Posts Tagged ‘Wintervale’
Doggone Excitement
Sunday was a refreshing day of warmth and sunshine, which melted enough snow to bring us almost back to where things were before last week’s storm. As I expected, much of my day yesterday involved shoveling channels in the muddy ground to facilitate drainage of the melt water. Luckily, we got help from Elysa and her friend, Anne, who stopped by for a dose of country sun and to commune with all our animals.
Anne captured this beautiful picture of Legacy and Cayenne giving Elysa some love for her efforts.
In the morning, while Cyndie and I were working in the paddock, we spotted a local coyote hunter’s truck that had stopped on our road. Then I heard the baying sound of his hunting dogs and quickly became concerned about where Delilah was. We discovered her a little ways out in one of our fields, oblivious to the world as she buried her nose in the ground in pursuit of some enticing scent. We called her back to our vicinity.
A short while after that, the sound of the hunting dogs erupted again, this time closer, from the woods beyond our house. Delilah took off after the sound, despite my calls for her to stay. Uneasy about what the hunting dogs might do to the sudden appearance of our dog, I dropped my shovel and hustled after her. Before I got very far, I heard the hunter’s truck coming up behind me in our driveway.
He has been up to our house a couple other times, to ask permission to track coyotes across our property, so I was familiar with him. He assured me that Delilah was not at any risk from his dogs. Just then, she came sprinting back, now interested in this stranger standing with me. We visited briefly and then he checked his electronic tracker and found his pack of hounds had moved on, so he headed off down the road after them.
You’d think by this point we might have considered putting Delilah on a leash, but we went on about our activity as if that whole hunting dog concern was over. That’s not the way tracking necessarily works. After enough time passed to lull me into forgetting about it, I happened to glance up and spot an animal running along our southern property border. Initially, I wondered if it might be a coyote on the run from the pursuit, but it became clear it was one of the hunting dogs. By the time I located Delilah, it was obvious that she had seen it, too, and was already on the opposite side of that same field.
Despite both Cyndie’s and my protests, Delilah excitedly ran down to check on the new dogs visiting her turf. True to the hunter’s word, there were no threatening gestures from his pack, as the number of arriving dogs increased. What did end up happening was plenty of barking and eventually, confusion. With Delilah anxiously, but cautiously, trying to engage all these strange dogs, the pack seemed to lose track of their primary mission, and decided to focus all their attention on her. Delilah decided to retreat back toward us.
Soon there were hounds around and in the paddocks and a fair amount of chaos as Cyndie and I hollered, waffling between trying to collar our dog or the hunting dog that was now in proximity of our horses. In a flash the hunter’s truck was rushing up our driveway, and he apologized three different times as he hoisted each of his dogs up into their compartments on the back of his truck.
Happily, there were no problems that occurred from the close encounter between our dog and the hunting dogs. In fact, it turned out to be a great opportunity to increase awareness of Delilah to our surrounding community. The hunter happens to be a cousin of our neighbor whose property abuts ours on two sides. He approved of the orange vest we make her wear outside. He said he noticed her out in the field right away the first time he pulled over, and would make sure his cousin knows about her now, too.
I appreciate that, because we’ve been meaning to introduce her since we brought her home last July, and just never got around to making it happen.
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Inspiring Flow
Well, the threatened blast of a winter storm did deliver as predicted overnight Thursday and into Friday morning. We awoke to a white scene-scape with clouds continuing to unleash serious amounts of new snow. I cleared off the front steps first thing, so I could tell how much more we were getting during the daylight hours. Another inch fell in the morning, bringing our total accumulation to 10 inches. As soon as falling snow started to let up, I headed out to plow.
With temperatures following the storm predicted to rise well above freezing, all I needed to do was clear a path down the middle of the driveway. The sun would take care of the rest. Unfortunately, that simple task was made more complicated by how heavy and sticky the snow was.
Another unfortunate thing about the snow is how exponentially more muddy it has made the paddocks. It’s getting to be quicksand-like mud out there. I expect to be working on re-forming and re-opening a lot of drain channels today.
I opened the one on the back side of the barn yesterday, which involves shoveling out the slushy snow that causes the melt water to stand in place. Once the water has an open channel, it really starts flowing. In a major coup of drainage improvement, the water was not only traveling past the paddock, but even beyond the round pen before heading down toward the main drainage path. That is a great sign that my hopes for minimizing the water from above which previously drained into areas we don’t want it, can be realized. I didn’t think that was possible without more significant re-landscaping.
As good as that was, it wasn’t the highlight of my day. We have rigged one other trick to manage water runoff, and yesterday was the first time it was truly put to the test. We have placed one of our 100 gallon oval watering troughs beneath the downspout of the new gutter on the paddock side of the barn, and attached a garden hose to drain the tub. The hose is long enough to reach about three-quarters of the length of the paddock, where I have placed it into that flow channel from behind the barn.
It is working as well as I wished it could. Maybe even better. Now all the water from the barn roof that used to end up passing through the paddocks is going to be diverted around. That is a huge amount of water and will really help improve the condition of our paddocks. It’s inspiring!
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Last Blast?
With any luck, this will be winter’s last blast of snow. Most of the day yesterday, we received freezing rain and sleet. After their breakfast, we put blankets on the horses to give them a little extra shelter against the freezing moisture. Unfortunately, with our temperatures holding close to the freezing point, the ground stayed soft and those spirited Arabians were running all over the paddocks for some reason.
While feeding them dinner, we decided to bring them into the barn for the night, to give them a break from the mud and precipitation. When we opened the door, Legacy and Cayenne were standing right there, anxious to get in. Legacy had so much mud on his legs that it looked like he was wearing brown knee-highs. Poor Cayenne had a face full of mud from following too close behind another horse that was kicking up a mess when running.
I tried taking pictures with my phone, but couldn’t hold it steady and they were constantly in motion, so all of the images turned out blurry. It’s a shame because they were quite a sight.
I did get one picture before yesterday’s precipitation started to fall. I mentioned in a previous post that the labyrinth was a negative image now that the snow had melted off the rocks, yet still remained where it had been packed for the trail. Here is what it looked like a couple of days ago…
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Threatening Weather
I was just getting ready to whine about the threatening winter storm headed our way, and then I noticed that they had moved our county from “storm warning” to “storm watch.” It isn’t a big difference, but it offers that glimmer of hope to me if forecasters think the highest snow totals might stay north of our location and spare us the worst. The storm they are predicting sounds a lot like the nasty blast we received last May, which did so much damage to our trees from the weight of the wet snow. This one appears to hold a similar threat.
This late-season big snow event is frustrating for us because we were getting very close to turning the corner of having the paddocks start to dry out. While snow accumulations are melting, it is a sure thing that the ground in the paddocks is getting wetter every day. Eventually, when the majority of snow has melted, it gets to a point where there is more water going out than coming in, and then the long, slow process of drying can begin. I’d say yesterday just might have been that point, which is moot now, with new accumulations on the way.
Happily, the project in our basement to build a storage room will go on regardless the conditions outdoors. Yesterday, they installed a ceiling in the room and started building the shelves. Our builder wasn’t able to find trim that would match what already exists in the basement, so we were brainstorming options. He told me it would be possible to steal some of the existing baseboard to use around the door so it will match the other doors downstairs, and then buy new baseboard trim to replace what we stole.
His comments about stealing trim got me thinking about what was on that angled wall of the entertainment center I tore out. They had used the same trim around the cutouts for the television and speakers. Good thing I saved everything. I had forgotten all about it due to having stashed it in the shop garage so long ago. I retrieved enough that he will be able to make it work.
Contemplating both the stormy weather and our new storage room together got me thinking, this room will turn out to be a pretty good storm shelter when it’s done. That’s something that is good to have, but which you don’t ever want to need.
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No Foolin’
I think we just might have gotten past the messiest part of the spring snow melt season yesterday. At least, that’s what the optimist in me is hanging his hopes on. It is hard to shake the memory of that 18 inch snowfall that buried us last May and significantly prolonged the drying out of our property last year, but something is telling me that won’t be our plight this year.
A remarkable amount of ground made its first appearance of 2014 during yesterday’s dose of warmth and wind. We were blessed with two separate periods of relatively light rainfall which is always a big help in melting the snow pack. I was able to make my way along a good portion of our southern property line and was thrilled to find that the new culvert we installed, along with the preliminary improvements to open up the drainage ditch, are functioning brilliantly. It is easy to see where we should continue, and I have renewed inspiration and confidence about what I want to do next to maximize the benefits possible in helping our land drain in a controlled way.
The channel I made on Sunday is still in place at the edge of the southern ditch. Looking back up toward where all the water is coming from, you can see how much it wants to spread out now. One of my goals this summer will be to dig out a more defined creek bed across this field with our tractor, and then soften the edges to a gentle slope, and seed it with grass. Most of the year it will simply be a dry depression, only filling with water during the snow melt or a significant rainfall.
Our water-loving dog, Delilah, is mad about helping me get the water to flow. She runs up and down the channels and tries to bite the water wherever it ripples or gurgles. I like it when she helps down here because the ground isn’t muddy and the water is clean, so she just gets wet. The running back and forth does wonders to burn off her otherwise endless energy. When we came in, I toweled her off as she lay on her back, and then she curled up with the towel and took a nap.
On my way back to the house, I plodded past the labyrinth and discovered an interesting phenomenon. The melting snow is creating an inverse image as compared to the way it looked when I was shoveling the route in winter. It takes longer for packed snow to melt, so the path that I repeatedly trekked with snow shoes is now taller than the border areas of stones. They appear as depressions between the paths now.
It’s true. I’m not just saying that because it’s April 1st. Seriously.
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No Rest
We are now in the season of mud and ice. In the mornings, everything that was squishy and flowing the night before ends up frozen solid. Morning is the best time to get certain things done that require traffic in our wettest areas. After the sun shines on the ground for any length of time, travel around here gets pretty sketchy. I don’t know how the horses put up with it.
Well, actually, I do know one way they deal with it. They lay down and roll in the mud. Shortly after being brushed yesterday, 3 of the 4 laid down and massaged their backs with the manure laced mud. It does wonders for Legacy’s light complexion.
Yesterday was a day of chores for us, and we were blessed by a visit from Elysa and Anne, who helped out with several tasks. In addition to brushing the horses and helping Cyndie clean part of one paddock, they joined us up on the hill of the big field where we took early action on the recently exposed ground.
There were piles of manure that needed to be spread out and broken up, sticks to be collected and removed, weeds to be cut down, and pasture grass seed to be spread. We are hoping to improve the potential of growing desirable grasses, with less weeds, so we can cut it for hay.
The highlight of the day for me was getting water to flow off our property and into the drainage ditch along our southern border. We were getting little rivers of water running from everywhere as the snow melted, but toward the lower portions of our land, it was spreading out and pooling up in the slushy snow that remained. I took a spade shovel and headed down there with Delilah.
The water was almost over my boots in some places, making it quite a challenge to navigate digging a channel out of the slush to provide the water with a straight shot into the creek of runoff that was now flowing along our property border. Because of the way water-follows-water, I like to give it a path that creates enough momentum of flow that the uphill pools get pulled down to fill the void. It’s a lot like priming a pump.
But flowing water is fickle, and if the momentum is slowed by a dam of slush that collects, the water is more than happy to pick an alternate route, or it may simply stop flowing altogether.
The last chore we squeezed into the day was painting the drywall of our new storage room. It got a coat in the morning and another one after dinner to get ready for the finishing touches by our builder this week.
It was the kind of day that leaves you needing another day of the weekend, so you can take a day off to recover. The problem with that is, if we had another day of the weekend, we’d likely end up using it to get even more chores done. There is no rest for the weary.
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Harsh Realities
In the last few days, we have come across a surprising number of animal parts that Delilah has collected from her explorations around our property. I think the melting snow might be revealing some carcasses that were preserved beneath all the white stuff this winter. At least, we hope that explains the dramatic increase in our exposure to the harsh reality of animal mortality lately, as opposed to the possibility that she has become that proficient of a predator.
Cyndie buys a lot of chew toys for our dog, but none of those come close to thrilling Delilah as much as something biological. Oftentimes, we are unable to recognize what she has in her mouth, but it is easy to tell from her behavior and body language that it isn’t one of the toys.
If we are lucky, we are unable to identify what it is. Somehow that is easier to stomach. I felt a bit nauseous yesterday as she chomped away on the very obvious body of a mouse. Then she comes inside and tries to lick our faces with her bad breath while we towel her dry and remove her blaze-orange vest.
Earlier that morning, Cyndie stepped in the house from feeding the horses and said, “I have a blog post title for you…”
“Headless Rabbit.”
I decided not. Cyndie described the unlikely scenario of lifting one of the horse’s feed pans which had been flipped upside down in the paddock, and discovering the carcass of a headless rabbit beneath. We can’t imagine how it ended up there. Maybe one of the horses came across the body and purposely covered it out of respect.
We also have a pile of feathers that Delilah has been working on, which I’m guessing came from one of the many wild turkeys roaming our land. In addition to the deer leg that has been a recent prize, she also is quite fond of chewing on a fair-sized piece of hide; both hoof and hide being something that a pack of coyotes might leave behind.
Another harsh reality we are facing this weekend, with temperatures soaring well-above freezing, is the mud and manure mess we have been anticipating in the paddocks. When the ground here is saturated, it becomes so soft that you sink to the point of losing a boot in many places. That means we don’t dare try driving the tractor into the paddocks now to remove the abundant accumulation of manure. It would sink past the axles. This will be a nasty problem to endure while waiting for the soil to dry out.
It is our first spring with the horses, and this worst-case scenario has us biding our time until we can engineer a remedy, which will likely be a combination of altering landscape to improve drainage, and adding some sand/gravel to a few key areas to improve their footing.
All this “reality” certainly does help to accentuate how far we have come in our move from the refined environment of our previous life in the suburbs.
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Topsy Turvy
I don’t know what it is, spring weather, phase of the moon, tax return preparation, college basketball tournament upsets, or blog hosting sites putting their users through unwanted drama, but things seem a bit chaotic around here recently. It doesn’t help that I am once again on leave from the day-job due to another slowdown in business. Then, there are things like the commercial airplane disappearance, the massive mud slide, Chicago’s commuter train crash, and our dog and cats getting the throw-ups. At least the horses are fine, well… except we received a classic spring rain/snow mix that got them chilled and wet yesterday, so that we needed to move them into the barn for the night.
I captured this picture of one of Delilah’s toys recently, and when I opened it up for viewing on my computer screen, it immediately caused me to think, “That’s exactly what I feel like.”
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New Room
My builder showed up on Monday and we finally have progress on the construction of a new storage room in the basement corner where the entertainment center used to be. In a few short hours they removed the old studs, decided on a location for the door, figured out a plan for the lighting, put up the frame of the new wall, and finished stringing electrical wire. Tuesday they got the drywall hung, taped, and a first layer of mud applied. It feels real good to have another of our imagined changes finally transitioning into actual progress.
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New Hay!
Of the many blessings we have experienced in the time since we first learned about this place we now call home, the ones that involve our animals seem to have a special preciousness for us. Our horses have been with us for less than half a year, and every success we achieve in caring for them brings a welcome sense of relief, since we are pretty much figuring everything out for the very first time. Managing the hay to keep them properly fed has been one of our primary lessons.
Back in September, as complete novices in all things hay related, we didn’t have a clue about what we were looking for in a bale. Even after learning a few things, we are still humbled to discover that even “good” hay can develop some mold, or contain sections with undesirable contents. The bales we acquired from two different sources, and have been feeding to our horses all winter, turned out to have some of both problems.
A month ago, I wrote about the discovery that we had too much foxtail grass in some of our hay, which was giving the horses mouth sores. We ended up losing many large bales from our stash due to that problem. Our struggle with finding mold inside other bales has been consistent, showing up in hay from both providers. We eventually deduced that some of the hay we purchased from the unfamiliar supplier must have been what is called, “ditch hay.” The grass in the bales proved to be dusty, like grass beside a gravel road is dusty, and included bits of plastic refuse and many large sticks. 
The dustiness is not appealing to the horse’s keen sense of smell, and it confounds our efforts of identifying whether we are seeing clouds from mold spores, or not.
Recently, a reliable source surprised us with the wonderful news that they had some small bales they could make available. Their message was a blessing that couldn’t have come at a better time. Yesterday, to make room for the new bales, Cyndie and I removed the pile of moldy hay that has been tossed aside.
Within minutes of Jack and Joanie pulling into our driveway, we felt the thrill of connecting with good-hearted people and sensed the hay would be ideal for our horses. In our bliss over having good quality hay, we neglected to think ahead about how we stacked it. Chatting while we worked, Jack tossed bales almost faster than we could stack them, I tried to think about fitting the bales into the smallest space possible, and Cyndie placed them at every which-way orientation. Later in the evening, I asked Cyndie if she counted the bales.
“No.”
“Me neither.”
What that reveals is that neither she nor I felt any concern about trusting the quantity delivered. Unfortunately, our lack of concern about counting bales relates to our not having a logical pattern to the way we stacked them, which means we will never actually know how many bales remain on hand after we’ve used a bunch. Another lesson learned.
Happily, the horses seemed as thrilled with the new hay as us. I captured Dezirea and Legacy breathing in the delicious smell, while Hunter and Cayenne wasted no time in chomping away.
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Relative Something 