Spring's Work

(post written by Jason)  Melissa mentioned in a previous blog that we know it's spring time when our workload moves from normal busy.....to warp speed busy. We crossed that threshold a couple weeks ago and there is no let up in sight at this writing. Frankly the weather has been so pretty that you'll hear no complaints from either of us on this topic. We are in the middle of spring time; by far my favourite season of the year. 

Of course the horses and their chores always come first on this farm. Since both ends of our day  are bookended by chores we have only a banker's hours in between in order to accomplish all the tasks that aren't directly related to horse care. And that's the case only when everything is right with the horses. Since most of our horses are "special needs" on some level we often have vet appointments or other important horse care items that further cut into the time we have available to accomplish other tasks. Yesterday we spent several hours with our dentist again and a bunch more horses had their teeth floated.

This time of year if it's light and it's not raining it's a fair assumption that we're outside working. In fact, in the morning it's fair to say that if there's light in the sky we are outside working. Much of our time is taken up on seasonal tasks that rely on perfect weather and soil conditions to accomplish. Since there aren't very many days that present us with perfect conditions things tends to get busy quickly when one arrives. Overseeding pastures, weed control, fertilizer applications and moving and applying manure all fall into tasks that  require perfect weather and soil conditions to accomplish properly.  At this writing we are well started on all the necessary fair weather tasks and a few more good days should finish several of them up in a timely manner. 

I hope you're enjoying some spring like weather and spring time activities where you live right now. If you're not, I hope you get to enjoy some good times soon! 

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Cinnamon, Calimba and Traveller doing some early morning hay eating

Gibson and Faune

Lofty and Donneur

MyLight and Silky grooming

Levendi having his teeth floated

Largo's turn

Homer

 Stormy

Oskar, Rocky, River, Rubrico, Toledo and Kennedy

Elfin, Ritchie and Grand

Leo, Trigger, Thomas and Moe

Walon and Rubrico

Oskar

Miss Lyle and Mina having a hard day

Jo and Mina showing me their "airplane ears"

Sunday Stills

I never get tired of views like this

Alex, Nemo, Taco and Sebastian

Elfin and Chance

Mick

River, Largo and Rocky

Trigger and Apollo

Baby, Rip and Hemi

mares and ponies coming for breakfast; Maisie, Lily, Silky, Cuffie and Norman

Dolly and Norman coming on the run

this bird has started showing up at feeding time in a couple of the pastures; here he is keeping Lofty company waiting for a crumb

he's learned that I shake the crumbs out of the feedbags and he is ready and waiting to eat them

Christmas Fail Revisited

Some of you might recall our Christmas fail back in December.  We decided we were going to do our best Clark Griswold impersonation and deck our house out in Christmas lights. You might recall that this did not go as planned. This was what we accomplished:

1. One skipping, cursing child.  Who can forget Carter skipping up and down the porch yelling "goddamn, cheapass lights!" I can assure you we cannot forget . . .
2. Jason hanging precariously from a ladder that was an unwilling participant
3. One dark spot in the middle of our one small strip of icicle lights
4. One strand of icicle lights pointing up and giving us the finger
5. Two wannabe rednecks seriously considering leaving the lights on the porch roof year round so we never had to do this again.

Sadly, we came perilously close to accomplishing number five. We were so scarred by the experience of putting the lights up that we found a million reasons not to take them down. However as we had our marathon mulching session in the flowerbeds this week (we're at 140 bags and counting now) I kept looking up at those stupid lights. 

I said to myself "whose stupid idea was it to put those lights up anyway?"  Then I answered myself, "oh, right, my stupid idea."  

As any good spouse does I started bothering Jason again about taking down the lights. It's almost April and the Christmas lights are still up. Jason's response?  "No one can see our house from the road anyway. Who cares?"  I told him I cared. 

Jason immediately began listing off the bazillion things we have going on this week. I told him I didn't care, that getting these stupid lights down was going to be thing number bazillion-and-one on the to-do list this week. He finally quite arguing with me and disappeared. He re-appeared driving one of the tractors. Just as when we put the lights up, we had another "don't do this" moment while Jason stood in the bucket of the tractor and took the lights down. I should add that the Christmas lights came down the same day we mowed the lawn for the first time this year - serious fail on our part.

Maybe we'll put them up again after Thanksgiving. Maybe not. 

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B-Rad napping, Nemo, Taco and Sebastian grazing

truly a proud moment, taking down our Christmas lights on March 26th

Oskar and Kennedy grooming

Ritchie and Tony

Homer, Moe and Apollo

Lily and Maisie

Donovan and Johnny

Stormy and Walon

Taco and Sam

Renny and Dutch

pretty sunrise

Doing All The Things

I always know that spring has really arrived when Jason and I go from "normal" busy to warp-speed busy.  We've been warp-speed busy the last few days. Today we had our first visit from the dentist in 2015. The horses were cooperative for the most part and several of the horses had their teeth floated. In order to be ready for the dentist at 8am I had to start working at 5:30am. Nine hours later, at 2:30 in the afternoon, I sat down for the first time today and ate my first meal of the day. That type of schedule certainly makes for a long day. 

Yesterday Jason spread fertilizer in several of the pastures while I had more fun with the shedding blade. For reasons unknown even to me, Jason and I also decided that yesterday would be a great day to re-mulch all of the flowerbeds around the house. So in addition to everything else we've been doing the last couple of days we also decided to weed and clean out the flowerbeds and spread 100 bags of mulch. Seriously, I have no idea what we were thinking. Of course we did all of the above in addition to the normal routine of feeding and horse care that goes on every day. 

Since we are already almost 30 hours into this work week as of Tuesday evening I'm kind of excited about the fact that tomorrow our only "extra" on the schedule is spreading some more grass seed in the pastures and spreading another 50 bags of mulch. It almost sounds like a vacation at this point. The weather has been so perfect that we haven't minded the marathon work days, it has been nothing but a delight to be outside. 

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Ritchie said "hey Grand, want me to pull your halter off? Then you pull mine off and maybe we can skip the dentist?"  Grand said "great idea Ritchie, let's do it!'

Rip having his teeth floated

Hemi

Chance

Grand (his halter pulling scheme with Ritchie didn't work out as they had hoped)

Flyer and Asterik

Elfin

MyLight scratching on the fence

Walon and Toledo on the run

B-Rad and Murphy

Jason spreading fertilizer

Fabrizzio and Walden watching Jason