Posts Tagged ‘Wintervale’
Did It!
We did it! We are on a stay-cation! Our house-sitter, Andy, arrived yesterday afternoon and we hung around long enough to see him feed the horses, then ran an errand to nearby Baldwin while he served dinner to Delilah and Pequenita. After that, we packed the car and drove off to stay at Cyndie’s parents’ house for a few days, through the new year.
The errand we were on was, washing the horse blankets at the laundromat that has large-sized washers. Boy, did we pick the wrong time to do that. First, the horses could really use those blankets about now. We are under a severe wind-chill warning for 24 hours. Second, after we got the blankets loaded and washing in the giant machines, we spotted the sign that said, “Don’t put horse blankets in the dryers.”
Oops. I suppose if you wash them in the summer, you could just hang them outside to dry. Sadly, the spin cycle on these machines didn’t do much in the way of pulling excess water out of the blankets. It was running off a couple of them as they hung over a high bar on the rolling clothes baskets provided.
We were making a heck of a mess on the floor. About the time I was ready to freak out over the situation we had created, Cyndie’s resourcefulness had her digging through a trash bin to discover an old t-shirt and baby blanket that had been tossed. We used those to mop up as best we could and I hauled the blankets back out to the car in the rapidly dropping temperatures.
We waited another half-hour for a comforter to dry and then were ready to stop back and see how Andy was doing with our animals. When we got to the car, the windows were all fogged up from the moisture of the blankets. What a fiasco.
Happily, we found everything in good order at home and felt confident that Andy was plenty competent to manage things in our absence. We spread out the blankets in the basement to dry, packed up the car with our stuff, and headed west to my in-laws’ place.
About the time we were retiring for the night, we received a text that Andy had chosen to move the horses into the barn for the night due to the wind-chill warning. Minutes after Cyndie replied with some added details related to keeping the horses in the stalls, she received Andy’s response that all had been done.
It already feels like we are on vacation.
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House Sitter
In the calm snowy sunshine blessing us after the busy Christmas schedule, Cyndie and I walked down to the labyrinth to see if she could navigate the course. She handled the exercise pretty well, despite slipping once when she inadvertently stepped on a stray rock.
I gave her a good head start before entering myself, side-stepping my way along the route to move enough snow for a clear path to appear. We didn’t make it all the way to the center before getting interrupted by the arrival of an expected guest.
We had an appointment to meet a man who provides house-sitting services with animal care included. Andy visited with us for a while, appeared to receive Delilah’s approval, and seemed completely comfortable with our horses. We’ve invited him to cover for us for a few days this week, to see how things go when we’re not around.
We were thinking about going up to the lake place for New Year’s Day, but circumstances changed people’s plans and we would be the only family members up there, so we are considering other options. We may make it an in-town vacation and spend a couple of nights at Cyndie’s parent’s house.
There are several chores that we hope to get taken care of first, particularly a plan to take the horse’s blankets to a laundromat that has giant washers. We finally felt the need to use the blankets during one of the recent above-freezing precipitation events. The two geldings seemed to feel a need to paint the blankets with wet lime screenings. It made a real mess.
I tried laying the blankets out to brush them off as much as possible before putting them in a machine, but it didn’t seem like I accomplished much. We are getting some below-zero overnight temperatures today and tomorrow, so we are a little late in having the blankets available if the horses appear to need them.
I’m hoping they took advantage of the hay in the slow-feeder boxes under the barn overhang and stayed sheltered all last night to stave off the worst of the deep-freeze. I worry more about them needing blankets when it is wet. Below-zero temperatures can feel cold, but they are hardly ever wet.
I hope they do fine, because I would prefer that our new house-sitter not need to bother with managing the nuisance that is blankets.
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Snow’s Back
I’m sitting with some Guatemalan hot chocolate and fresh-baked puppy dog tails from Isles Bun & Coffee (thanks Jeff and Catherine!), preparing to have a late breakfast after an extended trip to feed the horses. It took a little extra time this morning because of the new snow that fell overnight.
It has been a while since I needed to clear snow. I’m out of practice. I’m behind schedule and chomping at the bit to get out on the Grizzly and plow, so I’ll make this short. I’ll post pictures!
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Parking Job
It looked like we had a bit of a wild party around here overnight Tuesday. Elysa and Anne had come to spend the night so they could wake up and already be here in the morning for our family Christmas-Eve-day stockings and gift exchange.
When I stepped out with Delilah for her morning walk, I was surprised that Elysa’s car wasn’t there. As my mind worked to solve the puzzle, I realized that I had seen only Elysa the night before, when she peeked into our bedroom to say hello. Did Anne just drop her off and take the car back home, I wondered? Or, did they get up super early and need to make a run to the store for something?
I walked toward their usual parking spot and noticed the tire tracks. Then I spotted the car beyond the driveway in our back yard. What the heck? Did they come in too fast and miss the landing? No. It was obvious from the markings in the snow that they had parked and stepped out of the car doors like always.
From that, I deduced the car must have moved after they parked it. The only explanation I could figure was that the parking brake wasn’t set, and whoever had driven had failed to leave the car in gear after they stopped and shut off the engine.
It made for some good-natured ribbing with Elysa all morning. She said the parking brake was on, but she knew it wasn’t pulled tight. When pulled as tight as possible, she reported, it is difficult for her to get it to release when the time comes.
It took both Julian and me pushing, but she got it turned around and back up on the pavement again before it was time to head home.
Luckily, no one beyond us and the UPS delivery driver witnessed the car in the back yard, so she shouldn’t face any more teasing over the incident. I’m not going to tell anyone about it.
A note for our friends, the Morales family in Guatemala, who visited us during this holiday time last year… notice the lack of snow in the image above? You guys picked the perfect winter last year. What a difference we are now facing. It hardly feels like winter at all.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
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Sibling Revelry
Despite a sloppy wintry mix of precipitation doing its best to dampen our spirits (sorry ’bout the pun), the gathering of Hays relatives was a joy and a half. As always happens to me at family gatherings of limited duration, the riches of access to siblings I grew up with is enticing, but the reality of our usual chaos leaves me wishing there was more time. It is hard to finish a story, and sometimes a single sentence, without interruption. My attention is too often wrenched away from the person I was listening to, and time flies by so fast, the hour of departure comes up way too soon.
Regardless, every moment was precious. Reconnecting after long periods of separation, with siblings who share so many tendencies and characteristics, is refreshing and invigorating. I tend to feel a kind of validation of who I am, discovering the brothers and sisters that I grew up with remain so similar in behavior and perspectives. I am among my people again.
I’m lucky that, as a family, we all get along. These are the people who inhabited Intervale Ranch with me from the day I was born until 9 years later, when our family moved out and the property was razed for development into an industrial park.
With technical assistance from my son, Julian, I was able to display a digitized version of a slide show I put together close to 30 years ago, which featured that old farm property. It provided an opportunity to exercise our memories, as we analyzed some of the images and compared recollections.
Meanwhile, there was non-stop food to be consumed, youngsters to get reacquainted with and entertained by, and horses to visit. Unfortunately, that last part with the horses was complicated by the weather conditions. They have been a little jumpy the last two days. I’m thinking there may have been some coyote activity in the area. That jumpiness was then compounded by wet precipitation which brought them to shivers.
As the bulk of our visitors wandered down to greet the herd, the attention suddenly needed to be redirected to preparing the stalls and moving the cold, wet horses inside. At least people were able to witness the process as it happened, and see the horses enjoy the reward of coming in to warm up and dry out.
Delilah was pretty excited to have so many visitors, but eventually adjusted to the clamor of all the conversations and quietly laid in front of the fireplace. She seemed more than happy to accept cuddles from Reese, one of the older grandchildren present.
It’s nice to see the kids doing well with our animals, because we see them as potential ranch hands in the years ahead. When their parents eventually start thinking about sending them off to some camp for the summer, we can put in a pitch for the valuable experience they could gain here, doing chores at Wintervale. Seems like a win-win.
Cyndie and I express our extreme appreciation to all the family members who made the trip through messy weather to bring our place to life with their love and energy. Here’s hoping we don’t let too much time pass before the next Hays family gathering materializes!
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Family Gathering
It’s that time of year. The holiday events have started for us in earnest. Today we are hosting a large number of folks from the Hays clan, some who have never been here before. We are excited for this day and working diligently to prepare.
Therefore, my time to write is nonexistent. I’ve got chores to finish. Enjoy this photo from last year and imagine how much fun we will be having today with relatives from afar bringing Wintervale to life with their precious family energies.
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Little Things
In the long, slow transition to normal after an invasive surgical procedure like Cyndie’s hip replacement, little things like putting on socks and shoes, or climbing our spiral staircase become significant landmarks that have a huge impact on our perceptions. Yesterday we enjoyed a day that felt notably normal, other than the fact that I had to drive Cyndie to a hair appointment in Hudson.
She is experiencing increasing success in dressing herself and walking, as well as telecommuting to meetings at her school district job. Her sleep is greatly improved, which is giving her increasing energy and improving her overall outlook. Having Cyndie’s sunshine back is particularly rewarding for me, especially during this period when the weather has been nothing but gray. I am realizing how burdened with discomfort her countenance had grown in the months and years leading up to this.
While we were out yesterday afternoon, we stopped for an early dinner at Keys Café in Hudson. The restaurant boasts the byline, “the food you grew up with,” which is a good description of how it tastes, to our Minnesota-raised palates. Everything that we have eaten there in the half-dozen odd times we’ve been to the Hudson site has tasted like it was prepared by someone who cares like only a mother would.
I am particularly impressed by the fact that this is just a satellite location, 1 of 9. Their expansion to multiple locations has not led to any deficiencies in their kitchens. I wouldn’t describe the menu selections as fancy, but the food we have received is anything but simple. Every bite is “oh-my-gosh” delicious.
After a meal like that, driving home satiated to greet and feed the horses had us feeling overwhelmingly blessed and content with every little thing that has been going well in the last few weeks.
In the last seconds before needing to leave for that appointment yesterday, I finished setting out and filling the second slow feeder hay box I built. This time I was able to set it up while the horses were watching me. Sure enough, Legacy approached soon after I arrived to supervise my efforts more closely. I was very happy to allow them the opportunity to not be startled by the sudden appearance of this strange new object.
I ran up to the house to put Delilah in her kennel, get the car started, and guide Cyndie to her seat in the nick of time. As we descended the driveway past the barn, I turned to see if they were all up eating out of the new boxes. Nope. In that short amount of time they decided the grazing would be better out in the back pasture.
I chose not to take that personally.
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Design Issues
While our temperatures are above freezing, the horses are tolerating the sloppy conditions just fine. They seem to have no problem with the lime screenings we added as new ground cover in their paddock. 
When I went down to feed them in the late afternoon yesterday, I found that Hunter had laid down in the wet screenings and painted his entire side and face with them. Looks like he is getting a spa mud bath. It’s no surprise that it’s him, out of all the horses. He has a history of putting on mud masks since he arrived here.
I’m happy to report that they are making good headway on the bale in my slow feeder. I’ve decided to stay with the same dimensions for the second box, yet to be built. We will just need to put a bit less than a full bale in when we restock it, and loosen up the flakes before placing the grate on top.
I really should get the second box completed as soon as possible, so all 4 horses can enjoy equal access to the new grazing system. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough wood scraps to use the same exact plan I did on the first box. If I am going to succeed in building both out of materials I already have on hand, I will need to put it together differently. I’m thinking this one might end up with plywood sides instead of the 3 rows of treated 2×6 boards I used for the first box.
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Big Meltdown
The weather has taken the predicted turn toward warm, foggy, and wet. I didn’t take a picture this morning, because it would just turn out gray. Our visibility is at about 12 feet. It’s not like we lost a lot of snow. November brought us a couple of plow-able accumulations, but we never had more that 4 or 5 inches on the ground, excluding a few drifts that made it to twice that depth. But there isn’t much left in the way of snow anymore.
The mid-40s (F) all day yesterday and overnight last night have softened the once-frozen ground and turned the paddocks into their classic spring mud messiness. It is hard to judge the effectiveness of our drain tile with the current situation, because the ground seems frozen in some places and not so in others. I’m confident that our changes have helped to some degree. Ultimately, what the drain tile is expected to improve is the time it takes to dry out after the source of moisture ceases.
This situation is temporary, as it will return to freezing in a day or two. That will give the horses a break from the sloppiness. I don’t know if it bothers them as much as it does us, but it sure looks and sounds miserable when they trudge through the muck.
This morning they seemed particularly jumpy, I assume from the thickness of the fog, and it had them doing some dramatic running with gusto. When it is muddy, that kind of running kicks up quite a mess. Maybe they actually like that effect.
I took a picture of the drainage swale doing its thing yesterday. Here’s a before and after view of the big meltdown:
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Slowly Learning
I finished my first slow hay feeder box for our horses yesterday. I wish they had been around when I was placing it under the barn overhang and loading it with hay. The herd was on the far side of the hay-field at the time, happily grazing in the warm winter fog. Later, when the time came for them to come up for the afternoon serving of their feed supplement, surprise sightings of the new box in their space startled the heck out of each one as it came into their view.
If they had been there while I was working on it, they would have been putting their noses all over it in curiosity about what I was up to. I didn’t have time to linger with them, because I had a date planned to get Cyndie to a movie and out grocery shopping for the first time since her surgery. We even ate out at a burger joint to make it feel like a real event. It was a grand success, and she surprised me with her endurance traipsing the food aisles on her feet for the long duration.
I figured the horses might completely avoid the foreign object, but this morning discovered one or more of the brave souls figured out there was hay in there. Overnight there was enough activity to leave scraps on the ground around the box and create divots in the bale beneath the metal grate. Looked to me like one or more of the horses had spent enough time there to get comfortable with it.
We don’t want the horses to become frustrated by this obstructed source of hay, so I will continue to provide it in the existing feeders for now to allow them options. The hope is that this new system will be easy enough for the horses to accept as a pleasing source of grazing that is always available to them.
In that regard, I felt there was something wrong with my method after inspecting the results of their progress after one night. It appeared they were only able to make limited headway into the bale, leaving the grate resting high on spots they hadn’t pulled apart. My initial intuition was that I had designed the whole thing wrong, based on the bale positioned with the cut edge to the side.
If I turn the bale 90° so that cut edge is up, it resembles the appearance of growing grass. The ends all point up. It will be easier for them to pull a bite from between the squares, and the grate will be more inclined to drop down as they consume the bale. It seemed to me that would be less frustrating for them. So I tried it.
I immediately discovered a problem in that the bales aren’t symmetrical. When dropped in there on its side, the bale is too tall for the box! Back to the drawing board. That is why I only built one to start. I laid the grate on top and stood there for a while as Legacy took to the sideways bale right away. Eventually Cayenne joined him and they seemed to be having a fine time with it, until the loose grate laying on top suddenly shifted as she pulled aggressively at a bite. It banged the wall and they bolted away in a panic.
The thing is, I may be jumping the gun. I have a couple of thoughts about it now, after giving it some time. I don’t know for sure that the first way wouldn’t work, given enough time. Also, I put an entire bale in there, and maybe it was too tight that way. If there was just a portion of a bale, maybe they could make better headway.
I’m not sure how I will proceed. Maybe if I give them more time, they will teach me what to do. I am slowly learning.
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