Another New Pasture

 Last Saturday afternoon, while I was at a bridal shower at our church, DH pulled and adjusted the spacing of the gate posts that the latch goes on for pastures 4 & 6 (reason this was needed is mentioned in this post). He also put in the gravel pads at both gates.  And he bought the parts for and installed the remaining jump wires so now all my electric fence tape is live.  He was a productive guy!

On Sunday after church we installed the latches on both of those adjusted posts.

Which meant that now I could move the two mares, the Poetess and the LBM, into a new pasture with better grazing than the one they'd been in.

Of course, with moving to a brand new, never before been in pasture, comes excitement!  And running!

The Poetess ran circles around the perimeter of the pasture for about 3 minutes longer than the LBM did (being as the LBM much prefers eating to running) before settling in to taste the new grass buffet in front of her.

Needless to say, they are very happy with their new pasture.  As am I.  There is a little tweaking of the fenceline common to pasture 3 and pasture 4 to be done yet, then I will be able to say our fencing/pasture project is finally complete.  What a huge thing to be able to cross off our to-do list.

What a Bargain!

 Last weekend I happened to make a very timely and frugal discovery.  My local Tractor Supply had 100 gallon Rubbermaid stock tanks (my through experience very much preferred water trough) on sale for 30% off.  So, rather than being $100 each, they were the low, low price of $70 each! 

Let me tell you, having been looking for a deal on used--but not leaky--water troughs for months and knowing that this exact tank sells used for $75-$90 (or more!) at auction within an hour drive of this little place here, I jumped on this bargain price for brand spanking new tanks!

Now that I have six pastures fenced, and had all ready drug one tank from the now empty pasture 2 into the now in use pasture 5, I had decided last week to invest in at least one more Rubbermaid 100 gallon tank.  Dragging the dang thing, empty, from one pasture to another was a pain in the ass patootie that I didn't care to be repeating every few weeks during the grazing season.

When I discovered that TSC had them for just $70, there was no doubt in my mind that I was most definitely going to buy one.  And when I shared this info with DH, he (enablingly) suggested I just go ahead and get three new ones so that each pasture has its own and I nevermore need to drag a tank from one pasture to another when horses move to new pastures.  I mean, at 30% off, it was practically a Buy 2 Get 1 Free deal.

How could I not?

Loving my new tank-rich status.

Liquid Lunch

At the end of last week, we had a couple of days that hit 80 degrees.  I know for those people who live in southern areas, that's not an unusual April temperature.  But it is in Michigan!  Not only is that unseasonably hot, it also comes with humidity on the high side.  When you are in the mid-50s (and relatively low humidity) one day, then the sun is scorching while the air is moist the next, it's kind of hard on the body.

Often, when its hot and humid (no matter if it's April or a summer month), my appetite for 'heavy' foods--like meat--drops.  Then I have trouble consuming the proper amount of protein in a day.  Since working with a nutritionist again (beginning in late summer 2024), getting the right amount of protein in every meal is something I've learned to try to focus on.

One thing I discovered, is whey (since I have soy sensitivity) protein powder mixed in with milk.  I found a brand of protein powder that I find palatable, that doesn't have soy or artificial sweeteners (soy blows up my gut, artificial sweeteners give me migraines), so I keep a container of that on hand in my pantry.

Now, when it's a hot day and I don't really want to eat, I 'treat' myself to a liquid lunch.  The first time I said Liquid Lunch to someone, they thought I meant alcohol as/with my meal.  Ha!  As someone who doesn't much care for alcohol, I've never understood why people would drink for/at lunch.  It's so not anything I would ever think to do.

So much so that facetious me now has a little laugh everytime I make myself a Liquid Lunch of protein powder and milk.

 

12 oz whole milk to 2 scoops protein powder

whisked until frothy, then poured into a glass

enjoyed out on the deck with a good book

Blackberry Clafouti

 Last spring, I tried a new recipe and made cherry clafouti.  I loved it, DH did not.  So the next time I tried a downsized recipe and thought it was just perfect for me.

At the time, I also wondered if I could substitute other fruits for the cherries and I tried using strawberries in my downsized recipe.  Another success.

Well, this week blackberries were on sale at the grocery store 2 6oz containers for $1.  So, I found myself with lots of blackberries. Because how could I resist 50 cent conatiners of blackberries?  And of course I tried subbing them into the clafouti recipe.

Win!  Yes, blackberries can also be substituted for cherries in that recipe.  Plus, you can also sprinkle powdered sugar on top when you take them out of the oven.  Was it lunch?  Was it dessert?  It was a healthy dessert for lunch on that day, LOL.

Happy Earth Day!

 Popping on real quick to wish everyone a Happy Earth Day!  It's a very beautiful day at this little place here, and I've been outside for most of it so far (currently a bit after 4 p.m.)

DH and I planted a new peach tree (replacing the one that died winter before last) and a new cherry tree. Both were purchased through our local conservation district spring tree sale.

I also rode both the Poetess and Jedi.  And then there was the usual chores: cleaning stalls, refilling the chickens' waterer, etc.  

I had to force myself to come inside to take care of some office work type of stuff while it was still business hours, and to get the chicken breast that I'm planning to grill for dinner marinating.  But as soon as I publish this post, I'm heading outside again!  Most likely I'll stay there until it's dark; it's a nice enough day we will probably eat dinner down on the patio tonight.

Love your Earth!  Enjoy your Earth!  Appreciate your Earth!  Take care of your Earth!

Fencing

More behind the scenes things I've been working on but not blogging about in the last month or so.

It has been more than two years since DH and I last installed cross-fencing in my whole grand scheme of pastures that we put the perimeter fence around in summer of 2023.  I've been operating on three pastures when there are supposed to be six.  As a result, my three pastures got eaten down more last year than is really good/healthy for the grass and other plants growing in them.  I'm hoping they rebound this spring okay.

Meanwhile, pasture #4 was supposed to get subdivided off the remaining large pasture chunk last year.  Due to working on building the tack room (and how that took almost a whole year of off and on attention), fencing kept getting put off and put off and put off.  Until the ground was frozen and we had to wait for things to thaw this year.

Finally (!!!) in March I picked a Saturday with a good weather forecast, confirmed with DH that he had no plans that would take him off the property that day, and went and bought all the wooden posts we would need for three more gates and any interior corners.  Then when the chosen March Saturday arrived, we put the auger on the tractor, and installed all 9 of those wooden posts.  Hooray!

Two days later, on Monday, DH was working from home and finished up all his meetings early enough in the afternoon that we went out and worked on driving in t-posts on the (short) fencelines that contained the wooden gate posts we'd installed on Saturday.  We only spent an hour outside working on that before it was time for me to do dinner feed, but we got both of those lines done.

Then more than a week went by without working on the new fencelines.  Work, weather, family, among other things, all got in the way.  But the next Wednesday DH was done with work early enough, and the weather favorable enough (not warm, but at least not raining or snowing) that we were able to spend about an hour and half putting in the fence posts that make the long dividing line between pastures four and five.  The ground was rather soggy from rain overnight the night before, but that made it really easy to drive the t-posts.

Which left just a dividing fence line between pastures 5 and 6 that needed posts installed. It wasn't as long as the 4/5 pasture line and DH actually did about half of that himself on the morning of Good Friday while I was cleaning stalls. When I was done with stalls, I helped him put up the tensioners as well as the wood posts that are the horizontal braces between the posts the gates are hung on and their supporting posts.

Saturday was a rainy day, which made it perfect for making a run to the (40 minute away because the local one didn't have the right type of stuff) farm store for the 1.5" electric fence tape, t-post insulator caps, and the insulators that go on the t-posts to hold the two lower rows of electric fence tape, as well as jump wires, end insulators (that go on the wooden posts), etc that are needed to electrify the new fence we would be running.

Unfortunately that farm store didn't have everything that we needed, namely the end insulators or the jump wires, but we were able to pick up everything else.  With a few not-raining days the following week, and a little bit of time each day to work on it, DH and I got all of the insulators and caps put on the t-posts.

In order to make sure the insulators were properly spaced on the t-posts so that our rows of fencing didn't end up all wonky during the run, we used a story pole.  It's just a 6-ish foot tall piece of 2"x2" oak we've had for a long time (since having some oak logs milled for boards to trim out the interior of the house in the early 2000's) that has colored tape wrapped around it at certain distances.  Turned yellow-tape-down it tells us where on the t-post to put the insulators.  Turned white-tape-down it shows us the height of the tops of the t-posts when driving those into the ground.  A very handy homemade tool.

DH stopped and got those end insulators that go on the wooden posts one day after work, and we got those installed, plus ran all the electric tape the following Saturday.  Still needed to find jump wires to buy, and also to install the gates.

Kinda looks like a fence now!

 On that Sunday, we had DS1's five kids for a few hours in the afternoon.  The weather was good, so we had them help us install gates.  I snapped this picture of the boys, drafted into carrying tools for DH.  Gonna make farm boys outta them!

While Tractor and Rascal mostly were tasked with holding or handing tools to DH as needed, Toad got to have instruction on gate-hanging and was given the job of checking to see if the gate was level before the final tightening of hinge bolts.

Both Toad and K3 got to help lift/hold the gates in place while DH secured them on the hinges.

Nice looking gates!

Then came more rain.  So soggy everywhere.  I had been hoping to pull back the sod and install gravel pads at the new gates, but it's definitely been too wet to drive the tractor in there lately.  I'd rather wait on that than have deep tractor-tire width ruts in the pastures.  So we decided to install the gate latches,

installing the latch on pasture 5

at which point we discovered that the gates for pastures 4 and 6 don't have enough room to put latches!  Somehow, when setting those posts DH's measurments did not translate to drilling the post hole in the exact correct spot!  Rather than inside edge to inside edge, he took that inside-to-inside measurment and made it on-center.  So, we will need to pull and reset the two posts that the gates latch to.  (Smack head.  Ageing is not for the faint of heart.)

More rain, and the ground still too wet to pull and reset posts, so we used a not-raining but still very soggy hour to put up the boards that go between the hinge posts and the brace posts.  This makes a barrier  so the horses don't try to scoot through there even with the tensioner and wires running diagonally through that space.  This is instead of trying to run two very short rows of electric tape between the gate posts (and the dilemma of how to electrify that short section that is 'cut off' from the electric fence on the opposite side of each gate.)

This past Sunday we finished up pasture 5 by installing the jump wires that connect the cross-fencing to the existing hot tape on the perimeter fence, thus electrifying the new runs of fencing in those sections.  When shopping for the jump wire components, DH still has not been able to purchase all that we need (not in stock at the farm stores right now in the amount we need) but he was able to get enough that with a little modification we were able to make the cross fences of pasture 5 hot.  

Which means that pasture #5 is now ready to graze!  

This week is supposed to be much drier than last week, with only a few chances at scattered rain, not the torrential and almost daily ran of the week+ prior.  Which means that hopefully we can get those in-the-wrong-spot gate latch posts on pastures 4 & 6 rectified and, fingers crossed, also get ahold of and install jump wires on the remaining new fence section too.  I'd love to finish out the month with all six pastures operable (and the three that were heavily used last year able to rest for a month or so.)

A Few More Tack Room Finishes

 It's been a minute since I talked about the tack room.  Last fall, DH was working on getting the heat system installed in there.  I think that may have been the last tack room related post I made. 

I get frustrated with DH sometimes.  In the summer months, there are projects he will deem as "winter projects" because they can be done indoors and he doesn't want to 'waste' good weather outside by working on inside things.  But yet, in the winter, he often says it's 'too cold' to work on the in-the-barn indoor projects.  Such as doing finishing work in the tack room.

I posted back in early December that he had (finally) installed the heat system for the tack room and showed a picture of the wooden box he built to go around the heat exchanger.  It was all built from scrap lumber leftover from building and paneling the walls.  There were a few pieces I needed to stain, and he said once I did that he could get it all trimmed out and totally finished.  

At the same time he was building the heat box, he put up the cabinet I'd bought at Habitat Restore in the spring and also installed the countertop I picked up at a yard sale in May? June?  I don't actually remember the month.  Just that they'd both been waiting all summer and all fall for him to get the walls built/finished before they could be installed.  We used a scrap of quarter-round to trim the gap where the countertop met the wall.  It was my job to stain that quarter-round when I stained the heater box trim pieces.

Well, I stained all that in early January when we had temperatures in the upper 40s.  I told DH it was ready for him to install.

And I reminded him again in mid-January.

And again in late January.

At risk of being a nag, I pointed out to him in early February that those trim pieces were stained and ready for him.  And that once the trim pieces were put in place he could put his tools back in his shop rather than searching for them because they were still in the tack room.  (At the time he was looking for something that had been in the tack room for months because that's where he'd left it because he wasn't done yet. . . )

Well guess what!  It took all of five whole minutes to tack down those trim pieces on the heater box

and the quarter-round on the joint between countertop and wall.

Five minutes.  Two months of waiting, five minutes of labor.  (Imagine head bashing emoji inserted here)

For the most part, my tack room has been arranged how I want it to be and I've been happily using it the last several months.  It's not totally organized yet, one final project in there needs to get done before I have the space to put everything in its place, but overall it's working well.  I thought I would show off some pictures of my (mostly) finished and (sorta) organized tack room.

Reproduction print found at the local antique/artisan mall really makes it look ritzy.

A full-width view from the sink area.

Please excuse the clutter.

Full-width view looking at the sink area.

The one last project to be done in the tack room before it is really and truly complete is a wide shelf on two or (preferably) three walls at about 7' from the floor (remember, the ceiling is 10') for me to store totes of out of season or otherwise rarely used items.  Like winter blankets in the summer time.  And stall fans in the winter time.  In my mind, this past February was the perfect time to be working on that, because a) it's an indoor project and b) it was winter, when we do indoor projects. DH, however, felt more called to spending time in the house 'researching' things (like snowmobile trails, elk hunting trips out west, vacation destinations) on the laptop while sitting in his Lazy-boy than getting a shelf built so the tack room could forever be crossed off the to-do list. 

I'm picking my battles.  Although I can't resist saying "well, that's one of the things that needs to go on that shelf" whenever DH asks why this or that tote or fan or other rarely used item is sitting in the middle of the tack room floor or in an empty stall.  And now that we're otherwise ready for me to put out the word that we have an opening for a boarder, I can remind him that the last stall, the one that has been tool/material storage and all the totes that don't fit into the tack room yet, would be totally empty for a boarding horse to move in if he would build the shelf.