Farm Jobs

Over the past week Jason and I have partaken in what feels like all of the farm tasks. In reality we've done nowhere close to all of the things that happen around the farm but it feels like we've done them all. In addition to the usual feeding, grooming, farrier/vet visits and all normal horse care our to do lists have been very long.

Last Friday we finished nailing up boards on the section of fence we've been rebuilding. All that remains now is to nail up the face boards, and that is a very non-critical task. The warm season grasses decided to start growing with enthusiasm over the last ten days so Jason spent a couple of days spreading fertilizer on the pastures. This was his second round of fertilizing as he always does a split application. The cool season grasses get fertilizer in late February or early March, then the warm season grasses get fertilized sometime in May.

Our one unplanned task was dealing with a leaking water hydrant. Jason had the "pleasure" of tackling that job mostly on his own. There's nothing more fun than busting through concrete with a pick axe to dig up a hydrant. I know this because Jason looked like he was having the time of his life while digging up the hydrant. As it turned out the hydrant was fine, but the fitting that was used on the hydrant was the wrong size, and had finally come loose. We've got a mile of water lines buried on the farm and have had minimal issues with the lines over the past 8 years. The only areas we have had issues, including this one, are the lines and hydrants that Jason did not install himself. The hydrant is now re-installed with the correctly sized fitting and all is working properly again.

Needless to say the days have all felt like marathons lately. Hopefully things will now settle down and be more normal - whatever normal is around here!

lying face down in mud is always a good time

 all the boards are now on the fence

Jason working on round two of fertilizing the pastures

Nemo, Lighty and Sebastian

Merlin and Bruno

Cocomo and Silver

Maisie and Igor

Baby and Hemi

Johnny and Squirrel

Bonnie and Sabrina

Rubrico and Toledo

Rip and Grand

B-Rad and Blu grazing in the rain

Digby and Johnny

Fabrizzio followed by Remmy, Havana and Baner on a rainy afternoon . . . 

. . . and then Hesse joined the lineup

George and Flyer grooming

Revy, Homer, Moe and Levendi having a lazy afternoon

No Floodplain Means No Flooding

I mentioned in one of my last blogs that we'd had a lot of rain in February. I don't remember the final February tally but it was a crazy number, something like 12 or 13 inches of rain. March has started off in the footsteps of February and we had at least an inch, probably more like two inches, of rain last night and today. Schools were closed today in our county since several roads were closed due to flooding. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were warm, sunny days. Their purpose was to fake us out and trick us into thinking we were done accumulating rain in February. The ground was drying up nicely and the grass is starting to really pop with green color in some areas of the farm. Then the rain moved back in Tuesday evening and hung around until mid-day on Thursday. We've had a LOT of rain.

Some of our very long time readers might remember our lengthy search for land. If you can believe it we bought this farm EIGHT years ago in January 2010. One of the reasons we spent almost three years searching for land to buy was because Jason was insistent that we have no floodplain areas on our farm. He was serious when he meant none. Even 2 acres out of 200 was more floodplain than Jason was willing to own.

At the time I thought Jason was making an already tough land search even harder. Over the years I've come to realize he was a genius in his insistence on no floodplain areas. Since we've purchased this farm middle Tennessee has had a 1,000 year flood (remember that time when Nashville and surrounding areas had 12 inches of rain in 36 hours) and now we've seen a month like February.  We have predictable spots on the farm that form what I like to call "water features" when we have really heavy rain, basically little ponds where there shouldn't be a pond. But our water features are gone within a day of the rain clearing out, and most of them are gone within an hour or two of the rain stopping.

Other farms in the area have not been so lucky when it comes to standing water and flooding. More than one farm in our area has pastures that are completely, 100% submerged under water right now. Some even have water in their barns. I'm thankful that we have none of those worries on our farm thanks to Jason's meticulous due diligence when it came to our land search. Our creek even stayed within its banks while others within a half mile of us were out of their banks and flooding areas up to a half mile wide.

When it comes to running a farm it is easy to overlook some of the knowledge that Jason brings to the table. We have no worries at all about our barns or pastures flooding right now. After the extreme drought our area had in the second half of 2016 Jason spent a fortune in seed and fertilizer and countless hours on the tractor bringing them back to their usual excellent shape in 2017. He re-seeded four times and fertilized three times to undo all of the drought damage. Thanks to his large animal nutrition background we feed a custom feed designed by him with a vitamin/mineral profile balanced specifically to our soil, grass and hay tests. It takes a lot more than just hands-on horse knowledge to run a really top notch horse farm. Let me repeat that. It takes a LOT more than a good horse background to run a good horse farm. When I look around at the flooded farms around us I realize just how critical that knowledge can be at times, and how I have no stress at all while I watch neighboring farms trying to get horses and other livestock to high ground.

Thank you Jason for the lack of stress in my life right now.

Rubrico and Ewen on the run

Rocky and Toledo

Sushi, Squirrel and Gus

Cino, Remmy and Bruno

Cocomo and Asterik

Rip and Grand

the warm rain is making the grass start to green up in some places

Homer and Hemi

Baby, Apollo and Elfin

Chance and Trigger

Convey, Trigger and King

Roho and Wilson

Cisco and King

Norman

Maisie

If You Want It Done Right Part 2

In case you missed it, I wrote about our saga with local fence builder Maury Fence Company back in August. Maury Fence Company thankfully only built about one mile of our six miles of fence. I cannot imagine having to face rebuilding all six miles of fence. You can read my original post about our fence saga here.

After purchasing and then using our new post driver to rebuild a short section of fence this summer, Jason decided the first order of business before we rebuilt more fence was getting the post driver where it could be mounted on the front of one of the tractors instead of on the three point hitch at the back. After spending tons of time making his neck sore looking backwards it became quickly obvious to us why most of the fencing companies found a way to mount their post drivers on the front of the tractor. Jason worked with a local welder to have a plate custom made for the front of one of our tractors. Once the plate was ready he removed the front end loader and used the plate to mount the post driver on the front of the tractor.

He accomplished all of this in early October. We then proceeded to find every excuse possible to avoid rebuilding this fence.  Given that we're always non-stop busy we did not struggle to find reasons to avoid building a new fence. A few days ago Jason said we had to stop avoiding the fence project. The weather has been consistently gorgeous with days in the mid 60's, and we needed to take advantage of these days before they finally come to an end.

I refer to all of these time consuming, frustrating farm projects that require to be in each other's faces for hours on end while we work together "marriage building projects." For the last five days we've spent a couple of hours a day working on our marriage building project. The first two days were rough. I was running the tractor while Jason operated the post driver. With two cooks in the kitchen it should come as no surprise that things were getting a bit testy at times. Finally on day three I started largely ignoring Jason's instructions and he did the same to me. Unsurprisingly, we've worked in relatively nice harmony since then and we've gotten much more efficient.

Since we only have an our or two per day to devote to this we're not setting any records. We've set 120 posts so far. We are about 30 posts away from reaching a corner. The plan is to start nailing up the boards on that section of the fence, then we will start again on a new section. Part of me wants the weather to get cold and wet so we can stop. The other part of me wants the weather to stay nice so we can get this done and hopefully never do it again. My nightmare is that it gets cold and wet and I still find myself on the tractor pounding fence posts. I guess time will tell which scenario plays out.

Watching Jason drive a post

the fruits of our labor

Ewen, fencing supervisor

Alfie and Art

Baby, Elfin and Homer

Lofty and Renzo

Blu and B-Rad waiting for breakfast on a frosty morning

Roho and Rubrico

Nemo and Taco

Romeo and Silver

Cuffie and Charlotte were blending in with the morning frost

Hesse and Havana

Remmy, Merlin and Cino

Asterik

Dolly, Calimba and MyLight

Traveller and Lily

Toledo napping, Rubrico and Ripley eating hay

a closer look at Toledo

Johnny and Rocky