The Sun Comes Up

 

And the sun goes down

What goes on in between?

This is kind of a deep thought type of post.  Soul searching?  Navel gazing?  What do you do with your day?  Day after day after day. . . 

We strive to put ourselves where we want to be, but then when we get there, is it actually where we want to be?  Is it what we thought it would be?  Do we want it afterall?

In my head, I can hear John Mellancamp singing Paper in Fire: 

"She had a dream
And boy it was a good one
So she chased after her dream
With much desire
But when she get too close
To her expectations
Well the dream burned up
Like paper in fire"

On the surface, I'm living my dream: Husband, Kids (and grandkids), Horse Farm. . .  

My big three goals I set way back in high school, and I've met them all.  Yes, I am living my dream.

Unless you look below the surface.  Then, well, they haven't been quite fulfilled in the way I had envisioned.  I never expected life to be easy.  I was choosing some lofty things, some unconventional (for the time) things, and I was not starting with a silver spoon.  I knew I was going to have to work and work hard.

In hindsight, I didn't know it was going to take so long to get to the 'work for myself, own my own horse farm, run my own boarding and training business' part.  When I decided to have children, and lots of them (as four was considered in the 1980s, and depending on who you talk to now still is) I knew I would have to put off a lot of the horse business part until my kids were grown up.  Having a husband whose career was our bread and butter, and whose career required a lot of travel on his part, meant that my career couldn't require me to be unavailable to my children on evenings and weekends (when childcare is difficult to get, let alone prohibitively expensive).  So, showing horses (as I had all through my teen years) was not going to be happening.  Which meant training horses for other people wasn't really going to be a viable option either.  Okay, I can deal with that.  I can wait; I'll do what I can in the interim and I'll hit the ground running when my kids are grown up.

And then, the kids were grown up.  The time I'd been waiting for, had watched with growing excitement draw nearer and near, had come.  At least, in my plans it had.  Not so much, apparently, in what other people had planned for me.  They loved me in my (almost) always available to them position.  Me, I was more than ready to shed that for phase 2: my life full time with horses.

In the ten plus years since DD2 graduated from high school--my original expected emancipation from people caretaking date--it seems like every time I try to take a step away from my past role and into my highly anticipated second career things come up to keep me from making the change.  Or, at least, make the change extremely difficult to keep up with.

So many times I have felt like shouting WTF People!?! Get with the program!  Get out of my way!  Behave!  Be mature!  Be responsible for yourself (and your offspring)!  Leave me alone; I've paid my mama dues, I faithfully raised all the ones I birthed to adulthood.  Go!  Go!  Get with the program, take care of yourself! It's my turn now!  My time is supposed to be my own and nobody is supposed to try to make me feel bad about wanting it.

I look at all the tasks that fall into the "Kris/Mom/Grandma basket", some I've willingly put there and others I wish other people hadn't assigned to me.  Which do I want to do?  Which am I needed to do?  Which should I do? Which won't cause the world to come to an end if I don't do them?

Boundaries.  Sometimes I want to erect them like a stockade fence around me.  Just because I'm trying to be self-employed, which in a way means I get to set my own schedule, doesn't mean I'm available whenever someone else wants something from me.  I know dang well that if I was punching a time clock at a business not owned by me, if I had to report for duty on certain hours on prescribed days to a location not at this little place here, people wouldn't even consider asking me to do things for them during 'work' hours Monday through Friday.  Just because I don't leave my own property to 'go to' work doesn't mean people should assume I can drop things at their whim, let alone expect me to do so.

All these things people want me to do for them.  A lot are things I did for them, have done for them, but really, that time has passed and they need to step up and take those tasks on for themselves.  Like finding themselves a list of non-emergency babysitters for their children (my grandkids) that doesn't begin and end with Grandma (me).  Or, in the case of DH, taking back some of the household tasks he used to do before his job got so demanding and took him away from home so much of his waking hours every week.  His job isn't like that anymore.  And while his household task skills are rusty and he has forgotten a lot of them, they are still there.  They need to be brought out, dusted off, oiled up and put back into practice.  Because I can't continue to do them all even though I have for a long, long time.  Not if I'm operating my own business.  Ie. working, having a career, like has been his excuse (and at times my grown up childrens' excuse) why I must be the one to carry that particular load that needs to be done in a timely fashion.

*Deep cleansing breath*

This, truly, falls into the 'training of people' category.  I love training horses, even though it takes time and requires lots of patience and repetition and, often, readjusting the timeline for your goals.  Training people, teaching them to honor my time and my boundaries, I  don't love so much.  I don't have the same tolerance and patience for repeating things over and over waiting for people to learn it as I do horses.  I mean, people, afterall, speak the same language and (for the most part) think the same way as I do.  It's not like with an animal, a horse, where you have to allow for the language barrier and the totally different way their brain works and know that you can't just say "this is the way we do it now" and expect the animal to understand and instantly follow the newly stated procedure.

Ugh.  Training people is a pain in the patootie.  Some days it feels like I'll be stuck doing ever more people training for the rest of my life and won't be able get to the amount of horse training I would rather spend my time at.

The sun comes up.

And the sun goes down.

A Month and a Half

 That's about how long Jedi has been at this little place here.  When he came, he was very skinny.  That had been put as an effect of the hard winter our area had endured.  Remember my posts about the 'house deer' that were sleeping next to my house and eating everything in my yard that they could find? I could definitely understand that he may have lost a lot of weight over the winter.

When I bought him, I figured he could probably use about 200 pounds more weight in his body than what he had at the time.

These pictures are from the first few days he was here. Note the very visible ribs even through his winter coat, the bony-ness of his hips and withers, and the tucked up belly.

Well, upon asking some very detailed questions of the former owner, I found out that it had been three or more years since Jedi's teeth had been floated--originally I'd been told they 'hadn't had him floated last year'. (True, but not the whole truth.) 

For you non-horse people, horses' teeth grow throughout their lives, and through use develop sharp spots on their molars--from grinding feed as they don't chew moving their jaws up and down like we do but more side-to-side.  These sharp spots and other unevennesses need to be floated--or rasped off--from time to time to enable better chewing of feed which means more digestibility and better utilization of nutrients.  A horse given all the food in the world can still get skinny if its teeth aren't in good shape.

So, in the third week he was here, I had the vet check and float his (very sharp, very uneven) teeth.  He didn't take to the new vet in the new environment concept at all, and we ended up having to give him quite a bit more tranquilizer than a horse typically needs to stand calmly while their teeth are worked on.  (Like a lot of people, many horses aren't naturally chill while having dentistry done on them.)  He spent a few hours after the procedure in a very dozy and drunk-like state until the sedatives wore off (sedation dentistry: keeping people safe and livestock with functional chompers.)

feeling no dental anxiety what so ever

Having his teeth put to rights, along with offering him large amounts of hay, carefully measured (for weight gain but not overpowering his system) servings of grain, and the grazing season getting underway, has allowed him to make a noticeable increase in his weight.

The hips and withers are more padded now, the ribs less visible (even though his winter coat is all gone) and his belly is not so sharply tucked.  In fact, in the last two weeks I've been slowly lowering the amount of grain he gets at each feeding while still allowing him a generous amount of hay and he grazes as much as he wants during 10 hours of turnout daily.  I want him to gain some more weight yet, but not too much and not too quickly.

I don't think, based on his bone structure, that he will ever be one of those beefy brick houses of a Quarter Horse.  In fact, the vet asked me, since Jedi didn't come to me (or his prior owner) with registration papers, if I was sure he wasn't actually a (smallish) Off-the-track-Thoroughbred (like the Poetess, only shorter).  Honestly, no, no I'm not sure.  I only know that he was sold to his previous owners as a Quarter Horse that was possibly appendix--meaning registered Quarter Horse with some Thoroughbred ancestors--and that he has the same sleeker body style as the other (registered) Quarter Horse I owned  and sold almost a decade ago.

Frugal Things in May

 I took advantage of several frugal opportunities this past month.  There were lots and lots of great grocery deals, my favorite of which is one nearby store that every few months has offered a Buy 2 Get 3 Free deal on potatoes, onions, carrots, and celery.  Since those are all produce items we use regularly, and have the ability to store for a while, I make the most of that one.  With the holiday weekend coming, May also found lots of deals on bags of charcoal briquettes, chips, ice cream and so many other things that I also have the ability to stock up on and store for months.  Of course I made the most of that too.

At the library book sale (on Memorial Day) I found a couple of books, the Richard Scarry one I mentioned in a post all ready.  The other two are a book recently published and promoted that I'd been interested in and a book of sock knitting patterns I once borrowed from the library but forgot to add to my Wish List that my kids have access to (for when they want to buy me a birthday, Christmas or Mother's Day present).

While on Facebook Marketplace looking at nearby listings (for free hardwood firewood at DH's request) I stumbled across a listing for very low priced winter horse blankets that, while dirty, looked like they were in good condition and not even 10 miles away!  Looking up the brands online, I found that brand new the black and grey one costs $100 and the maroon one has an original price of over $250 (with a hood, which this one seems to have lost).  They are in sizes that I can use, so I inquired about them and ended up a couple hours later (after the seller got off work) driving up to a barn that I used to work at (!! in 2016-2017 doing morning feed and turnouts, it has changed hands a few times as people leasing it found their own horse properties to purhase) and buying both of them for the bargain basement price of $40 total!  Yes, that's a measily $20 each!

Over the next few sunny days, I gave each of them a good wash in my (super capacity) washing machine on the heavy duty setting with several extra rinses (one at the beginning to loosen up and get rid of much of the surface dirt) and hung them on my clothes line to dry.

The maroon one does have a spot where the lining is missing, but that's something I can easily patch. It also needs new leg straps, and I happen to have a replacement pair on hand.  At a mere $40 for over $300 worth of winter horse blankets, I'm not going to begrudge < $10 for leg straps.

I brought Sweet Madame Blue out of hibernation (aka winter storage in the garage until the roads are definitely salt-free) and gave her a bath in the front yard rather than paying to take her through a car wash.  With gas prices so high it makes sense to drive her for everything I don't need a truck for.  So the pick-up will most likely stay home and only make runs to the feed store for grain and to Tractor Supply for bales of pine bedding until November or so.  Sweet Madame Blue can take care of hauling the smaller items until the snow flies and the roads get icy (and salted) again.

Then, the very last day of the month, I saw that Tractor Supply had the pelleted horse bedding (that I like the sprinkle in the pee spots of the horse stalls for extra absorption) on sale for $2 off per bag.  Since the regular price is $6.99 a bag, $2 off was quite a large percentage in savings.  I bought several bags more than I normally do.  Again, I have room and the ability to store it, so might as well stock up while it's on sale.

Since it was time for me to get more bales of pine shavings that I use for stall bedding, and the price on that was 60 cents per bag lower than normal, I decided to take DH up on his idea of buying an entire pallet of it rather than the 20 bags we normally get per trip (in the back of the pick up).  We just hooked up the trailer and took that to TSC with us this time.

59 bags fit on a pallet, so 59 x $0.60 came out to a savings of $35.40.  Not too shabby.  Now we'll test DH's theory that we can store a pallet of shavings in his shop--I don't have that much space in the barn--in an area that will be both easy for me to access weekly and won't be in the way of any of the other items that 'live' in the shop (like the tractor, 4-wheeler, mower, tools, tools, more tools, work tables. . .) or the activities that are done in the shop (repairing things, woodworking kind of things, hanging deer in season. . . ).

Funny side note: I texted this picture to both my daughters with the caption "When TSC has bedding on sale, you buy a whole pallet."  DD1 responded almost instantly "For a very brief moment I thought 'How many bed sheets does this lady need?!?' Then realized you meant horse bedding."  

HA!  That would be a few lifetimes of bed sheets indeed!

Books Read in 2026: May

 The Name Game by Beth O'Leary.  This author is one I like to go to for a light read that isn't too cliche or annoying.  This particular novel was just published this spring, but I had heard of it last fall and had put my name on the hold list at the library as soon as they placed their order for copies.  After all those months of waiting, I devoured it in just four days and if this wasn't such a busy time of year at this little place here I totally could have read the entire thing in one afternoon.  Which, made me, when finished with it, look up what other books of hers I hadn't read yet and grab that one immediately from the library shelf when I found out it was sitting at my local library amongst all the other books waiting for someone to check them out.

Swept Away by Beth O'Leary.  If I had to pick a favorite between these two books by the same author, I think I would pick this one.  I liked them both, but this one, to me, just flowed better.  

A Botanist's Guide to Flowers and Fatality by Kate Khavari. A book I spied on the library shelf, read the blurb, and decided to give it a try.  Set in London in the 1920's, it was overall an interesting read.  Apparently it is the second book of a series, so now I'll have to request book 1 from the library interloan (my local branch doesn't appear to own a copy) so I can read (and understand) some of the references in the second book to characters and events prior. I liked this book and will definitely read more by this author.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke.  Overall, I liked this book although it was kind of weird, and sometimes rather dystopian and hard to follow. Did I like the main character?  Oh heck no, not one bit.  Could I sometimes relate to her?  Yeah, I could. 

The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie.  I'm pretty sure I read this one, a long, long time ago (like high school in the late 1980s).  But I don't really remember it, and since I decided late last year that I would like to read every single Agatha Christie book in the coming years, even those I read once upon a time in another lifetime (pre-kids, pre-husband, pre-having to run a household), in chronological order and this is the second book she wrote, here we are.

Remember back in March, when I started reading Pillars of the Earth?  Guess what. . . this month I finished it!  So good.  So much history, so many characters that get addicting and you want to know what happens to them, so masterfully written! I will, undoubtedly, at some point read the rest of this series, but for at least the summer I need to take a break from giant books, so it might not be until 2027 that I pick up the next one.

Busy, Busy, Family-full Weekend

 Last weekend was not our ordinary Let's Tackle a Project weekend.  Rather, we were busy all three days of the holiday weekend, yet got zero projects done and even had a hard time fitting in the normal daily/weekend tasks like mowing the lawn, horse chores, chicken care, etc.  

On Saturday we spent several hours in the middle of the day having a Meet The Parents lunch with DD2 and her boyfriend (whom I've been mute on for nearly a year that I've known about him, biding my time and waiting to see how things go before giving him an official name and presence on my blog).  He'd met DH and I last summer, and she had met his parents last summer, when the two of them decided they were going to take their relationship from talking and getting to know each other to being an official dating couple.  Since then he's been to our family functions and she's been to his, but parents had not been introduced to each other.  His family lives a little over an hour from ours.

DD2 and boyfriend will soon be moving together near the very bottom edge of Michigan; at the beginning of the year he took a job across the border in Ohio (after, in late 2025, government funding  to the research job he'd been doinggot axed and thus he too got axed).  As their relationship progressed, they decided to look for housing together closer to his job and DD2 started looking into transferring from the veterinarian office she works at to another of the same 'chain' that is also just across the border in Ohio.  This spring she was made aware of an upcoming opening in the office down there, went for an interview, and was offered the job to start as soon as she moved.  They have signed a lease on a brand new modular home and will be moving in mid-June.  Right after that, DD2 will start at the new to her vet office.

So, while it wasn't exactly an 'our kids are engaged to get married, we should meet each other' Meet The Parents, it sort of had that tone.  And it was very nice to meet his parents; they are friendly people and I can definitely see that he gets his ebullience from his mom while his dad seems to be the stereotypical quiet engineer type (his father and DH, while they haven't worked together, have worked for the same gigantic employer and even in some of the same locations but at different times in different programs).

That was our 'family Saturday'.

Then, on Sunday, K3 got confirmed into the church. 

 Between her 'examination' during the Bible Study hour, the Rite of Confirmation and taking her first communion during the church service, and then her open house afterward at DS1 and Two-ee's house, DH and I were gone from home about seven hours.  Which meant that when I was home I was cramming in stall cleaning and other horse related chores.

Unfortunately it poured rain for most of K3's open house, which made DS1 very glad that Two-ee's had talked him into renting a party tent for the event.  The guests, after dashing from their vehicles to the tent in the backyard, all stayed dry.  DS1 had borrowed our pig roaster to use as a super sized grill for the hamburgers and hot dogs being served, which was in danger of having the fire put out by the downpour, but he and DH were able to construct a makeshift roof for it with some 2x4s, cinderblocks, rope and a big tarp. The two of them got very wet in the process.

The kids, of course, didn't stay dry long as they delighted in running around in the rain outside of the tent as soon as their parents' backs were turned.  Sixlet in particular was fascinated by being rained on; in his just over two years of life he'd not yet been allowed to play in the rain, nor had he ever had a shower (just baths), and at first he was confused by how he could be getting so wet from above.

Of course his brother had to join in the fun, much to DD1's consternation (they were supposed to be going to Honorary Son's parents' house afterward) and also get soaking wet.

That was our 'family Sunday'

Monday DH and I went to the village for the big Memorial Day parade, which is at noon but if you want to get a spot on the edge of the street you really want to be there with your chairs right around 11:00.  We like to sit near the front of the (very small) library, which has a couple of shade trees and also easy access to the annual library book sale (which is by donation).  I didn't find very many books I was interested in this year and only purchased three, one of which was this cool Richard Scarry board book.

With the exception of DD2, who had to work a half day on Memorial Day (who makes a vet appointment for their cat or dog on Memorial Day??), all my kids made it to the parade this year.  The small cousins sat in front, jostling for position when candy was being thrown, and heartwarmingly sharing with each other when one would come up emptyhanded on the latest treat influx.

L to R: Sixlet, Rascal, Tractor, Faline 

(Buck was sitting in a chair and doesn't show in the photo,

Lucky was in a stroller just out of sight also)

After the parade, they dispersed to different places for lunch, with the exception of DS2, Surprise and Lucky, who came to our house.  DH had put a brisket in the smoker before heading to the parade, DS2 brought a brisket with him that he had begun the evening before at his own home, and we visited while the two briskets finished 'cooking'.  Then, in time for dinner, DS1 and family came, bringing leftover open house side dishes, DD1 and family came with a giant tub of cottage cheese, and DD2 came from her work shift bringing rhubarb muffins and a rhubarb crisp she had made the night before.  We all sat down to tables in the backyard (gorgeously sunny weather that day) and enjoyed a potluck style meal featuring two flavors of smoked brisket.

That was our 'family Monday'.  And I was exhausted!

Random Stuff

 Is this a happy things on Friday post?  Is it a May recap post?  Who knows?  I'm not sure.  Let's find out together!

My irises are beginning to bloom.  I added quite a few new-to-me varieties last year, through trading rhizomes with a friend and through buying some from local and online nurseries.

Many Mahalos

variety unknown, probably very old

ditto

Easter Candy

Locally, schools are wrapping up for the summer.  The district that all my school-aged grandkids attend, and where DD1 teaches at, finished this week. Faline graduated from Kindergarten, and insisted on choosing her own outfit to wear to the celebration in the elementary school gym.  

I've been working a lot on getting the garden planted, including transplanting the plants I started in the house.  While the basil I sewed from (old) seeds didn't grow well, apparently their cup made a handy spot for a grey treefrog to take up residence while the rest of the plants were hardening off pre-transplanting.

strangest looking basil plant I've ever seen

using my 2+ decades old Farm Bureau yardstick to space the tomato plants

DH and I found two spots around the property where there are golden oyster mushrooms growing on old stumps.  They are quite yummy and I've been incorporating them into our dinner menu.

lovely clump of mushrooms

underside

All spring, DH and I have been wanting to have a fire in order to burn some brush and accumulated paper garbage (in the winter we put the 'burn garbage' into the wood boiler, but that has been shut down for a few weeks now that warm weather is here.)  Either it's been too rainy, or too windy, or we've been too busy on the good weather evenings to light the brush pile.  Finally, on Sunday after dinner the wind was calm enough to safely get things lit and burned off.  I took advantage of the 'down time' while watching the fire to do a little knitting on the second sock of the pair I am making for my Dad.

Tis the season for raccoons to become a pest issue.  One morning this week I went out to feed horses and found that my feed room had been pillaged.  Luckily they hadn't gotten into the containers I keep the grain in (due to the nature and placement of the containers), but they did manage to get into one of Crockett and Tubbs' supplement buckets and spill some onto the floor as well as make a mess in their endeavors to get to the food stuffs.  So, out came the live trap.  I baited it with dry cat food (a favorite 'treat' of raccoons) in the hopes of catching the perpetrator that night.

Imagine my surprise the next morning to find I'd gotten a two-fer!  This sometimes happens with a mama coon followed by her young into the trap, but it's the first time we've ever had two full grown raccoons squeeze into the trap close enough together that the door snapped closed on both of them.

Partners in crime?

The trap has been rebaited and set every night, and we have caught five adult coons near the barn, plus one more in the (smaller) live trap I set near the front porch after finding coon manure right in front of my front door.  Rude little buggers!

On the way to Faline's graduation the other afternoon, I had to drive a different way than I usually take due to a road construction detour.  I spied this happy stump on the edge of a field and just had to pull over for a quick photo.

Hoses, The Bane of My (Farming) Existence

 Hoses.  Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

At least, on the farm, you can't do without them.  As frustrating--and sometimes back-breaking--as they can be, hoses are a necessary evil if you have animals and plants to water on a frequent basis.  

There's the hose needed for inside the barn that can reach from the spigot to each and every stall, for the daily filling of the water buckets.  Depending on the length of your barn, and therefore the length of your hose--that one can be pretty easy to deal with.  It still needs to be coiled up neatly and stashed out of the way between uses, but it's usually a short enough hose that it's not terribly heavy to move around.

But then there's the hose(s) needed for outside, the long hose combination necessary to get to the water troughs.  Because, in the summer especially, who wants to hand carry 10 gallons of water per horse per day to each trough?  A hose does the job much more easily, and, since it's doing the carrying its much easier to fill a 100 gallon trough once a week or so than hand carry that 10 gallons per horse daily.  Once you get to know your particular set up combination of hose diameter and length, distance to trough, and water pressure provided by your well pump, you can figure out how many minutes it takes to fill each water trough.  Armed with that knowledge, you can make efficient use of your time by geting the hose stretched out and into a particular trough, turn on the water, then go do something else (like clean a stall) while the well pump and the hose do the work of refilling the trough.  You don't need to stand there while the water flows. Just come back and remove the hose (and typically start the process over at the next tank) after that specific number of minutes has passed.

But that's when it works.  When it doesn't, you have to hunt down and remedy kinks in the hose.  Which, it seems with any hose manufactured in the last 10 years or so, happens every single time you try to coil up your hose or roll it onto a hose reel.  ARGH!  I haven't figured out yet what the flippin' deal is with these modern hoses, but kinking wasn't such an every time all the time thing in my previous decades of horse farm work. Not to say it didn't happen, because it did, but not every single time the hose was used (or multiple times in one use).

And when the hoses are actually behaving, once the kink has been tamed, the next frustration is the snake-like twisting that hoses want to do.  Can they just roll up nicely in a continuous cranking of the handle on the hose reel?  NO!  They must twist themselves around every which way, so that periodically you must stop turning the handle and straighten the hose back out into a twist-free unknotted line, then resume cranking again.

No picture to go with this next woe, but periodically you also have to deal with a hose that has sprung a leak.  Now your water pressure is being lost due to a pin sized hole in the hose that sprays water out before the end where the water is supposed to exit.  A pinhole that, when you keep using the hose-- because, let's face it, neither duct tape nor baling twine is gonna fix it, and you so much dread going hose shopping and trying to pick out a better, more durable, less kink-prone hose in an afforbable price range (truly,  there's no 'affordable' 100 foot long hose out there)--suddenly gets to the point that there's a geyser shooting out of your leaky hose and the water trough is not the recipient of the majority of the water.  This not only makes it take forever to fill a trough, but it leaves a huge muddy mess somewhere along the hundreds of feet where the hose lies on the ground in order to reach said trough.  Worse yet, a holey hose that sprays water inside your barn where puddles are definitely not okay.

When that happens, you must go hose shopping.  Not only must you go hose shopping, you must remove all 200 feet of hose from your hose reel--because it, of course, is the hose that is hooked to the water supply connector on the hose reel and not the hose closest to the 'top' of the hose reel that sprung the leak--unscrew the leaky hose from both the hose reel water supply piece and the other 100' hose attached to said leaky hose, then uncoil the new hose and attach it to the other hose plus the hose reel, and wind all that back up again onto the reel.

Without tangling any of the now 300' of hose (old plus new) spread out in the vicinity of the hose reel.

And, if you are dealing with 100' or more of hose that needs to be used/moved frequently, you are going to want a hose reel.  One hundred feet of hose (especially decent quality hose), while possible to coil into big loops and throw over your shoulder, is kind of heavy.  Add a second hose and now you're stooped under the weight of it.  And let me tell you that no, it wouldn't just be easier to drag it.  It's still heavy and now you've added the resistance of the friction with the ground.

So, hose reels.  Also not cheap.  It's best to just resolve yourself to the truth that you are going to have to hand over your hard earned cash for a hose reel in the three-figure price range.  Don't think you can get by with one in the upper two-figures.  Learn from my mistake (that was, luckily, fully refundable) with those lower end reels; they aren't made well and won't hold up.  In my case, my cheapy hose reel didn't even make it through ten days of nightly filling two water buckets in the barn before it started spraying through the reel itself where the water supply connector had cracked.  That one went back where it came from immediately the next morning.  In it's place I (wincingly) bought a heavier duty model for twice the price and have been loving my hefty hose reel for almost two and a half years so far.  

That's just the barn area hose-related part of life.  There's also the (large) garden hose issues.  A garden of size needs more 100' hoses.  Those hoses also will kink and twist and at times run over and break off your tender veggie plants even when you're trying to be careful where you are dragging the hose through.  They too will eventually spring leaks.  And so will the splitter attachment for the hydrant at the garden so you can attach two hoses to one hydrant and water two spots simultaneously with sprinklers. Typically a new gasket in the splitter will fix that.  Those are cheap and easy to replace.

Sprinklers.  Don't get me started on the headaches with sprinklers. Attaching them to the hose(s). Leveling so they don't spray long in one spot and short in another on their rotation.  Durability (or lack of).  And, again, gaskets.

Farm life is never boring, even when you're talking about working with inanimate objects.