Posts Tagged ‘Wintervale’
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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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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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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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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Relative Something 