Landscape Life

This cold continues.  It is a bitter, biting cold.  However, it is interesting to notice that I had the sense of warmth today when it got up to 14 degrees.  I think when it gets to twenty, later this week, it will feel downright balmy.

Before I go on to tell you how I gave in, I want to say something about people who let their dogs lick their faces or even their lips.  You know who you are!  Some of my best friends do this!  Ugh.  I am SO not a germaphobe but this habit is disgusting to me.  Here are my two dogs enjoying their treat of popsicles.  Auto-correct took the second O out!  I really meant POOPsicles.  Frozen poop.  Yum.  And I think horse manure is far from the worst muck that goes in their mouths.

So, “I give up” means that I stopped letting the ponies rough it.  I finally put heavy winter blankets on the ponies.  I had to go buy one for Mr Jasper because I was using layers on him, a wool warming blanket plus a wind-proof rain sheet.  Too many straps for him and probably not warm enough.  I sort of KNOW they would be okay without the blankets given how furry and strudy they are, but I just couldn’t bear it.  I was cold and their heavy blankets make ME feel warmer.  Plus, doesn’t he just look so handsome?!

I also started giving them water.  The stream is not quite frozen over but it’s getting there.  When the edges started to freeze, I figured it was time.   I don’t want them to have to break through ice to get to water.

So, yesterday I set up this water heater in their drinking trough.  It works beautifully!  The water is even a bit warm.   Strangely, they went down to the stream to get water just after I put this in.   I think they like it down there and like breaking the ice with their hooves.  Still this morning a lot of water had been taken up by them through the night.  I feel more hydrated with this in place.

It is so silent and bare here.  I love the silence.  I bask in it.  When the air is bitter like this, I find it hard to imagine the intense life that will blossom up here come spring.

I just got back from doing the morning feed and it’s just 5 am.  It’s pitch black out there and minus 2 degrees F (-20 C).  I went out earlier than usual because this level of cold just worried me.  It is SOOO cold.  It seems counter-intuitive that a warm blooded animal could be okay sleeping out there.  I KNOW they are okay but it just FEELS so not okay….I had to go check them.  It also feels like the water out there could simply not be flowing and un-frozen.

So, I bundled up with my felted wool fisherman knit (I recommend this – buy a fisheman knit at the used clothing store that is way way too big and then wash it in hot water so it felts down.  So warm!) , my sorels, down jacket, hood, hat and mittens.  I got my lantern and crunched my way to the barn.  I had closed up all the doors except their stall doors so there wouldn’t be cross drafts in the barn.  Of course I find them comfortably sleeping in their clean shavings, relaxed and happy, little icicles hanging off of their noses.

I put the bale of hay on the sled and rode it down into the pasture in the bitter blackness.  Yup, the water is still flowing!  Amazing.  How can that be?  I am all prepared for it to freeze with my hyrant in the barn, an unfrozen hose in the house and a water tank heater but if it is flowing in this, my hunch is that I won’t have to use my contraptions.  Having fresh flowing water for them is such a wonderful and labor saving benefit. There is something comforting and satisfying about the earth simply providing for them.

I didn’t take pictures this morning because it was just too cold to take my mittens off.  These pictures are from the ice storm the day before Christmas and the snow storm on Christmas.  But the cold and dark out there with thousands of spots of light in the sky was exquisate.  What a way to start the day.

Okay, so what do I know about running a farm?   Not much.   I somehow thought that, with the horses having free run, the ability to be in and out of their stalls with a huge pasture available, that their poop would be nicely distributed around the pasture.  I was set up to muck the stalls every day but that was it.  Having them poop outside the stalls was great because the work of mucking was light.  That actually worked for a while but it all changed with the arrival of winter.

Somewhere in November the grass in the pasture disappeared.  Without the grass the horses don’t have much reason to wander around the pasture.  They like to hang out by the barn.  The fact that we put the hay out near the barn was an added attraction to the paddock area.  Then, one day, it kind of dawned on me that the paddock area was looking like a poop-o-rama festival.  And it is only December!  Oy Vey!

Dan Hutt was here getting the foot print ready for the shed on the back of the barn and happened to have some heavy equipment with him so he dragged and shoved and moved that poop in a good pile outside the paddock.  He cleaned it all up!  Yay!

So now we have some new systems in place!  Just in time for all the snow and ice.  First, we pick out the poop from the paddock every day and bring it to the manure pile.  This can easily be done with a plastic sled!  I did this this morning as the ice storm was descending and the manure plops were all shimmery with a coating of slippery ice.  Secondly, we give the horses their hay WAY OUT in the pasture, in different places every time so their droppings are mostly spread around.

This morning I went out to feed just before light.  I put a bale of hay on the sled and then sat on it.  I sled out swiftly down the hill, able to steer by leaning this way or that.  Very convenient and fun!  The ponies are out there now eating their morning bale.  They’ll get another at dusk.  The paddock and stalls are all clean.

We wish everyone the very warmest of holidays and a really really good new year.