Posts Tagged ‘Wintervale Ranch’
Guest Photos
Cyndie and a few of our party guests have shared some photos from our summer celebration extravaganza. They save me coming up with words today…
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Summer Celebration
The weather held! In the morning yesterday, radar indicated rain showers were moving past just north of our county, and hours later, just south of us. We stayed dry the whole time. That allowed us to set up for our gala gathering of friends and family to party and picnic throughout the afternoon and evening.
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Our friend, Marco, went above and beyond the call of duty and stood over the hot flaming grill to cook enough brats to feed an army, even though he and his family were the guests of honor. Eventually he snagged an opportunity to wash up and return to enjoy the epic social extravaganza.
High school friends rallied and assembled a superb ensemble of guitar, keyboards, bass, & drums for amplified live music over the lawn. There was dancing on the deck.
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People brought incredible contributions of food and some excellent yard games. Passing through the line to fill a plate was not a one-time occurrence, because new dishes kept appearing that demanded attention. I faced the unsolvable challenge of wanting to be down at the barn, up by the house, with folks at the labyrinth, or guiding them on our trails, all at the same time.
At the end of the night, Cyndie was able to fill me in on some of the grand excitement I missed. She and I were in two different places for almost the entire time, so our combined experience paints a better picture of the whole event. Sounds like the horses were a big hit with people, young and old. Cyndie and Dunia went with the flow of energy and ended up doing precisely what they had planned to avoid, by allowing people to have turns inside the paddock to interact with individual horses.
As I suspected, I had to rely on visitors to experience the details of our place under their own initiative. I received enough reports from people that they had walked the labyrinth or explored trails to feel satisfied that they were getting a pretty good sample of what life is like here at this time of year.
It ended up being a classic summer afternoon and evening, perfect for the fun and frolic we had in mind. I sense that it would be safe to say, a good time was had by all.
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It’s Today!
The day of our spectacular event to celebrate summer at Wintervale is upon us. We are mostly ready for guests to arrive this afternoon. There are just 368 things left to do. I’m sure we will have a very relaxed morning, lounging around after finishing everything with time to spare.
We drove home from the lake yesterday and had enough time to get some mowing done and take a few first steps toward preparing. Unfortunately, there was another gully-washer of a rainstorm while we were gone and it washed away some of our new lime screenings and pushed the sand out of our round pen.
Two steps backward for our one step forward last week.
I need to do some landscaping above the round pen to divert the water before it gets a chance to run through the new sand.
For every accomplishment we achieve, there tends to be an additional step that also deserves attention.
Today, that will be shelved for a later time. We will be doing our best to focus on the precious friends who are driving long distances to see Wintervale and celebrate summer with us and our guests, the Morales family from Guatemala. There will be music, food, sunshine (possibly through clouds), horses, our dog Delilah, fields and forest trails awaiting our visitors.
I will be trying to find a way to help folks figure out where to park, and doing my best to spend as much time as possible with every person who shows up. Despite my desire to tell visitors every story I have about our place, it will serve me well to figure out short versions and parse them out sparingly.
People will pick up the gist of what we have going on at Wintervale by the experience of simply being here. The property and our horses will tell enough of the story to accomplish what I wish them to know. I would like to relax, enjoy the moment, and let people discover whatever is theirs to discover.
I hope I remember to take some pictures…
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Fabulous Time
What is the deal? Is my camera broken or something? I haven’t taken any pictures for two days, so I can offer no visual proof that our friends, the Morales family, have arrived, or that we have already had so much fun being with them again that little else is receiving our attention.
The one exception turns out to be my stealing any spare second to get after the never-ending task of mowing or trimming grass. I now have just one section of fence left to be mowed before having that whole job complete. I’m planning to sneak that in early this morning before packing up to head to the lake for a couple of days.
We decided to drive two of our cars up there to give me the option of returning earlier than others on Friday to enable me to —can you imagine this?— mow all the lawn grass in preparation for the big knock down, drag out shebang we have scheduled for Saturday night.
Some years the grass growth slows around here in late July and August so I don’t have to mow as frequently, but this year I’m finding that it looks like I need to mow again after just a couple of days. When I wait a whole week, enough grass clippings are created to make me think I should have George bring over his baler.
We are having a fabulous time with our precious friends. Despite their late arrival on Monday night, which had us getting to bed around 3:00 in the morning yesterday, we made it to Hudson in the afternoon for a brief moment of shopping, and a fine patio lunch overlooking the St. Croix river at Pier Five Hundred restaurant.
Later, after a stint of grass trimming, both along the fence and in the labyrinth, George and Rachel Walker joined us for dinner. Marco graciously accepted Cyndie’s invitation to grill steaks, which turned out perfectly delicious. Poor Delilah doesn’t have a clue what happened to her usual sleeping routine the last two nights, as we lingered around the table after the meal, sharing stories and laughter well-past her usual bedtime.
Today, we leave her behind to be cared for by friends for a couple days while we will all be visiting with Cyndie’s parents up at the lake place in Hayward. With any luck, I’ll remember to take a few pictures of the frivolity expected to ensue.
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Good Progress
I’m not quite done with everything I dreamed of doing over the weekend, but I certainly made good progress toward that goal. I would like to finish trimming the weeds along the wood fence of the paddock, and then I’m satisfied that the most visible areas of the ranch look pretty well maintained.
Why do I want it to look good? We’ve got company coming! Our friends from Guatemala, the Morales family, will be arriving around midnight tonight. Then, on the following Saturday, we are hosting a rockin’ party, with an open invite to friends, family, co-workers, and varying levels of acquaintances to come celebrate summer with us and meet our guests.
A number of those who have indicated they plan to come will be seeing our place for the first time. We want it to look nice!
Yesterday, I finished spreading the remainder of the pile of lime screenings, using the bucket on the tractor. It just reached the point where I had done all the tricky parts by hand and needed to finish quickly in order to move on to the next job. The tractor worked well for me this time. I left the horses in the paddock and they patiently tolerated the racket of my back and forth effort on the machine.
While I had the big tractor out, I used the brush mower to knock down some excessive weed growth that the horses have been avoiding in the space between their paddock and the arena area.
I also did some trimming with the power trimmer, tightened all the wires on our fences, cleaned the entry to my shop, swept up the grass clippings on the lawn using the grass catcher pulled behind our lawn tractor, and tended to the daily manure management chore.
In the middle of the day, Julian arrived to help me record a vocal track for a project to which I had been recruited. His mad skills on the recording software allowed us to quickly create a version that was very well received by the person who requested it of me.
It was a long day for me. In order to get it all done, I got up early and then worked through the dinner hour. Getting back to the day-job today will feel like a day of rest, even if it is busy there.
Busy at the office is nothing like busy on the ranch, you know.
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Many Projects
It was getting to be about lunch time yesterday when Cyndie disappeared to get some refreshments. I continued to work in the hot sunshine of the paddock, once again choosing to use hand tools and a wheelbarrow to do a job that deserved the tractor. I get rewarded for that because I enjoy the manual process and I get better results than when working a machine.
Not that I don’t sometimes give in and let our machines do some of the work. After lunch, I cranked up the Grizzly ATV and filled the trailer with assorted tools for some trail maintenance in the woods. I used the chainsaw to cut up a fallen tree on one of our trails, and I revved up the power trimmer to clear the rest of that trail.
Cyndie returned with a picnic lunch which we ate beneath the shade of the gazebo, overlooking the newly sanded round pen, to christen the new viewing station. It will work well for the training Cyndie plans to do there. It is rewarding to finally have arrived at the physical reality of something we have been talking about and envisioning for years.
It was Cyndie’s brilliant lunch-time suggestion that moved our attention to the trail in the woods, in order to get a break from the heavy sweating effort we had been putting in to spread the second pile of lime screenings in the bright sunlight.
I finally broke open the plastic cover on a new pole saw and branch trimmer that I bought for some perceived frantic need a month or two ago. The only use I had put it to up until this day was as a tool to remove a fast-growing wasps nest. It worked well for that, too.
With the new branch trimmer I was able to make that trail into a thing of beauty. I have learned that a simple trick to give the trail a superb visual appearance is to trim the branches that lean across the trail, as high up as I can reach. When I finished, it looked like a hallway in a cathedral.
Next, I was back on the power trimmer and cleaning along the fence line. It became apparent to me that we have more than enough forage for our 4 horses to graze. They aren’t keeping up on their portion of the mowing. I am going to need to cut parts of the pasture again because they aren’t eating enough of it.
After I emptied a second tank of fuel on the trimmer, I switched projects again, and 
moved back to the pile of lime screenings. It was in the shade at that point, and I wanted to get that pile out of the way for the horses. They don’t actually seem to mind it during the day, and someone has been putting hoof prints all over it when we aren’t around, so it seems to me they see it as some kind of jungle gym.
It’s day-2 of the weekend, and we will pick up where we left off last night. More spreading lime screenings, and more fence line trimming. Who knows, maybe even another picnic lunch under the shade canopy.
Happy August, everyone! One day late.
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Temporary Calm
We have arrived at the last weekend before guests arrive and our chance for preparing our place for the big shindig on Saturday, the 8th. I can think of enough things to do to fill twice the time we have today and tomorrow. Luckily, some tasks are nonessential, but involve my wishing the trails and grounds would look optimally groomed.
The secret of things looking good to me involve constant care. Neglecting a trail for too long, and then going in to hack it clear every once in a while does not create the enticing feel that a well-worn path will. We are making good strides to achieving that, but not quite there yet, having been here just under 3 years.
We are still putting energy toward things like getting the round pen surface established (there was enough sand! —barely), and improving the ground in the paddocks. The labyrinth continues to require a fair amount of time, but Cyndie is still in process of getting desirable plants established and squelching the urge of undesirable ones (namely, weeds) to keep sprouting where they have grown for years. I think they’ll learn, in time.
Today, we still have some lime screenings to spread in the paddock, and I hope to trim under the fence lines. We may, or may not, try to get some wood chipping done. Then we could work on the trails, but that will be entering the non-essential work. I guess it means we are that ready for what lies ahead.
It’s calm and quiet this morning, but it’s not going to last. The week ahead for us will be filled with thrills. We can hardly wait!
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Learning Opportunities
Of all the projects we have undertaken since we moved here, I never imagined that gutters would become the significant issue that they have. Yesterday we had a visit from our gutter guy, (really, we have a gutter guy —how sad is that?) to have him give us a quote to improve the gutter on our barn so that it actually works during anything heavier than a light drizzle.
They installed the gutter for us originally, per my request, but it has never provided the solution we were seeking. Last fall’s addition of lime screenings on the ground in the paddock has served to very visibly reveal the shortcomings of our current set up. We have some major rills that have been formed by the water that pours off the roof, over the gutter, and flows down the slope below.
Sounds like my decision to now add metal “blocks” on the steel roof to hold snow in place will actually serve us well in making the gutter more effective. They originally mounted the gutter low to protect it from being damaged by ice and snow sliding down the roof. With the blocks in place, the gutter could be raised up and that would help, so I’m told, in catching more of the water that flows over the lip of the roof line during heavy rain.
Where were they with that brilliant suggestion when they did the first install? Especially since I did order snow blocks for the back side of the barn at that time (where there is no need for a gutter), because I didn’t want the massive pile up of snow occurring on our roadway back there. I had seen what happened the year before, with no blocks, and was wary of how difficult it would be to keep that passageway clear of snow if we did nothing.
On the front side of the barn, the roof gets enough sun exposure that it usually melts before creating a giant accumulation like what would happen on the back side, in the shade.
So, we bought a gutter once, and now we are going to buy the gutter again. It’s kind of like getting 1 gutter for the price of 2! What a deal!
This is so not how I want improvement projects to go. I get to chalk it up as one more lesson to me about getting over my thing with perfectionism. Oh, and my thing about frugality. And my thing about making smart, informed decisions.
I take solace in the fact these lessons come to me in this most beautiful place that we now call home, surrounded by fields, forest, our horses & dog & cat, wild animals and many critters galore, gorgeous sky views day and night, and a peacefulness that is garnished with songbirds, mooing cows, occasional barks from neighbor’s dogs, and the wonderful sound of rustling tree leaves.
It all helps soften the blow of the next brilliant (F@#$!*%&) learning opportunity destined to come my way. Perfection.
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Got Shade?
We’ve got shade by the round pen now!
Yesterday, Cyndie stepped outside with Delilah and the dog made a beeline for a spot where there was another rabbit’s nest. It is pretty obvious that they breed like rabbits, because Delilah keeps finding new nests filled with babies.
In this case, Cyndie tried to rescue a couple of them from becoming Delilah’s next meal, but I don’t think she had much success. She walked back into the house and said, “I guess that’s why they call them ‘dumb bunnies’.”
Apparently none of them were smart enough to evade the resident predator.
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First Test
Despite my desire to get the already too long grass mowed yesterday, due to an all-afternoon soaking precipitation on Thursday that delayed getting started early, I ended the day without ever having turned the key on the lawn tractor. As so often happens, activities unfolded with total disregard for my feeble plans.
Knowing we had an appointment scheduled for George to trim the horse’s hooves at noon, I chose to dip into a project down at the barn, finally assembling the shade gazebo that we purchased over a year ago. I threaded nuts on bolts for hours on end throughout the intense afternoon heat.
Cyndie provided valuable support, including going to the trouble of making a temporary fence to enclose the horses on some of the too-long grass outside the paddock, so they could do some “mowing” for me.
At the end of the day, we decided to save the work of stretching the canvas over the top for this morning when we would have fresh energy. That turned out to be a really smart decision, especially since I have yet to drive the anchors into the ground.
In the middle of the night, we were startled awake by an incredibly intense storm. We both fully expected to find the spindly frame tossed into a tangled mess, pressed up against the round pen rails nearby. Lightning flashed at a shocking rate, wind stressed our house, and the power went off for a couple of hours.
The generator kicked in perfectly, but the sound of it tended to fuel the dramatic feeling of alarm over the significance of the storm raging outside. Alarms chirped occasionally within the house, at the sudden absence or intermittent return of AC power during the outage. There are only a few essential circuits that the generator maintains, so much of the rest of our electronic devices remain at the mercy of the power grid.
Getting back to sleep was a challenge. I always think about how the horses are faring when the level of intensity of thunderstorms is so extreme. By the time we find them in the aftermath, they always seem so unperturbed.
This morning they were happy as could be. I wondered aloud if Legacy knew that today was his birthday. The elder statesman of our herd turned 19 today.
To our joint surprise, as we came around the woods and the new gazebo frame came into view, it looked exactly like the way we left it last night. It survived its first test with an excellent result.
Now we need to walk the trails and see if all our trees held up nearly as well.
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Relative Something 