Sat. January 19, 2008

On days when I am feeling good enough (when I have a little extra energy) I try to take a snow shovel around to all the pastures with me when I feed. I shovel a path from the house to each pasture, and through each pasture to the various spots where I have to break ice in the creeks, or carry hay to feed. It is a lot less work to walk a clear path than to trudge through heavy snow, and we have been getting a few inches of fresh snow per day for the past few weeks, so there is plenty of snow out there.

I did the paths today, and had good enough energy to shovel everywhere I go on a daily basis - that's a lot of ground to cover, but I actually had some energy for the first time in a week. Today's work should make things a lot easier until the snow builds up again. (One of these days we will figure out what is wrong with our snow blower and then I wont have to shovel any more...)

My normal routine right now is to get up around 9am and go to the Upper Little Barn. I load two bales of hay on a sled (150 lbs) and pull that to the feeders in the Lower Little Barn, usually doing two runs and putting out between 3 and four bales. Then I load up two more bales and drag that all the way across the Little Barn Pasture to the Middle 20. I throw flakes of hay over the fence all the way up the fence line between the Upper Little Barn and the Middle 20.

After that I take a maul (very heavy headed ax) and a shovel and walk to the far side of the Lower Little Barn to the creek spot and break it open. Then I walk to the Big Barn Pasture.

In the Big Barn, I take two bales and distribute it between 9 feeders. Then I take the same maul and break open their creek.

Every few weeks we have to do extra work on the creeks. Did that today with Dave's help. This time of the season, the bank of the creek builds up with a couple of feed of snow. However, when the horses walk on that spot over and over it tuns into ice, not snow. So there is a solid bank of ice built up around each of our watering holes and if it gets too high or too steep, the horses can't reach the water anymore. Either the water is too deep down for their necks to reach, or they slide down the ice too much and just can't stand in that spot anymore. Dave and I take a pick-ax and a couple of shovels and try to lower the bank and make it flat instead of steep. We spent about an hour doing that today and counted that good work, which will hold us for another week or two.

One of these days we will manage to water without the creek during the winter. We just found a propane heater for water tanks that would allow us to keep a water tank from freezing without electricity. Still looking into its effectiveness, but something like that would be great both for us and for the horses.

In any case, I worked for about 3 hours today - best energy I have had all winter. Slept most of the rest of the day, but am quite happy to have had that kind of energy for a while.