Saturday, January 21, 2012

Mild Night



I just got in from feeding everyone. First out to the horses with a little bucket of grain and apples , then i go into our new hay shed and get there hay for the night. Dior and lacy were both in the barn , warm and dry on nice fresh shavings. The horses have a huge walk in barn that allows them to come and go when they please. I have to come believe this is a healthier way of life giving them the ability to move around at will 24/7. This also causes a ton more work as they use it as an out house as well. Hopefully next summer we can raise the funds to put a nice shelter up and off of our new shed for them to stand out of the rain . It will save us both shavings and the extra labour to keep it clean . Lacy was a snuggle bunny today when i was in cleaning . She stood waiting for me to scratch on her and stroke her soft neck. She reached her head down to mine and held her face into my cheek , she is a lovely horse.

We had a great show of help today with Roxane , Alicia and Theresa arriving. Alicia tackled the waters and we opted to hand pail then drag the hose out, we all chipped in when we got to the big pigs waters. The pigs had peanuts in a shell for breakfast and i have noticed they are all now starting to spit out the shells where as before they all ate them. A tad spoiled me thinks... thanks for feeding the kids Roxane and Theresa and filling up the pails for tonight.

Nick was here, getting his hours done so us girls had a few things we needed him to tackle. All the gates on the paddocks i had built here are braced wrong. One by one they are starting to fail , the first one that needed reinforcing was Roscoe's. Yesterday when i went into move snow and free up ice water I couldn't get the gate to swing open so i had to climb over the fence to get out. So to my disappointment we have already had to micky mouse something on this expensive build when i moved here only two years ago. Eventually every one of the gates will have to come down and be rebuilt correctly.

Everything is still under snow and there is some deep icy patches so i chose to not let the farm pigs out today as they are so rambunctious and i sure don't need any of them falling down on ice here, especially our Rose. While sitting watching my senior herd eat tonight i could see in the snow pile a perfect water tub icicle 5 inches thick, hard to beleive it is so mild out now. And there is going to be a ton more work next week-end as the snow melts as we could only pick up what we could out there today.

Well i better go get Mouse out as she hasn't been out of here all day and then feed my inside crew, oh and then me.

Will leave you with a picture of a gate built incorrectly. The long brace should be coming from the lower hinge up. You can see the long brace is done opposite so those two pieces going from the lower hinge up may look pretty but structurally they do nothing. I have added a picture of a gate built correctly..

1 comment:

Jean said...

Yup, basic gate-building 101. Too bad you can't get the guy back to correct his mistakes at his own expense - heaven knows you paid enough for all that fencing.

I hope you are feeling much better and that the health issue is resolved favourably. Here's hoping the rest of the winter is mild, with enough rain to fill the well but not so much that the mud sucks your boots off!