Highboy and I made a quick trip over to Lena’s again yesterday for a ride around her beautiful hay fields, through the woods, and around her neighbor’s old tobacco (now soy) fields. Highboy was his usual jolly self, ears always up and looking at everything with great interest. It’s nice that he doesn’t really spook much anymore, but definitely wanders around like a tourist taking in every bit of scenery.
Blu was meowing at me like usual this evening, and when I found him he had captured a vole and was harassing it. Poor rodent was having a tough day…. Both Blu and Soliel were making the most of playing with it. At one point Blu walked away from it to come see me, and he just shrugged his shoulders and said there were plenty more where that one came from. This is why we have the cats- for rodent control- but it can be a little jarring to watch them at work!
I'm very happy to report that the arena sand has arrived, been spread, and is looking fabulous! It needs a few good soaking rains to get the spread out sand to shift and settle a bit, then I'll get after it with the tractor and arena sand harrow to fluff the top 3-4 inches. In the meantime it's plenty deep and makes for good cardio when walking through it!
I took out the Pivo this morning and rode Dewey with the dogs to check out how the sand had dispersed after the delivery guy had spread it with his skidsteer this week.
The dogs were very excited to get out and work a bit -it's been in the upper 90s here this week with significant humidity (compared to Colorado!) so too hot to really work the horses or the dogs. But this morning was really nice and all four of us enjoyed ourselves.
We also went around the trails after we'd investigated the arena, and I couldn't resist taking a couple photos as we hacked around the pond.
After going through the woods at the back side of the house we get to the open area along the perimeter of the property. It adds another loop to the walk to hack back through the field. Dewey said the bugs were kind of bad through the taller grass (deer flies are no joke!) but otherwise it was a nice walk in the cool morning air.
This afternoon sand started to arrive for the arena and I'm so excited! I’m very impressed with the accuracy of the gentleman uploading this giant truck of sand. It will of course need to be moved around some, graded and leveled, but I had fully expected large mountains of sand to be deposited, needing quite a bit of skidsteer work after the big trucks were gone. However, this guy is spreading each delivery quite nicely. Regular training will commence soon!
Over the years I've established and developed a significant knowledge base for working on old tractors. That's not to say that I can repair any old tractor, but I know how to do very specific things on the particular old tractors I've worked with. I had an old 1950s massey-ferguson, a 1960s Ford, and I've worked with newer (80s and 90s) John Deeres and Kubotas. As time went by my four letter word vocabulary developed, as tractors only break down when you really need to use them. I've replaced starters that I had rebuilt, changed out solenoids, identified transmission issues, recharged and replaced batteries, assisted with hydraulic repairs. While I'm reasonably capable, I don't enjoy this type of work when I could be doing other things I enjoy much more.
Because of the hassle of finding an older mechanic who is capable, knowledgeable, and willing to work on these older tractors when I run into an issue I can't fix myself, we decided to take the plunge and manifest my midlife crisis by purchasing a new Kubota from the local dealership. Their prices were comparable to others I'd researched online, and we're hoping with a new tractor that we won't have the expensive repairs I was doing so regularly on our tractor in Colorado. With the newer tractors most of the inner workings are controlled by a computer, so I couldn't do much in the way of repairs myself even if I wanted to. Ideally this new one won't need the excessive repairs.
I also got a mower to use with the tractor to take care of the pastures here. Pasture maintenance requires regular mowing to knock down the weeds before they go to seed and proliferate, and to help the good grazing grass to come in thicker. So far things are working reasonably well. I had to do a good bit of prep on the mower to get it ready for use in the way of setting up gearshafts, adjusting height, putting oil and lube in the correct places. However, having a 6' swath mowed with each pass makes pasture maintenance much more palatable.
Rizzo doesn't like the normal zero turn lawnmower at all. If Owen uses it near her and the barn she goes and hides in the barn where it can't get her. Oddly, she doesn't mind the tractor and mower. In Colorado she would run around with me while I was working with it, and even help keep horses in the right pens as I moved big round bales through gates like Miles did in his days. But don't get near her with that regular lawnmower - from a dog's perspective it's clearly not safe.
It's definitely starting to get hot here, we've had several days in the 90s over the last couple weeks. When I ride it's always early in the morning before it's too hot, and the dogs like to come with me. They take dips in the pond whenever we ride by, and they enjoy meandering around on the trails in the woods we ride. Since they seem to like the water for cooling off, I went to the store and picked up a small kiddie swimming pool for them. I filled it with cold hose water and set it in their big kennel. So far I've only seen them drinking from it like it's a giant water dish, but hopefully they'll realize they can climb in and cool off too. I did try to lift each dog and set them into it, but they curled each of their dog legs up to avoid getting their paws wet, and gave me the stink-eye when I set them down in the water. Possibly it was too reminiscent of having a bath?
The goslings have done well, too. All three have made it to adolescence and are getting faster at hopping into the water to swim to safety. The parents are still quite militant about family defense, which is likely how the youngsters have made it this far. Teenage goslings aren't quite as cute as newborns, but it's a phase of life everyone must go through to reach adulthood.
I got the new fencing up and finished last week, the fencing guys were great and even hung the gate for me. Now Daisy and Raven are enjoying the access to new grass there too. We love how it looks, it needs little to no maintenance, and was half the cost of comparable wood fencing. We decided to eventually replace all the post/trail fencing with this, but we’ll have to do it in increments for budgeting reasons.
Dewey enjoys the grass in the gelding pasture. He and Highboy occasionally graze together, but mostly Note and Highboy stick together and Dewey eats on his own. At night Dewey and Raven are pastured together, so here at least has some friend time.
Over Memorial Day weekend Owen and I found another trail where we can take the horses to ride and Owen can run. It’s called the Tobacco Heritage Trail and it starts kind of in the middle of town. There is parking big enough for my horse trailer, and the trail is really well groomed and maintained. This area used to have a lot of tobacco farming, and the trail kind of travels past the old locations.
