Horse Update, August

As in July's update, K3 has been coming once a week to 'help' me with training the LBM.  This is good for the Little Black Mare, as it reminds her that she has to listen to humans of any size, not just adults and not just me (as a rather strict human when it comes to minding personal space or who's the boss in the horse-human relationship).

It is also good for K3 as it gives her something she can be responsible for (keeping her 'job' schedule of working the horse once a week), something of her own interest to learn and work at, and it gets her into the mentally calming atmosphere of being around a horse.

Each week, when it's her day, K3 and I talk about our game plan for that training session.  And then I put her in charge as much as possible.  She has to get the horse.  She has to groom the horse.  I do the saddling as she's not strong enough and the saddle is too heavy for her to lift over the LBM's back and set down nicely.  The LBM came to this little place here being rather nervous about the whole saddling thing and it took months for her to learn to stand still, that I wasn't going to fling this saddle at her and whack her in the back and sides with it's parts and pieces.  So, for now, I do the placing of the saddle and K3 does the girthing.  We are working on K3 getting coordinated enough to do the bridling.  That's coming along, but I still stand behind K3 and help hold the LBM's head still and in the right position while K3 fumbles with holding the bit in one hand and the crownpiece in the other and keeping everything from twisting.

Once the LBM is saddled and bridled, the three of us walk out to the 'arena' that is behind the barn (so there's a fenced in area in case of mishaps and a loose horse) and K3 does the longeing.  This is something she has been learning, and, while I typically still stand behind her and man the whip as needed (which entails just raising it as needed as encouragement to move out on the line or to change speed--or keep moving when the horse gets lazy and slows--not cracking it or touching the LBM with it), K3 makes the decisions on how long to walk, when to begin trotting, when there's been enough trotting, when to halt and change directions.

Then it's time for K3 to get on.  We are still having her begin each ride on the longe line.  That is when we do a quick recheck that the LBM is listening to K3's aids for walking, halting and trotting.  It's also when K3 rides in trot, as she is still learning her seat and trying to stay balanced at that bouncy gait. I don't want her using her reins for balance (and inadvertently banging the horse's mouth), so rather than have her try to trot and keep her balance and steer right now, we're sticking with being on the longe where she just needs to think about balance and going into and out of the trot.  We'll tackle steering--ie going solo--at the trot when she's developed her seat a bit more.

Depending on how much trot we work on and how tired K3 is from that, we either end the session there, or I remove the longe line and K3 rides solo at the walk for a bit.

Solo walk work involves a lot of turning, halting, and going over a single ground pole.  Both to make sure the LBM is listening to her rider (vs just following me around) and to give K3 practice at these skills (and being the boss of the pair, not just a passenger).

On the days when K3 isn't the rider, I work with the LBM on developing more balance at the trot and canter as well as riding through visually confined spaces in a relaxed manner.  She was doing awesome riding out and around the property until about mid-July when the corn in the fields got tall enough to not be able to see over.  And thick enough that you can't see through it.  And the leaves long enough that they wave in any sort of wind.  Scary stuff for a prey animal like a horse.  And we're practically surrounded by corn this summer, including in our own 15ish acres that we lease out to a crop farmer. 

So I had to take a step back from riding her anywhere and everywhere and concentrate on getting her to be calm while working our way closer and closer to the monster-hiding corn. Which meant sticking to super familiar areas with great visual distance for a few weeks as well as keeping a fence between us and the corn.  This week we finally rode between the fence and the corn for a short distance at the end of a training session, then turned and went back to the barn before she had the chance to get anxious about what might be lurking inside the wavy seven foot tall green wall.

Poetess just had her very own long post, which pretty much brought you up to date with how she's doing.  I will add that this morning I rode her for the first time without anyone else being on the property.  DH had to go in to work in person today, and I really didn't want to lose out on a training session with the Poetess in his absence, so I figured I'd work her like I normally do and see what happens.  She was very good and it was no big deal.  In retrospect she had no idea if he was home or not, so his absence only matters to me (as a safety measure in case the horse manure hits the fan--causing me to hit the ground--which so far she's shown no inclination to initiate.)

Barn-wise, there hasn't been any new construction done.  I've disappointingly had to replace dozens of the T-post insulator caps in the past three weeks.  I will have to get in contact with where I purchased them from last fall, as they are supposed to have a 5 year warranty and we haven't even gotten through twelve months of use yet.  It's not the horses pushing on the fence that's breaking them where the fence tape runs through them, either, as it's always in the mornings that I find the top 'rail' of the fence sagging with another broken insulator and the horses are always in the barn overnight.  If anything is putting excessive force on the insulators, must be deer hitting them.  Which, if they are designed for a horse to push on/bounce off of the fence without breaking, a little 100-some pound deer shouldn't be beyond the integrity of the caps.  

The Poetess After One Year

Late June marked the one year anniversary of the Poetess's arrival in Michigan and the beginning of our partnership.  I had wanted to write a long post in honor of that in July, but *sigh* it didn't get done.  

On the outside, since I'm not cantering her around yet, and not showing her in even Intro Dressage classes, it might look like she and I haven't made much progress since the day of her arrival.  But au contraire!

Looking back, we've actually made quite a bit of progress. Especially if you factor in that we've never had an indoor arena to work in, so we're pretty weather dependent.  Add to that the fact that we haven't had a fenced outdoor arena either and at this little place here I don't --so far-- even have a real arena with good footing, just a mowed patch of clay dirt.

There's also the health issues I was having last summer (could barely walk 50 feet without coughing, muscle weakness, etc., etc.) that slowly started to resolve themselves over the winter and are much better now (cough free and can lift 50 pound bags of feed again, YAY!) but was whammied in May with a knee issue that took away a lot of physical ability in it's own way.  All to say, it's not like we've had five days a week every week since her arrival to work on training. . . 

Here is our notable progress, starting with on the ground:

She stands still in the cross ties.

It's been months and months since she nervous pooped either in the cross ties or on the longe line (and she actually has never done this under saddle).

Speaking of manure, it is of normal consistency all the time, compared to being loose when she first arrived and then varying between normal and cowpie-ish for many months.

In turnout, she not only is willing to be caught, but 9 times out of 10 she comes to me if she sees me approach the gate to the pasture she's in.

She figured out what treats are.  😁

She picks up all four feet and patiently holds them up for me to clean (compared to jerking them up and back down; and also compared to only picking them up if I stood on her left side as was the norm at the track).  She also stands quietly for the farrier.

This mare, who had no idea what hand grazing was all about, now hand grazes like nobody's business!  I think she'd almost rather graze with me holding the lead rope than she would loose in the pasture.

She stands like a statue for having her legs wrapped as well as for saddling and unsaddling.

While she still doesn't like her ears messed with much, she will let me brush them with a soft brush, and sometimes even lets me put the roll on fly repellent in them without yanking her head up and down in avoidance.  Interestingly enough, bending them forward for haltering and bridling has never been an issue

Not only does she lead from either the left or right side quietly, she also walks, trots and canters calmly on both sides while longeing.  It took months, but she finally figured out that going to the right is just no big deal and the same rules and expectations apply as when she's going to the left.  There are still some days where the longe session begins a bit up and tight, but most days (and even the ones that start tight) she is looser in her body and stretching forward and even sometimes downward over her back.

Under saddle she is figuring out her new role too.

She stands still to be mounted and, while she still thinks she's supposed to move off once I'm up, she has begun to occasionally continue to stand until I have both feet in the irons and tell her to walk!

She halts quietly under saddle.  And stands calmly to be dismounted!

She's caught on to steering with seat and weight aids quite well although there's still a day now and then when she still doesn't want to bend right very willingly.

We haven't ridden outside the greater fenced in area yet, but we are riding at a walk around the majority to the inside of it!  

We do trot work about 50% of each ride now, and she especially loves going over a series of ground poles.  Bending lines are another favorite. 

Her balance is getting better and she's figured out trot is a gait in itself, not a precursor to going into a gallop (occasionally she pops into a canter over the last ground pole but comes back to a trot pretty quickly when asked).

Over the course of the year, and especially in the nine and a half months that she's been living at this little place here, we've become a team.  She nickers at me in the mornings when she sees me walking from the house to the barn for breakfast.  Sometimes she comes to the fence and nickers at me when I'm out in the yard doing various tasks.

She is insanely jealous when I ride the Little Black Mare instead of her, especially on days when I'm giving the Poetess the day off and I just work the LBM.  Apparently I belong to her just as much as she belongs to me.

                                                 

Sewing and Stitching Update, August 2024

I decided, in late July, that I wanted to get the beading done on my Celtic Santa right away rather than waiting until closer to Christmas time to finish it.  So, on a couple of hot and humid afternoons when I was in the house out of the mid-day sun, I worked at sewing on all the little tiny beads.  Now all I have left to do is trim the perforated paper down to just barely outside the stitching, braid some of the leftover embroidery floss to make a hanger and glue on a piece of felt for the backing.

Also during hot days I spent some time down in the basement sewing area working on the Airplane Quilt.  Once all 42 planes were sewn, I couldn't wait to get them put together into rows and then the rows into a top.

While trying to take a picture indoors, I discovered I really don't have a place to 'hang' a quilt this big for photos, so I made the best of it by draping the top over a set of tall shelves plus a tall 'dresser' that sits next to the shelves.  It looks a little wonky in the picture below, but the rows really are straight, lol.  

I have the skinny white inner border strips cut and ready to sew on (we've had a cool spell lately, so I've been outside a whole lot in the past week).  Then I will need to go through my solid red fabrics used in making some of the airplanes and see if there's one that is big enough to cut the wide outer border strips from.  If not, I might play with making the border scrappy using all the reds rather than just one solid one.

June & July Frugal Accomplishments

Well, I never did get June's frugal accomplishments posted.  And now we're 10 days into August and July's frugal post is also AWOL. So, I'm going to roll both months into one post. 

As always, we ate mostly from the freezer, cellar, and pantry.

I baked bread roughly every two weeks.

All laundry except jeans and towels went on the clothes line to dry.

Since summer electric rates went into effect on June 1st (meaning higher rate for electricity used between 3 and 7 p.m.), I tried to get laundry washed before 2 p.m. and not do any tasks requiring electricity until after 7:00.

In June I:

Gave DH a haircut.

Bought a bag of Oneida silverware (about 6 full place settings plus several serving pieces) at an estate sale for $10.  I'd been saying since last Fall that I wanted to get more silverware (but only secondhand) because what I have had for decades isn't enough now that we have over a dozen adults/older grandkids using 'big forks' when eating here for family gatherings and holiday meals.  Personally I hate trying to eat with a plastic fork/cut meat with a plastic knife, so it's totally worth it to me to store extra silverware that gets used less than a dozen times a year.  And as a bonus, this 'new' silverware is almost a match in pattern for my (Oneida, wedding present) silverware I've had for 31 years!

Used a 30% off code at State Line Tack to purchase some new riding gloves and a few miscellaneous  barn supplies (enough that I met the free shipping threshold).

Took advantage of Dover Saddlery's 60% off sale to get myself some summer riding apparel (apparently last summer's colors), including some polo shirts that can also be (and were!) worn to church.

Utilized an email offer for 20% off and free shipping at AZPepper.com to restock on DH's favorite Gunslinger green jalapeno sauce

Moved the remaining meat from the upright freezer into the chest freezer (finally ate enough elk to have room!) and unplugged the upright freezer until it's needed again.

 

A friend of DH's bought a new house and sold his home that was less than 10 miles from us.  He had some largish items he didn't want to bother moving/wouldn't need at the new place, so he gave them to DH.  A box blind for hunting, a portable generator (which will be given to DD1 since she and Honorary Son don't have a generator and both of our sons do), a pressure washer and a brand new never installed laundry sink (that will go in my tack room once we have the walls and ceiling built.)

DD2 brought her laundry to do here while having her all-day sewing lesson , saving herself roughly $20 instead of using the not-free washers and dryers at her apartment complex.

In July:

I gave DH another haircut

Took advantage of a deal at SSTack.com and saved $110 as well as used loyalty points to get $20 (of $25) off freight charge to buy a 4-tier saddle stand for the tack room.  What a lot of space that saves!

We got a $38 "reliability credit" on our electric bill from DTE because we lost power 6+ times in the previous 12 months.  A happy surprise to get a credit on our bill for this, but I do think it should be called an "Unreliablity credit". (Side note: since the middle of July we have randomly lost power three times, twice lasting longer than the 'minimum five minutes' to count as disruption of service according to DTE.)

DH and I went to a free polka concert at the outdoor band shell in the community park at the next town over.

I bought a baker's dozen of bagels (to put in the freezer for quickie breakfasts) at Panera on a Tuesday when they're cheaper, and used a 'Free Bakery Treat" coupon to get a chocolate croissant while I was there.

After 15 months of not knowing how many flicks of the switch it would take to activate the ballast in the (fluorescent) kitchen light each time we went to turn it on, DH finally replaced it. Actually, he rewired it for LED bulbs instead of buying whole new fixture.

Knitting Update, August

 Churfirsten Sock 1: DONE!  YAY!

Sock 2: cuff complete, and about 1/3 of the way through the (very short) leg.  I honestly have done very little knitting in the last several weeks.  Apparently I've spent all my couch time reading, as evidenced by the list below.

Books read:

• Bake, Borrow and Steal by Ellie Alexander.  Another Bakeshop Mystery, a good light read.
• Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. Saw this one on Ginny's blog (Ginny the originator of the Yarn Along idea) and requested it from the library.  If you only like a more modern writing style involving female characters, this book most likely isn't for you. I did enjoy it, the style of writing reminded me of a lot of books read in my youth.
• The Riding Instructor's Manual by Gordon Wright & Samuel Kelley.  I've had this in my personal library for a long, long time and got it out when I first had K3 start working the Little Black Mare with me. This book is mostly themed for the English/jumping rider, and was written many decades ago.  Some info was still relevant to my project with K3.  (Side note: went on Amazon to find a link to add for this book and WHOA!! Check out the price!! I knew it had been out of print for while but didn't know my copy was worth so much!)
• 500 Miles From You by Jenny Colgan.  She has become one of my favorite writers when I want a feel-good read that isn't fluffy.  Another story based in Kirrinfief Scotland and there are cameos of familiar characters from her previous two books that I read.  Pretty sure I literally read this book in two days.
• The Burning by Linda Castillo.  This is her latest Kate Burkholder novel and is as gripping as all the others.  
• The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center. Her latest novel, was engaging, funny and hard to put down.  Another that I devoured in 2-3 days.

Currently reading You Only Die Once by Jodi Wellman. I've barely started it, but so far I like her writing style.  Not sure if the perkiness and the in-your-face will wear on me after a while.  Will have to report on that next month. 

Horse Update, July

 The bugs have been awful at this little place here pretty much since May.  One huge drawback of having a warm winter: not enough prolonged cold weather to kill off the bugs.  And so we are having an especially buggy summer this year.  Mosquitos honestly aren't so bad, but the black flies and stable flies and green head flies and deer flies are horrible.  I'm going through fly spray like crazy and no matter which one I use, it seems like a few hours later there's flies landing on the horses again.

The Poetess wears a fly mask with ears in turnout because she has ear plaques (had them last summer; not sure what her history is on those) and I don't want them to get worse/irritated by fly bites.  Her mask keeps her happy when she's out in the pasture.  But when she's being worked, her ears are unprotected and she really doesn't want me to rub roll-on or cream bug repellent into her ears, especially the one with the majority of the plaques; it's sensitive.

The LBM doesn't seem to care much about flies in her ears when she's out grazing.  But under saddle, that's a whole 'nother story!  The head shaking to remove bugs sometimes got so bad that she wasn't listening to me at all while riding.

So, shopping to the rescue: I ordered two ear bonnets.  One for the Poetess to wear while working, and one for the LBM.  And just like that, the LBM was no longer being driven out of her mind while being ridden.  And Poetess's ears are protected during work sessions without me having to try to swipe goop into them every couple of days.  What a game changer.  I highly recommend ear bonnets if you are having similar issues with bugs in the ears driving your horses batty under saddle.  Mine aren't fancy, and aren't the sound deadening kind.  Just something lightweight to seal up those ears from bugs.

Along with the bugs being a problem, we went through about two weeks of nightly invasions by raccoons.  My nice heavy duty snap-on lids for my grain bins failed me; the darn raccoons figured out how to get them off.  I'm not sure if it was the biggest one(s) doing this, or if it was a joint effort of many little raccoon hands. Even on the nights they didn't get the grain bin open, I could tell they'd been wandering around inside the barn because in the morning when it was turnout time and I opened her stall door Poetess would put her nose down to the cement floor and walk up and down the aisle, smelling.  

This couldn't continue; raccoons in the barn and barnyard/chicken coop area was not a good thing.  So, I baited two live traps, put them nightly near the front door of the barn and in 8 nights of setting out live traps I was able to catch five raccoons, two of which were adults and three were juveniles.  They were quickly given lead poisoning.  DH patrolling in the evening just before dark was able to dispatch six or seven more who were given lead poisoning without being trapped first.  That seems to have solved the critter raids on the barn problem.

In the last three weeks, K3 has been able to 'help' me with the LBM's training twice.  LBM's owner and I had talked about putting K3 in the saddle to see what the horse would do with a much less experienced rider than I.  We agreed to start this on the longe line, and then progress to K3 riding solo.  So far so good, a few interesting things have come to light (the LBM spooked the first few times I had K3 raise her arms while in the saddle; shorter legs giving the walk command got ignored) which have given K3 things to do in the saddle and me to desensitize during my work sessions with the mare.  We are planning on having K3 in the saddle once a week for the remainder of her summer break.

While DH was on 'vacation' (mandatory first week of July), one of the many small/medium size projects he worked on was finishing up the final two stalls of the barn by laying the floor mats.  Luckily, that week had decent weather, a break from the low 90's with high humidity that we'd been having and was a comfy lowish humidity upper 70's on the day that we put in the mats.  We still got sweaty and tired, but at least neither of us got heat stroke!

DH cutting a mat to needed size, using the tractor forks and a pallet as a work table.

(Yes, that's my foot in the foreground, my knee was super blown up still and I frequently had to sit with it up on shavings bales to rest it while working in the barn.)

If you recall, last summer we'd found these stall mats on sale and purchased the total number of mats we'd need to do all six stalls even though we were focusing on getting just two stalls built that year. We didn't want to come back in a few months (or more) when we were ready to mat the remaining stalls and have to pay full price (which at that time was $15/mat more than the sale price) for those. Well, when measuring and cutting mats for the very first stall, DH miscut one of the mats and it was then too small.  We set it aside, hoping that it would work for one of the future stalls as each stall wasn't quite exactly 12'x12'.

As each new stall was matted, that miscut mat was still too small.  It was beginning to look like we were going to have to make a half-hour trip to buy just one new mat, at the regular price, in order to finish matting all six stalls.  

We were literally down to the last mat needed in the sixth stall, when, to our utter joy and amazement  (because we'd been measuring it for four whole stalls hoping it wasn't too small), it wasn't too small for the final corner!  In fact, it needed just quarter inch or so trimmed off part of one edge.  Whew!  So glad that mat wasn't wasted after all!

The 'thank goodness it's not too small for here' mat! (A bit dusty from storage not in a stack.)

That's all for this month's update.  I was going to mention more about the Poetess's progress, but that was making this post extremely long, so I decided to give her her own post talking about how far she's come.  Look for that soon.

Family Time

The end of June and beginning of July found DH and I having a lot of family time.  It started with beef brisket being on sale, and DH deciding he wanted to smoke a brisket on the upcoming Saturday and invite all the kids and grandkids to spend the day and have a meal. 

Everyone was invited, and told to bring a side dish to round out the dinner of smoked brisket.  All except DD2 and Brad were able to come.  The afternoon was full of kids, grandkids, ball, and smelling the brisket smoking in the smoker.  

We had baseballs, softballs, the appropriate bats as well as a batting tee, and anyone who wanted to got a chance to pitch, bat and catch.  Which was just about everyone although I only ended up with pictures of one grandson and one son-in-law actually hitting the ball.

At this little place here, we bat away from the house, into the large backyard.  If you hit it over the septic mound, it's a homerun.  If you hit it into the cornfield beyond the septic mound it's even more impressive but the fielders don't really like you because they have to go searching in the corn to find the ball.  At one point, DD1 got a little fed up with her husband because he kept hitting them into the corn for her to have to retrieve.

Buck and Rascal practicing t-ball.

Buck is a lefty.

DD1 pitching and Honorary Son hitting,

DS2 and Faline watching.

Will it go into the corn?

Once the brisket had reached the optimal internal temperature in the smoker, DH wrapped it in a towel and set it inside a cooler (without ice) to rest for an hour before serving.  He couldn't resist offering everyone a smell at the end of the rest period before removing the brisket and slicing it for serving.

Smelling the brisket, trying not to squish Sixlet in the process.

The four oldest grandkids: K3, Toad, Rascal and Faline, were invited to spend the night at this little place here, and DH built a small fire using a hollow stump.  Once it had burned a bit, smores were made with K3 and Toad doing the marshmallow roasting until they tired of cooking for the smaller kids.  After that, DH roasted a few opting to save on his back and knees by just sitting in the grass.

After church the next morning, DH and I took those four grandkids hiking at a recreational area about half an hour away.  We let the kids determine how long we hiked and were pleasantly surprised to have Rascal and Faline walk for about two miles.  Shortly before getting back to the trailhead we'd begun at, Faline announced that her "knees are tired", so DH put her up on his shoulders for a little ways before having her finish the trek on her own feet.

Faline is quite a character and is known for saying what's in her head at the moment.  Being three, she also has some funny mispronunciations and word mix-ups as her vocabulary builds.  A couple gems from the 24 hours she was with us:

 

(At bedtime, which was later than normal, and she wasn't wanting to lay down and give it in for the day yet, at which time I told her that I was really tired and wanted to go to sleep.) "My body says it's not going to sleep; you can go to sleep Ahma, but I'm not going to."

(While leading us in the common Lutheran table prayer) ". . . and Moses endures forever." (rather than ". . . His mercy endures forever.")

(When debating what toppings to get on pizza for the grandkids to share after hiking) "I don't like pickles on pizza, but I can pick them off." (referring to green peppers).

For July 4th, DS1 invited us all to his house for a cookout in honor of the fourth and for Toad's 10th birthday (his birthday is the 5th, but that was a work day.)  Again, everyone except DD2 and Brad were able to attend.  DS1 grilled hot dogs, brats and burgers and introduced us to an alternative way of cooking corn on the cob: shucked, placed in a cooler, boiling water poured over it to cover, then the lid of the cooler closed and kept shut for an hour or more.  It turned out really well.

Buck enjoying some corn.

There was some more batting happening, as DS1 had recently purchased a pop up style batting cage and a pitching machine for the kids to practice their batting skills.  All three of his kids have been playing summer ball through the school.

Apparently when it's your birthday, you can bat barefoot,

 shirtless and in shorts like Toad as along as you wear a helmet!

Back at home after that party, DH and I decided to relight the remainder of the stump from the Saturday before and get it the rest of the way burned.  Alas, it was not to be as we had no sooner gotten a fire going than the sky opened in a downpour!  We relocated into DH's shop to wait out the storm, sitting inside the opened back door.  Once the rain had passed by, there was a really bright rainbow.  A few minutes later, a fainter rainbow appeared just to the left of it.  In the photo below, you can just barely make out the double rainbow portion near the edge of the tree's branches.

We did, eventually, get that stump burned on Saturday evening, a full week after first lighting it.  It had gotten rained on and put out at least twice since then.