when it evokes an impassioned response of awe and appreciation.
It helps me to stay present in the thrill and wonder of a precious experience that every day grows more routine for me.
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Thinking Back
Yesterday we spent a little more time thinking ahead to what comes next around here and what steps we need to take to actually hold some training seminars. I shared a monthly expense worksheet I created a while back, and we were able to identify some critical items to add that I had overlooked.
Little doses of financial reality do wonders to moderate unbridled optimism, but our situation is not so far out of balance that we feel any reason to seriously doubt the possibilities of achieving our dream, eventually.
This morning I feel myself looking back to the day the horses arrived here. It was September 25th, in 2013. I posted my description of the occasion on the 26th, and you can read about it in the Relative Something archives by selecting the month in the drop down menu in the margin on the right.
No matter what we ultimately accomplish here, the experience of that day will be hard to match.
September 2013
February 2015
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Seriously, Horses
Not all that long ago I was living in a suburb of the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, in Minnesota, where my wife and I raised our children, and I was driving a mere 11 miles to a day-job that occupied my weekdays. As often as I could, I would participate in team sports with a couple gangs of like-minded friends, playing soccer and floorball for fun and exercise. I can honestly say I had no idea about the changes that lie ahead for me.
Seriously. Horses?
Turned out, yes, horses.
Now I find myself spending each day tending to our herd of 4 horses. In a short time I have gone from having no experience with horses to having a personal relationship with 4 of them.
Last week there was one night when the temperature dipped below zero, and it felt even colder due to a brisk wind. I gave the horses a night inside the barn.
We usually move them in one at a time using a lead rope temporarily draped around their neck. I succeeded without incident with Legacy and Dezirea. As I attempted to bring Cayenne in, Hunter quick-stepped his way through the gate before I could push it closed behind her, getting past Cayenne as I held her in place with the rope.
She did well to remain calm and respect my control as he entered her stall despite my verbal objections. He went straight to the feed bucket in there and chomped up a mouthful. I stood at the opening to her stall with her on my right shoulder and tried talking him out of there. My mind raced through options.
It wouldn’t be the first time we swapped their positions because of something like this, if I just put Cayenne in Hunter’s stall. My intuition moved me to do otherwise. Risking potential disaster, I walked Cayenne into the stall along with him. She went right for her feed as if he wasn’t in there, basically wedging him against the back wall. He looked totally stunned.
Suddenly he went from the frisky little “I can do whatever I want” guy to looking like a confused child. Since Cayenne was ignoring him, I stepped in to push her butt over so he had space to exit, which he did without hesitation. Hunter rushed out of her stall and headed directly into his own, appearing very happy for the opportunity.
For some reason, I don’t feel a tendency toward panic when things don’t go the way I intend with the horses, which may just be a function of my relative naiveté. I give credit for some of my control to Dunia and Cyndie for the horse wisdom they have provided me. It also helps that I have the benefit of daily interaction with our herd. Our horses seem to recognize my contributions of serving up their input and cleaning up their output, and demonstrate total comfort with my presence in their midst.
Yesterday, Cayenne came to me as I exited the paddock through a gate while holding Delilah on a leash. Similar to the precious shared moment she gave me a while back, Cayenne pushed her cheek into mine and we lingered together, breathing in each other’s smell while Delilah patiently waited her own turn for my attention.
My life has changed a lot from 4 years ago, and I couldn’t be more honored to be doing what I do now.
Yeah, horses. Seriously.
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Relative Something 