Posts Tagged ‘Wintervale’
Still Winter
Our general region has had it pretty easy as far as weather goes this winter, especially as compared to the heavy snowfall events that have occurred in the northeast of the US. We’ve had less snow and warmer temperatures than usual. But the past doesn’t define the future. It’s still winter, and yesterday we enjoyed a return of both snow and cold.
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With the temps low, the snow crystals were perfect and we received about 2 inches of wonderful powder snow that came floating down in a windless calm. The woods took on a mystical appearance with snow cradled in every “Y” of all the branches.
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As is typical for our horses, they stood out in the middle of the hay-field during the heaviest snowfall. I coaxed them back under the overhang by bringing some loose hay and putting it on top of the slow-feeder grates. It probably would have been wise to put their blankets on prior to the snow, but they aren’t showing any signs of having a problem with the relatively small amount of precipitation.
Poor Cyndie had to endure a prolonged evening commute as a result of the backed up traffic, but that gave me a chance to get the driveway plowed before she got home. Since the snow was dry and light, that chore was a breeze.
I was walking Delilah when I decided the precipitation had slowed enough to justify some shoveling and plowing. She sat calmly while I shoveled the front steps, walkway, and apron in front of the garage doors. Then she began to demonstrate an interest in moving on. I willingly accommodated her since it was already past her usual dinner time, setting the shovel down to head indoors.
I still wanted to get to the plowing, so I left my jacket on and rushed to put food in her bowl, before heading back out. I figured she should be fine on her own while I worked.
When I opened the door 45-minutes later, I found her laying right inside of it. She looked uncharacteristically subdued. Then I noticed food in her bowl. That is an anomaly. I worried that something was wrong with her and bent down to give her some love and attention. As I stood up to remove my outdoor gear, she got up and walked over to eat everything in her bowl.
To my great surprise, she chose to wait by the door for my return rather than eat her food! I had no idea. It does add meaning to a behavior I have noticed during our routine of coming in the door after a walk. I make her wait in the entryway with me while I remove her leash harness and blaze-orange vest. Then I tell her, “Okay,” as a release to run off and do whatever is tempting her more: chase Pequenita the cat or madly chomp on any available squeaky toy.
I’ve noticed that she doesn’t run off until she sees me taking off enough outdoor wear to feel satisfied I will be staying inside along with her.
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Gruesome Find
Eventually, all the clues began to make sense. Not a day goes by that Delilah doesn’t find something outside our windows that drives her into a barking frenzy. Nine times out of ten, it is beyond me to identify what has triggered her reaction. If it’s squirrels, they are long gone by the time I arrive. If it is gunshots or thunder, she hears it long before I am able.
Yesterday, Delilah began to go nuts with the barking. Attempts to distract and calm her seemed futile. Minutes later, Elysa and Anne stepped in the door announcing their arrival for a visit. Was Delilah barking at them? I was willing to believe it.
As the afternoon wore on, we headed outside to spend some time with the horses. We found them uncharacteristically jumpy. I tried several times to brush the remaining snow off their backs, but not one of them stood still long enough for me to finish. The wind was gusting a bit, so we thought maybe that was making them uneasy. It gave us an excuse to move on toward the pasture to toss discs for Delilah to chase.
Out in the open, the wind was cold enough to drive us onward so we headed for the trail in the woods. I had already traveled this trail earlier in the day with Delilah when we did our usual morning patrol after feeding the horses. We had enough snow overnight to just cover the ground, so it was easy to spot recent tracks along the trail. There were very few at that earlier hour.
As the four of us walked along with Delilah, it was easy to spot something laying on the trail up ahead. My first thought was that the wind had knocked down a tree branch, but what my eye was seeing looked larger than a typical fallen branch.
Yep. Not a branch.
It was the largest limb from a carcass that I had ever come upon. My guess: it was the leg of a cow and coyotes were likely to blame. Why one or more of them had dropped this leg in the middle of our trail is a mystery to me. Of course, it was a prize beyond Delilah’s wildest dream. It was too much for her to carry, so I picked up the frozen leg and carried it for her.
She didn’t know what to do. Walk in front of me? Walk behind me? Jump up and bite it while I walked? We made our way back to the house where I left it on the ground for her to gnaw on. She instantly morphed into one of the pack.
Based on the size of this limb, I’m expecting to see the local coyote hunters busy at work around here in the near future. Farmers aren’t very patient when their livestock are being culled by predators. For those with sensitivities about such images, I am including this shot as a thumbnail to give readers an option of viewing it or not. Click per your personal tolerance for the gruesome, but natural, cycle of life involving wild carnivorous animals.
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Hay Games
February has arrived right on schedule, showing up with a new frosting of snow for us. The horses have been doing just fine without blankets, but that meant this morning they are wearing blankets of snow that make them look like powdered sugar treats.
Makes them down right irresistible.
Until I find they have been behaving badly. I don’t know if it was intentionally malicious or just bad planning, but somebody’s butt dropped a pile of nuggets into one of the slow-feeder boxes overnight.
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I bet they can identify who the culprit is. Wonder if they chastise the offender. What would we say to a member of our family who contaminated our food? I think that person would catch a lot of flack.
We’ve got something of a new routine going for serving up the daily hay. Even though the slow-feeders are working like a dream, there is no denying a horse’s love of eating freely out in the open.
I have placed the feeder boxes beneath the overhang to keep the hay protected from precipitation. It is pretty clear the horses would prefer being out from under that roof.
Recently, I had cleaned out the bottom of both boxes of dusty remains and decided to dump it on the ground beneath the willow tree. Since Hunter, the youngest and lowest in the herd hierarchy, usually has to wait for a turn at the slow-feeder boxes, he came right down and started nosing around in the scraps I had dumped.
That got the attention of one of the other chestnuts and they left the box to come down and make sure he wasn’t getting a better deal. Soon the three chestnuts were doing a comical slow dance of rotation as they moved from the ground below and the box above.
The next time I was filling the boxes, I decided to throw Hunter a bone and dropped a whole flake under the tree for him. Oddly, it is right next to the old feeder, but they like the hay down low so much better, and I was still of a mind to move their focus away from the old feeders to the new slow boxes, so I am completely ignoring them.
Our hopes with the old feeder was to keep hay off the ground where it gets trampled, peed and pooped on, so as to reduce waste. That didn’t really work as imagined, because they still spilled a whole bunch anyway. 
Now with the new boxes, waste has been greatly minimized, and it is starting to feel like we enough hay that such a loss factor is hardly a concern.
Since one of the boxes had been soiled this morning, I threw out several flakes for them while I cleaned up and refilled the boxes. All four of them were quick to show me they much prefered the unobstructed ground-hay under the tree.
Sure, until one of them goes and poops on it.
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Quarterly Meeting
We’re trying to run a business here. Sort of. Today we will be holding our first annual meeting to assess our status and document goals for the year. Here’s hoping the animals will be well-behaved and communicate their opinions clearly.
With tax documents for the previous year filling our inbox, there is an increased visibility of the paperwork and accounting that is involved with managing finances. I was reminded that our lawyer urged us to keep thorough records of meetings that reflect operation of Wintervale Ranch.
Sure. No problem. How hard is that?
We have failed thus far to follow through on even holding formal meetings, let alone properly documenting them.
With that, this morning I will blog less, and conduct business more. I’m off to a meeting in the conference room/kitchen to lay out the goals and dreams for the 2015 phase of Wintervale Ranch, LLC. Hopefully the remote transmission from staff in the paddock will be working smoothly so advice from all parties involved will be heard.
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In Between
Lately, it feels like things here at Wintervale are in a state of being between, in a variety of ways. In large part, I think it is a function of the time of year and the type of weather we have been experiencing. The big blizzard in the northeast of the US has been the main focus of weather-related news. Here, we have had very little in the way of newsworthy winter weather. I have been able to carry on with my daily activities relatively unaffected with needing to plow and shovel snow.
After that long cold spell ended, caring for the horses has gotten a lot more relaxed. They have required little in the way of care beyond their twice a day feeding sessions and some limited paddock cleaning. I can only do so much in the way of manure management when the paddocks are frozen solid.
My daily patrols with Delilah have begun to get a little too routine, so I have started looking for ways to mix things up for her. After already having switched up the route in every way imaginable, I tried letting her choose her own path through the thick interior of our woods beyond the trail, while keeping her leashed. That meant I needed to follow as she explored through trees that I could barely maneuver. I suppose it ended up being more invigorating for me that it was for her.
Yesterday, I decided to bring along a new toy of hers that Cyndie recently brought home. Delilah had quickly accomplished beheading it to rip out the stuffing and chew the plastic squeaker. I brought the colorful remains along on our walk and periodically dropped it out of her sight while she was otherwise occupied. Then I would stop her and give the command to find her toy using her nose.
This game of having her hunt down things we hide, by tracking the scent, is as much fun for us to witness as it appears to be for her to play. It has the added benefit of keeping her attention focused on our place and not on the neighboring properties that she would prefer to explore. Those wild animal smells she keeps picking up are coming from somewhere nearby, she seems to assume.
There’s something even bigger that feels in between for me. We are in our third winter on this property, and after taking on some significant projects to improve the infrastructure supporting our horses during the first two years, we have taken a pause. There are still projects to be accomplished, but they aren’t so urgent.
At the same time, we have delayed taking some essential steps toward formalizing the equine training Cyndie wants to offer, which remains an ultimate goal. Her hip problem was a big contributor to our reasons for waiting, and now we will be in a period of rehabilitation for a while.
We are in a time between the busy activity of our initial efforts, and the point of actually offering training sessions to paying clients. The fact that this is on my mind tells me a next new phase of planning is likely to happen soon.
In the mean time, it will serve me well to allow myself to accept this period of being between. I want to enjoy the everyday moments of apparent stasis. I expect to find myself missing this when things begin to thaw and days become filled with more to be done than time allows.
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Weekend Photos
I took this picture because it was feeling just warm enough to remind me of the outdoor furniture and the cook grill over the fire pit, but there was no confusing that it was all still buried and frozen. I guess that is the definition of a January thaw.
This is a giant tree that long ago fell over on this property that we bought. It lies at the side the trail near the top of a hill and has a very powerful presence. It captures my eye every time I walk by. In my mind I now think of it as “Brooke’s tree,” (the daughter of one of my nieces) because the last time she visited, it grabbed her attention, too. She wandered off the trail in search of a way to get up on top of it. I directed her to come back to the end visible in this image, where she found easy steps up.
One of my minimalist images. Less is more. It may not seem like there is anything to this, but I find plenty that appeals to my senses.
The back side of our house doesn’t get a lot of attention. I like this view. When I am back here, I enjoy the total isolation from the driveway and most of the activity on the ranch. It is near where I split logs, on the edge of our woods. In the winter there isn’t a lot of activity around this fire pit, but the rest of the year it is a natural gathering place.
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A Saturday
Yesterday was another warm winter day for us. There was a hint of fogginess out the window when morning darkness faded, which suggested that moisture was breaking loose from the confines of ice and snow. Cyndie gifted me a chance to linger in bed by tending the morning routine of taking Delilah out and feeding the horses.
I was able to return the gesture after I got up, as she laid back down to read and put herself back into sleep mode, falling into a late-morning nap. I cleaned the kitchen of the tools she had used to whip up a delectable batch of fresh blueberry muffins, and then took Delilah outside where I was planning to play lumberjack.
It was warm, and the hint of fogginess was becoming just plain fog. I had chosen an over-shirt instead of a jacket, but it was too much for me at the get go. I even opened the front of my flannel shirt to cool down as I carried the chainsaw from the shop to the woods behind the house. I was going to cut up more of the limbs of broken trees that litter the hill below the wood shed.
Cyndie has asked me to refrain from using the chainsaw when I am alone during the week, so Saturday becomes my first chance. Despite the likelihood I was about to shatter her nap, I wanted to take full advantage of my opportunity without further delay. The morning was quickly fading.
The fog was beginning to fade, too. I glanced up from my labor to catch the sun beginning to appear, looking a lot more like a typical view of the moon.
Eventually, Cyndie came out to join me and help process wood that has remained piled here for a couple of years. I now have plenty of wood ready for splitting, a chore I have permission to do when I am home alone.
By early afternoon, the air had cleared and there was so much sun and blue sky that I had long since shed the flannel shirt and the horses were laying in the snow. I got the impression they were too hot to exert themselves with any effort, and the cool snow felt good against their bodies.
It felt like a perfect Saturday scene. One that I will remember and revisit when I get back to toiling away at the splitter during the week ahead.
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Slow Hay
I want to chronicle my project to get slow-feeders for providing hay to our horses, especially since my initial intent was to buy feed boxes because I didn’t want to build them myself. It didn’t quite work out that way in the end. I searched online and found most images were of home-made versions. One site offered to sell a set of plans to build your own. I opted to order a plastic box that most closely matched a version that appealed to me.
As I described in an earlier post, that online order flopped and I got my money back. I gave in and decided to try making two of them myself, based on the images of others that I liked. What primarily inspired me to follow through was an introduction to a local welder who said he could make custom grates to my specifications.
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I had him make two. It wasn’t cheap, but since I planned to use materials I already had lying around to build the boxes, I would still be able to do it myself for a third of what it cost to buy them. I used plywood for a base and 2×6 boards for sides on the first box. The second box ended up being a combination of plywood and boards for the sides. I had a bunch of 1×1 lumber that I played with to brace the bottom and lift the base off the ground.
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To prevent the horses from lifting the grate out of the box, I added iron corner pieces on one end and a chain on the other. The horses are comfortable with the chain because it is what we use to secure all our gates. To add hay, I unhook the chain and the grate comes out easily. I added handles on each end to make it easy to pick up and turn over to remove the hay dust that accumulates in the bottom. I thought about using slots on the ends to sweep out debris, but it ended up being easier to just tip the box and dump it out.
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It has been working well for us to add flakes as needed, instead of trying to always fit a full bale beneath the grate. We basically just fill it so the grate is up to the top. As they eat, it drops as the level of hay goes down. Sometimes they eat all of one end first and the grate ends up at quite an angle, but mostly they eat it fast enough that I find the grate almost level and near the bottom by morning. Best of all, they are eating every bit of the hay, instead of tossing it on the ground.
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I am particularly thrilled with how well it works to mimic natural grazing. The horses nibble to get a bite and then pull it out between the grate squares and munch away. Their heads are down, as opposed to the other feeders we have that hold the hay up at their standing head level. Those feeders allow the horses to push their noses deep to get at some morsel of a bite they want, and then they can toss their head and flip the hay they passed up onto the ground. The slow-feeder grate only lets them get a modest mouth-full of a bite and they need to tear it out with a motion that is identical to how they naturally break off bites of grass.
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Our horses have proved to me that they can eat together, two at a box, but I often have found them taking turns. I think it is part of their hierarchy playing out. When all four had 360° access to the old feeders, they would do this dance of moving each other around all the time. The new set up makes it easier to force a subordinate horse to wait its turn, instead.
I am absolutely thrilled that the horses have adapted to this new method of being fed hay, and that my (begrudgingly) homemade boxes are performing as I hoped they would. It is working so well, I am contemplating how I will adapt the design to work in a corner of their stalls in the barn. It all starts with the grate, and I’m thinking about testing a cheaper option than the custom welded solution, because this time, I will need 4 of them.
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Hay Thoughts
We experienced a distinctly different sky Monday from that which we enjoyed on Sunday. In fact, we even received a short burst of heavy snowfall for a few minutes from the gray clouds overhead. However, the above freezing temperatures of the middle portion of the day sufficiently evaporated the fresh snow cover off of any surface that wasn’t already a snow base.
The cloudy sky kept things from being very melty, but didn’t completely stop the loss of snow cover. The ground is peeking through in multiple places, especially where I had plowed a path for walking around the back pasture fence.
At this time last year, there was so much snow on the ground that I don’t think I would have been able to keep that path open. This year has been quite a different story. I am itching to find out how our new drain tile installation will work for us in the spring. If the winter ends with below-average snow levels, I am expecting to see noticeable improvement in how the paddocks dry out. Although, it will be hard to judge how much better the drainage is when basing it on a reduced amount of melting snow from this year.
Not that I’m complaining. After the amount of wetness we endured during the first two spring seasons that we lived here, we are due for a break this year. If a dryer spring happens in 2015 and we don’t get a real test of the new drain system, so be it. I’ll welcome the break.
One of the things that would be a nice change is a chance to cut hay sooner. Our hay crop was far from pristine, as our field is long on weeds and short on desirable grasses, but our horses seem to prefer it to the bales I purchased from a farm to the north of us.
(Jack and Joanie, if you are still reading: I recently found a few bales of your hay left over that we had stowed inside the barn, instead of the hay shed. Our horses really liked your hay! We were able to feed it to them during the severe cold nights.)
I am still hoping that we will gain ground on improving our hay simply by cutting it regularly. If we can get on the field to cut it before it gets too long for a first cut, and early enough to give us a good shot at getting a second cut later in the summer, I believe, based on the yield we got last year, we can put up enough of our own hay to feed our herd through a winter. That would be a real special success.
It would be just like we planned it, back when we didn’t have a clue about any of this.
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Few Photos
Our friend, Ian, was hoping for photos of our frolicking with the dog and horses… The weather yesterday was particularly warm and very sunny, but the horses weren’t in much of a frolicking mood. It was so serene that I think they were lulled into an irreversible calm.
It was quality time for all, regardless. Cyndie brought out her camera and captured some of the action. I unclipped Delilah to play a little “Oblio and Arrow Triangle Toss.” I’m pretty sure we won.
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We then mingled with the horses.
Except for an occasional outburst from someone’s dog down the valley, it was amazingly quiet outside. The fact that the Green Bay Packers were playing in the NFC Championship game at that hour may have contributed to the absence of any outdoor activity. The barking dog was irresistible to Delilah, so to keep her from running off to answer its call, I had to reconnect her leash after we finished our play. We wandered up to the horses, who had moved to the shade of the barn overhang to get out of the hot sun.
Or maybe it was to eat hay.
I crouched down to mediate potential interaction between the horses and Delilah, then snapped a shot of the view Delilah sees when she looks up at Legacy. I can see why she is a little intimidated.
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Everyone was very calm and relaxed during our visit. I think it helped to burn some of Delilah’s extra energy before our interaction with the horses at such close proximity. It is nice to spend time in the horse’s space when we have no actual demands to ask of them. We just lingered together and that was enough.
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