A New Face

 

This cute face (and the rest of it's body) moved in this week.  It's been such a maybe/maybe not situation I didn't want to post about it until it actually happened.

Last Summer, DH and I started talking, in the future tense, about getting a horse or large pony that would be calm and safe enough that the grandkids could ride it. Eventually the Poetess will be able to take a much less experienced rider than myself, but she's rather tall (and potentially scary) for small kids.  What I needed was a been there done that unflappable gelding of moderate height.  Not so small he'd be outgrown quickly, but not as tall as the Poetess.  

DH wanted me to get a fourth client horse in residence first.  With one stall completely taken up with tools, materials, and storage of stuff while the tack room was being SLOWLY built, and nowhere in the interim to have a new boarder store their sadde & bridle, brushes, etc. I told him the tack room needed to be completed before I advertised for another boarder.  

In the meantime, I started scouting online for a potential grandkid horse, not with the intention of purchasing right away, but more trying to get a feel for what's out there currently and what the price range is for something that checked my necessary boxes on personality, training, and (extremely) low maintainence. Probably in its teens.  I didn't want something that was so been there done that it required hock injections or daily medications for arthritic old (or highly worn and torn) joints.  And perferrably a horse with good feet that wouldn't require shoes.  It didn't have to be a gelding, but with the mare drama between Alpha mare personality Poetess and 'I also want to be the Alpha mare' Little Black Mare, I was hesitant to even consider adding a (nonpaying) mare to the barn.

I envisioned a nice mid-size Quarter Horse gelding.  Your stereotypical derpy, go along with anything, put any rider on him, not cause trouble in the barn or pasture, guy.  He didn't have to have a show ring background.  I'm not sure any of the grandkids will ever get into showing, and, honestly, when I see what the Western Pleasure show circuit horses move like these days, I don't want a horse that's been trained to move like a cripple just so their rider doesn't bounce.  (Sorry, not sorry, for my bluntness if any readers happen to currently be part of that fad.  That's NOT how Western pleasure horses moved in the 1980s/early 1990s when I was still showing Western and Hunt Seat, it's not how they naturally move unsaddled, and I'm not buying into it.)

Anyhoo. . . 

Because we hadn't completed the tack room until recently, and that 'tool/storage' stall hasn't been totally relieved of duty yet, I haven't advertised for a fourth boarding client horse.  Which meant, in my mind, and because I hadn't much saved up for buying a horse, that I wasn't shopping for that grandkid horse yet.

But apparently God had a horse for my grandkids.  Not just any horse.  A mid-sized been there done that, low maintainence fairly derpy Quarter Horse gelding.  In the stereotypical QH gelding orange, er, chestnut, color.  Or sorrel if you're Western folk (as it was explained to me back in 1991, if you ride English it's a chestnut.  If you ride Western, it's a sorrel. Exact same color, more of a dialectual thing than a difference in coat color.)

Hopefully this isn't all ready a TL,DR post, because it's about to get longer.

In January, I got a call one morning from DS1 asking if I could go pick K3 up from school; he'd gotten a call from the school office that she was sick and needed to go home.  He was at work, Two-Ees was working from home but in a meeting and couldn't leave at the moment. Could I please go get K3 from school and drop her off at their house?  I was out in the barn, dressed for work on planet Hoth in my full Carhartt regalia (insulated bibs and coat) plus clunky insulated waterproof boots, knit hat and thick insulated leather work gloves, but I said I could run and get her, hopefully she wouldn't be embarassed by being seen with me in my barn gear.

The embarassing barn gear is a key element in this tale.  Because while I was waiting in the school office, the secretary asked me what kind of animals I had (due to my obvious winter farm gear).  When I said horses, she said "you must have really clean stalls; I can't even smell you."  A huge compliment.  Because, IFYKY, clothing that is regularly in the barn takes on a certain smell, especially if your animal husbandry practices are a tad lacking. To not smell horse barn on my presence in all those pounds of winter clothing was indeed a testament to my (highly anal retentive) barn management skills.

Then she proceeded to tell me that her daughter has a horse, but they were thinking of selling it because, since she got her driver's license last summer, the daughter has lost interest in riding.  Of course, given that info, I mentioned that, while we weren't shopping yet, we were thinking about buying a nice beginner-safe horse for K3 and the other grandkids to ride.  The secretary asked for my phone number, in case they did decide to sell the horse, and I obviously gave it to her.  Because what did either of us have to lose?

A month went by. . .  And in late February I got a text from the school secretary saying they were probably going to put the daughter's horse up for sale, would I like some info on him?  Uh, yes, yes I would.  She sent me more texts, and several pictures and videos of her daughter riding the horse (from past summers).  I asked a bunch of qualifying questions.  We set up a tentative date in March (since I was about to leave for vacation with DH) for me and K3 to come see the horse and for me to get a better idea of if he might work for what I had in mind.

While on vacation, that date got moved back, at the secretary's request, due to weather and some other things they had going on.  We picked a date about three days after the original.  That date came and it was windier than windy.  

K3 and I went to see the horse, but, since it hadn't been ridden all winter (and hardly at all the summer before), the ground was pretty wet,the only place they had to ride was their yard or the side of the road,  and it was super windy (horses are always silly in high winds) we opted not to test ride that day.  I checked him out in every other way than riding him, though, and was fairly interested in him.  When asked what price they were thinking of for him, the daughter gave me one and the mom immediately said a price $500 higher.  I told them I'd like to come back another day, after the daughter had had a chance to ride him a few times, and then ride him and perhaps have K3 ride him.  Also that I would have to speak with my husband on the price as we hadn't really saved up that much yet, not having intended on buying a horse quite so soon.  As we parted ways, they said they'd contact me in a week or so after the daughter had ridden a few times.

Two weeks went by without a word.  Then, suddenly a text wanting to know if I still wanted to come ride him or not.  Yes, we did, so a day and time was set up for riding.  On that day, once we were there,  they weren't sure they wanted to sell.  Daughter wanted to keep him and show him at the county Fair in the summer.  I rode him briefly anyway, and so did K3.  He seemed to be a calm and willing horse overall (if you looked past him being kind of 'up', which is common in horses who've been out of work for a long time and also with unfamiliar riders).  I told them that if they sold him to me, I would be open to allowing the daughter take him to the Fair and also riding him once or twice a week between the date of sale and the Fair.  Then brought up price, as we could, maybe, meet the price the daughter quoted but not the Mom's price.  Especially as Mom seemed to now want to adjust her price even further upward than her original price. Left with both parties going to 'think about it' and get back to each other.

I went home, talked to DH, and came up with what he and I felt was a reasonable offer that we could afford.  Texted the Mom the next day after work asking her to call me.  She replied that she'd call in a little bit, they were getting ready to head out on vacation for Spring Break.

Four days later, she texted me and then we spoke on the phone.  They now wanted to keep the horse and not sell until after the Fair.  Then she went on to say how much more than the price she'd quoted me they could list the horse for sale online for.  I'll save you the whole fifteen minute conversation, but I gave her the options DH and I had come up with--the price we could pay in cash now, me taking on the cost of the spring vaccinations and coggins (saving them several hundred dollars) if they sold him to me this Spring, and how the daughter would still have use of him--at my farm--between now and the Fair and be able to show him at the Fair.  It seemed like a win-win option to me.  But the Mom was focused on the cash, and the tone wavered from $x amount, firm, to not going to sell him until end of Summer.  She said they'd talk about my offer and call me back in a few days, later in their Spring Break trip.

Not a word for over a week. I figured that was that, they weren't going to sell him to me.  I started intensely looking online for horses for sale within 100ish miles of me that might be a good fit for my pocketbook and the grandkids use.  Even told K3 that I was sorry, it didn't look like that horse was going to be for sale afterall.

And then, on the ninth day, a text saying they'd decided to sell him now. Daughter would not be showing at the Fair afterall.  If I wanted him to let them know, otherwise they were going to list him online.  ARGH!

Again, I'll paraphrase the conversation for the sake of brevity.  We haggled on a price.  We haggled on how he would get to this little place here, as neither of us own a horse trailer, and whose responsibility it would be to transport him.  I consulted DH at work.  Haggled with the owner some more.  Came to an agreement on price (very close to what they insisted they would sell him for before Mom started raising her price quote) and agreed they would be responsible for delivering him at their own expense (if they needed to rent a trailer.)  Agreed on a delivery date.

Well, there were a few more bumps in the road, but he finally arrived late in the evening on Monday.  I'm glad to have all that done with.

He seems to be settling in well.  The grandkids are all eager to come ride him, but I told them he needs a few days to settle in, then I'll ride him a couple of times to make sure he's calm and comfortable here and then they can get on him.  He needs to put on probably around 200 pounds of weight, as he came off the winter rather thin.  But he seems to be put together well.

So, meet Jedi, our new horse.  A 15 year old Quarter Horse gelding.  He's orange.  He's about 15.2 hands.  He's calm.  He's derpy.  The Poetess seems to think he's an okay roommate, being in the stall next to hers, and he seems to be quite happy to let her have ownership of the wall between their stalls (unlike when the LBM had the stall next to Poetess).  I think this is going to work well.  I'm pretty sure God had a hand in this all along.

Now I need to get that other stall totally emptied of it's tools, etc.  DH needs to get the shelving built that will go around two or three walls of the tack room at approximately 7' high for totes of things (currently in the 'extra' stall) to be stored on.  And then I need to put up advertisements on a lot of horse related local online groups and get that fourth boarder horse found and on track to move in this Spring or early Summer.

We Bought Some Dirt

 Technically not dirt, but crushed asphalt and some gravel with fines.  

10 yards of 23a gravel

20 yards of crushed asphalt

The crushed asphalt is for the driveway extension we put in last year that goes in front of the horse barn and DH's shop.  What we had bought last year was just a guesstimate of how much we would need for the driveway and the approach to the concrete pad at the 'front' door of DH's shop.  It, as we had suspected, wasn't enough once it all packed down and settled over many months.  So this spring we ordered another 20 yards in order to fill in the low spots plus widen the driveway extension about two feet. 

low area in front of the shop added to, 

plus the extra width on the south side of the driveway extension

The 23a is for gate pads in the horse pastures.  Having a nice packed gravel pad (which is why we got the gravel with limestone fines) keeps the mud away from the heavily trafficked gate areas.  

Having gone through three winters and springs now with horses at this little place here, I was so tired of dealing with the boot sucking mud of the thaws as well as the punched-up-with-hooves-then-frozen-solid-and-rough-enough to-bust-an-ankle-on soupy to rock hard mud during the warm-frozen-warm-frozen cycles of the winter months.  It wasn't just hard on my ankles (and the horses' ankles!), but at times it was potentially treacherous for the less well-seasoned person that might be needing to bring horses in or out for me.

So, gate pads.  Not just a frivolous extra, but a realistic health and safety improvement.

Working around our work schedules, other previous commitments, and the weather, we've been able to get one pasture gate area done since the gravel was delivered on Tuesday.

For each gate, DH first has to smooth out the area on each side of the gate and also get the soil down to the depth we want it (in order for the pad to be thick enough to not just get punched into the mud by hooves yet not be so tall that it impedes the swing of the gate).

Then he adds the gravel, a tractor loader bucket at a time, spreading it across the area he prepped.  Once it is spread, he drives the tractor back and forth several times, packing it as much as he can with the weight of the tractor.

In process

Gate #1 done!  Now for the horses and the weather to pack it down tight like cement.

I tell you, having a gravel gate pad is the cat's pajamas.  I feel like I've made it in life!  By the time we have all six gates done my head's going to be so big I'm probably going to have to get a bigger riding helmet, LOL.

Although probably not very many people would be impressed if I just answered their "what did you spend your tax return money on?" questions with "We bought some dirt!"

Chewbacca and My Yogurt Plants

 Before DH and I headed to Florida for our short warm-weather get-away at the beginning of March, I got out my seed starting supplies and sowed tomato and pepper plants.  I used my time-honored method of starting them indoors: put (reused) plastic cell packs into (reused) large foil baking pans, add starting mix to the cells, sow seeds, water, and slide the whole thing into (reused) giant reclosable clear plastic bags.  All that then gets placed on the (hydronic radiant heated) floor of my living room in front of the sliding door.

Shortly after we returned, they sprouted.

At the end of March, most of the tomato seedlings had their first set of true leaves and were starting to get leggy enough that it was time to move them into larger quarters.  So I brought in my little greenhouse and a bunch of plastic containers from the shed, bought a giant bag of potting soil--on sale! (having none left from last year) and set all that in my mud room for a few days to warm up.

Then, once everything was warmed to ambient household temperature, I grabbed the tray of tomato plants and proceeded to transplant them into (pint) sour cream and (quart sized) yogurt containers, where they will contiue to grow until it's time to install them in the garden around the end of May.

my kitchen island-cum-potting bench

If you hadn't guessed, I'm big on reusing stuff to keep costs down.  Something else I've been reusing for at least the last decade is a plastic spoon in the shape of Chewbacca that came from a cereal box (Lucky Charms, I think) long ago when my kids were little.  Chewbacca changes color depending on if he's in room temp air or cold milk, which is how he managed to stick around while they grew up and eventually went off to college.  At which point, with no kids around to object, I drafted him into duty to gently scoop seedlings (and a 'rootball' of soil) out of the plastic cells when transplanting my tender tomato and pepper sprouts to their sour cream and yogurt containers. 

During the off season, he lives in the garden shed with the rest of my seed starting accoutrements.

Chewbacca reporting for duty.

I had assembled the green house and put it in front of the living room sliding door where the seed trays had been sitting.  Now it was time to put all those (reused) containers of tomatoes on the shelves, as well as the tray of (still tiny) peppers--no longer in its humidifying plastic bag-- into the greenhouse and zip it shut.

Several days later I repeated the drill with my (now leafy) pepper seedlings.

Faline and Buck came and spend a few hours with us not too long after that.  They were curious about the pipe and plastic structure (the greenhouse) that had appeared in my living room since the last time they'd been here.  I told them it was a little greenhouse where my baby tomato and pepper plants could stay warm and grow until it was warm enough outside for them to go live in my garden.  

"And your yogurt plants!" Faline piped up, reading the label on the larger containers but not being tall enough to see what was inside of them.

So this year I'm apparently growing yogurt plants too.  I have a feeling this Faline-ism will now be a permanent part of our gardening vocabulary.

This Weekend, I Lived in a Castle

 At least, that's what I'm claiming.  We had So. Much. Rain. overnight on Friday that we didn't just have standing water in the field.  No, we had running water all around the house.  

The front yard. 

The side yard.  

The back yard.  

Between the garage and the barnyard (where you couldn't see it because it ran through the culvert that is under the driveway and parking area.) 

Basically, we had a moat around the house.  Which means, therefore, that my house must be a castle.  I'm going with that.  

As a testament to how well the grading we did around our house when building it works, even with all that water--and more that fell pretty much all day on Saturday--we did not have any water get in the house.  Outside, it all drained away from the structure.  Inside, in the basement, the sump pump worked just fine and the water going into the sump never got near enough to the top of the crock to seep into the basement.  Hooray!

I love my castle. 😁👸

Make My Horse Life Easier Tip #9

 Cobwebs in the rafters.  It's a common ailment in horse barns.  How best to get rid of those cobwebs is a subject stable owners discuss among themselves.  Some like leaf blowers.  Some like to securely lash a broom onto a pole or old broom handle with duct tape in effect making a super long broom. Some like to use a shop vac with an extension or two added to the hose and then stand in the bed of a pickup brought into the barn for this purpose. Some ignore them and let them grow.

cobwebby ceiling

I do not like to ignore them and let them grow.  Cobwebs are dust catchers, which, like moldy chaff in the hay loft, has an adverse effect on air quality in the barn.  And, also like a build-up of chaff in the hayloft, cobwebs are a fire hazard.  I definitely do not want to increase the risk of a barn fire!  So I try to clean out all the cobwebs from the rafters at least annually (and those that build up on the stall fronts at least twice a month).

While a regular broom works well for stalls fronts, the rafters are harder to reach. What I have found works for me was to commandeer an extension duster we'd bought for using in the stairwell of the house.  It has a telescoping handle that lets it reach to 15 feet. Which means that 5' 7" tall me can stand in a stall and reach all the way to the peak of the ceiling in said stall. I can also slide the rod shorter and reach the top of the stall walls without having to awkwardly contort in order to fit my extra long pole within the confines of the stall.

reaching all the way to the hayloft

I can clean the slanted ceiling easily as I can the stall walls

Yep, that's the tool for me.  Not a taped up extra broom handle with one length option.  Not a leaf blower that leaves me crippled up the next day (true story from a barn I worked at in 2015) from lifting that thing over my shoulder while bending backwards to look up in order to actually reach into the rafter with the blown air.  Just a simple household stairwell duster.

Nice and clean and bright.

Books Read in 2026: March

In March I read books that I had picked up at previous community book swaps.  Because there was another book swap coming up near the end of the month and I wanted to be able to take in books I'd finished in order to make room for those I would undoubtedly find at the next swap and bring home.  Gotta have priorities, right? 😉

Here is the list of what I read either fully or partially:

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult.  You know, I just can't decide if I like this author.  I've read (I think) three books of hers over the last ten-ish years and each one I kind of like but don't like.  And yet, here I am having read another.  There were parts of this book I was sucked into, and parts I felt like I slogged through, but I did read it all the way to the end.  Which, yet again, left me with mixed feelings.

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger.  This book was weird.  Sorta supernatural, sorta old Western-y, very much about family ties, and some just Midwestern goodness (wholesomeness?).  Some parts were kind of predictable, and others had me saying "What?!?" I did read it all the way through, mainly because I wanted to know how it turned out, if (and how) the family would be reunited.

Fiction Can Be Murder by Becky Clark. This book was definitely more interesting than I'd expected it to be.  It has the look of a cozy mystery on the cover, and the blurb on the back had me thinking it is of that genre.  Yet when I read it, with the exception of a few parts, I did not find it annoying like I tend to find most cozy mysteries written in the most recent decade.  I liked it and will keep my eye out for other titles by this author.

Girl in the Mirror by Cecelia Ahern. I found this book weird. It was composed of two unrelated short stories.  The first was almost horror-ish and I will say I did not like it.  The second was more my style although it was kind of sad. Overall I did not enjoy this book as much as her full length novels but had the second story been developed into a full length novel I would definitely have read that one cover to cover, just not the first.

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl by Fannie Flagg.  I have had this book for several years, and tried reading it once years ago but didn't get past the second chapter.  I almost didn't pick it up this month, but then I decided now was a perfect time to try it again because if I couldn't get into the story, it definitely needed to go to the book swap at the end of the month.   Well, even with this second try and at a different point in my life than the last time I'd tried getting into this book, when I still wasn't interested at page 60ish, into the book swap bag it went.  Maybe it would have interested me more as it went along, but I didn't want to put that much effort into it.

Touch by Olaf Olafsson.  This I read it all the way through.  It wasn't quite the story I'd thought it would be by the blurb on the back.  Was it good?  Yes, overall it was well written and the story was interesting.  

A Bride in the Bargain by Deeanne Gist. This was my fluff reading after the previous very serious toned book.  I picked it up at the book swap on Saturday and finished it by Sunday night.  In a few spots it had the trite Christian romance novel things, but those were not annoying enough to take my interest from the story line and make me not finish reading it. I really had a hard time putting it down (and being extremely under the weather on Sunday gave me the chance to sit and read it for most of the day).  Historical, and yes, a romance, but not in the tripe category in my opinion.

Spring 2026 Book Swap Scores

 This past weekend was the semi annual book swap that my friend started back in the Spring of 2023. Other than that inaugural one (which happened to be the same day as K2's funeral), I have attended them all.  My daughters, until now, have been interested in going but not fit the swaps into their calendar.  This time, they both were able to go along with me.

They were blown away by the magnitude of the swap, and by how well run it is.  We did have to wait in line a bit to get in, but, as I had told them, there were 'book swap fairies' who came with boxes and carts to relieve us of the books we were swapping so that our arms didn't get tired while we waited.  Really, the wait was very short, less than 10 minutes (we had arrived five minutes before the doors opened for the general admission--VIPS paid $10 and had access from 9-10 a.m., Early Birds paid $5 and had access at 10 a.m. and us cheap people got in free with a minimum of one book to donate starting at 11 a.m.).

I'm pretty sure both of them will prioritize the Fall Swap and be back again, most likely with friends.  It was entertaining to hear them exclaim "Oh!  I should have told so-and-so about this, she'd love it!" with numerous different names as the so-and-so each time we'd move to a table with yet another genre of books arrayed on it. Friends, co-workers, in-laws.

While all of our mission was to clear out books we had all ready read (or realized we would never get around to reading) in order to make space in our homes, each of us also found numerous books we wanted to read and thus took home with us.  DD1 had donated a bulging grocery sack of books, but insisted she did not want a bag to carry her finds in, rather having the mantra of 'if it doesn't fit in my arms I don't need it'.  She did keep to that mantra, although her arms got rather full.  DD2, who is moving again this summer when the lease is up on the house she's been sharing with friends, I think managed to only take home three books. I'm betting that if she goes to the Fall Swap, she will take home many more books as she'll be settled into her new space by then.

I took 22 books to swap, and managed to return home with 16 'new' ones.  Number-wise, I did good on the decrease possessions aspect.  Although I think I returned with more hard-backs than I donated, so they take up just as much shelf-space as I'd emptied, if not a little more.

One of the books will be gifted to either Lucky or Octavia later this year, so that one doesn't really count as taking up shelf-space, LOL.  Another isn't pictured above because I immediately started reading it once I got home and it was on the end table by the living room couch when I unloaded the rest of the books for photographing.