by Michael Lobby
Well, it’s almost the end of July and I can’t believe the Summer is going by so fast. We had quite a busy week, lots of horsey stuff. The barn was full of activity with lessons, hoof trimming, hay bucking, egg hunting, and a nice visit from my uncle and cousins from Eugene. Repairs were made to the chicken coop in addition to a new shade area so all the hens could take their dirt baths out of the hot sun. We obviously have to make more repairs as the smaller hens can be found wandering around the yard outside the coop. And an enlightening discovery (or just a realization) about a certain “hen.” I had been trying to convince Kim that her beloved Babs was not the unique and beautiful hen she was hoping for, but a quite lovely and colorful boy chicken. I knew this by the not-so-henlike behavior of jumping on the others and going for a ride. Kim was in denial (I think the kids were too) about her being a, yes I’m gonna say it, Rooster. The final giveaway was the loud cockadoodledoo out of his beak after having his way with one of the girls. Oh well, he’s still Babs, only now will probably be on his way to a barbeque nearby.
Kim and the kids (mostly Kim) cleaned up the barn and rearranged the feed room into one stall and the tack room into another temporarily until I can get the official tack room finished. It needed to be done as we have new sets of saddles and bridles and, yeah, that stuff for the new boarders. I was able to empty another stall of hay and get another 50 bales up into the loft. That was after I discovered I started the stack too far from one end and wouldn’t be able to fit all the hay up there. So I spent half a day restacking 110 bales before I added the next 50 to make sure there would be room for all of it. Whew! Great workout. Let’s see, that was probably a week ago. Still have 160 bales up. My workout plan has, so far, fallen flat. But, thanks to Kelli I found and old a hay elevator that I’m going to try and pick up this week. We’ll see…
I added another cross fence to divide the lower pasture and make room for Velvet, the new mare that will be staying with us. The initial visit between the mares didn’t go so well. Pretty much as soon as I tied the last wire and turned on the fence charger, one of them, I think it was Molly, kicked through and ripped down the fence. Grrrrrr…hours of work demolished and a few seconds. I went and got Kim to help me get the big mares moved before they did the same to the next fence. When Kim went in the pasture (wearing shorts), sure enough, the same thing happened again - one of the mares kicked through the fence. The wire got caught up in one of their legs and as they ran pulling the wire, it cut right across the back of Kim’s legs at the knee. Ouch! It looked like she had been whipped and then burned. She was ‘hurtin for a few days. Poor Kimmy. But we learned our lesson…shorts + fence wire + horses = pain. So, I spent the rest of the day rewiring the fence and getting the mares situated in the pastures to the sides of the geldings. Sometimes girls just can’t get along.
Kim had taken our cousins and the kids to Sauvie Island to pick berries. She came home with a few flats that we canned. It wasn’t a whole lot compared to the super-canning-homesteader Kelli Wright, but it’s giving us some practice and help planning for next year. We have made a master plan of our future garden that we hope to start on at Summer’s end. Right now we’re just waiting for the blackberries to ripen so we can pick and then get rid of the overgrown buggers. Oh so much to do…and loving every minute of it.
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