In the past month, we've had super cold weather for a little over a week. And then a warm up where all the frost left the ground and things were soupy mud, then deep mud, then fairly dried up. And then back to cold(ish) weather again, followed by another warm up.
Poetess checking out the sled that I used to carry lunch hay to the pasture during the cold snowy weather.
This was followed shortly after by a quick warm up that included an all night heavy rain (about 3"??) before the ground was very thawed. Which meant that one Friday morning I woke up to a small pond in a portion of the circle created by the driveway. It was quite large puddle, and more than 6" deep in the middle. So I took advantage of the opportunity to do some water training with the horses.
The LBM wasn't sure she really wanted to go in the water, but with a little coaxing she followed me in both times I asked her to walk through it. Poetess, on the other hand, seems to love water. She really enjoyed marching through the water, even stopping in it and splashing around with a front foot as if she was contemplating throwing herself down for a good roll in it. I suspect had it been warmer than the mid-30s she would have done just that.
During the soupy mud phase, I daily came in from leading horses into or out of turnout with lots of mud splashed onto my pant legs. You can definitely tell how tall my waterproof boots are, LOL.
One purchase I was especially glad to find at the sale was some over-sized western stirrups. During our really cold spell, I found that my insulated winter muck boots are too wide to be safe in the western stirrups I had. And it was way too cold (and at times, wet/slushy) to wear my paddock boots during the LBM's training sessions those days. Wet/frozen feet definitely are not my thing at this middle-aged stage in life. So I had decided I needed to find some what I called 'big wide man-foot stirrups'. And I did! In brand new condition for $20 (current online brand new price $65).
They don't match my saddle, but I don't care, as for me they are all about warm feet and safety for winter training rides, not for show.
As you can see in the picture below, they are quite a bit wider than the original stirrups for that saddle.
As I told him the other day, when I'm on her back she doesn't feel any less reliable than any rental stable trail horse I've ever been on. So, while it's definitely not the fine tuned contact and dressage horse feel I'm gotten used to in the past decade or more, I don't think it's high risk for being unsafe. She's actually a very calm, steady horse. I think she would make someone with a horse experience and a firm yet calm hand, a super trail riding horse, or even an endurance horse.
view from her back
While the weather was in it's 'good' phase, we worked on fencing for the third pasture, getting all the posts in as well as insulators and the electric fencing tape installed. Just need to brace the gate post and hang the gate and that one will be ready for use.
DH put together and we hung all four of the remaining stall doors. Two need different bottom boards; with the pitch (for drainage) of the cement floor over the 48' length of the barn we had to do some creativity with the height of bottom boards to get all the grills to look good and not like they were at different heights from one stall to the next. Which means two of the stall doors need 2 x 8 boards for the lowest board instead of 2 x 6. You might be able to see in the picture below that we have yet to put the bottom --Wolmanized-- boards on each stall front.
We also bought a bunch of 2" x 6"x 12' boards for making the remaining dividing walls between stalls, but at least half the batch the lumber mill gave us were not good and will have to go back and be exchanged before we can finish those walls. Boards with multiple raw/live edges just don't stack vertically very well and won't work for our purpose. As DD2, who took several classes in forestry as part of her wildlife management degree, said "These look like they were made from pulp sticks, not saw logs."
During the week where we had a string of days in the mid-40s and even up to 60 degrees, I stained the walls for the next group of stalls. Which is one entire stall. two stall fronts, and all but the dividing wall in the adjoining stall. The doors will get stained once we have the right bottom boards for them (DH put in some scrap ones in the meantime).
Do you remember in January's update where I mentioned having cold weather problems with gate posts shifting? One gate no longer lined up with it's latch and I had to use a chain to hold it shut. Well, once everything thawed, DH was able to use the tractor to fix that post and now the gate and latch meet up correctly. Hooray!
We have discovered a new gate woe, however. With the gustier winds of the Spring-like days, we found that when the big 16' gate is opened (say, to drive the tractor through), the wind will take it and ram it into the mesh, bending the mesh, getting the prong that goes into the latch caught in the fence as well as allowing the top of the gate to lean on the strand of hot tape. Not a gate you want to touch without unplugging the fencer in the barn first!
We are going to have to rig up some sort of 'door stop' for this issue so the gate can't open quite that far. Gates touching the fence is not allowed!
Oh! Almost forgot to add that the water hydrant in my barn thawed and had been back in use for a few weeks. Then we had two cold windy days in a row (highs only in the 20s) and it froze again. :0( But only for a couple of days, then the temperatures returned to 40ish and the sun came out and it thawed. We definitely are going to have to do some investigating and repairing of that issue this summer so that it doesn't happen next winter.
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