It’s hard to believe that summer is winding down already. It’s been hot and/or rainy all summer which meant every time I thought we’d eat outside on the patio, it was too hot, too wet or both. But the weather has changed already. Days are shorter, there’s a cool breeze and this weekend was one of the rare opportunities to eat dinner outside. Not just for us – but for “the herd” too. Happy Labor Day!
Disa has been a resident of our farm for quite a while now, but we traded her for something smaller. Well, it wasn’t quite like that.
Disa eats a lot, and that’s hard on our pasture. We cordoned off part of the pasture so it could recuperate and grow, but it’s winter and the grass isn’t growing much anyway. So it made sense to swap out Disa for Lollipop. Disa moved to Becky’s other pasture and brought Arianna’s pony here instead.
Lollipop seems to like her new home. Pono was a little skittish right after Disa left. He wouldn’t come near us for fear of being snatched and taken away in that horse trailer into the dark night, never to be seen again. But he seems to have calmed down now that it’s apparent that he’s staying. And Fiona? She’s still here, and probably always will be because no one can catch her (except maybe Chris).
The truck is beginning to pay for itself already! Chris picked up a load of hay and hauled it home in the truck. Yes, that brand new truck will certain make a dent in those hay delivery charges! With stray strands of hay flying around behind, we lumbered over hill and dale of back country roads. It was like lugging a Christmas tree home on the roof of the car, only to see all the needles flying off. I wondered how much of the bales would remain; for the most part they were intact.
It’s a multi-step process getting the hay unloaded. The bales go from the truck bed to the little green cart attached to the back of the John Deere, and then hauled up the hill behind our house where they are unloaded into the barn. Arianna enjoyed the trek back and forth – especially when she got to sprawl out in the empty cart on the return trips down the hill.
Considering that the barn only holds about 2 to 3 weeks’ worth of hay, I guess the delivery truck will be getting a work out. The horses are happy with the fresh hay, Arianna is happy with the tractor rides and the “farmer” is happy in his pick-up truck. I guess it’s a good day on No Rhyme or Reason Farm.
It would be an understatement to say that the “Three Musketeers” – Disa (the Norwegian Fjord Horse), Pono (a miniature horse) and Fiona (our goat) – REALLY enjoy their pasture. In fact, they’ve chomped it down to the roots.
We realized that we probably needed to divide the pasture in half, so they can graze on one side, and let the other side recuperate!
Being novices at all of this, we made a trip to Tractor Supply to look into electric fence tape. In this modern digital age, the aisle of electric fence supplies also offered a free “Instructional DVD” on installing electric fences. We figured it would be really complicated if you had to take home a DVD to figure out how to do this.
As it turns out, it wasn’t that hard (well, it wasn’t hard for me, because Chris did the work). He put in the plastic fence posts, a couple of ground posts, strung the electrified tape, flipped on the power – and voila – we had a divided pasture.
That was the easy part.
The hard part has been keeping (mis)chievious – “Miss” Fiona (the “Miss” is for Mischievous) from jumping through the fence. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. At first Chris would corral her back to the permitted side of the pasture. Eventually we gave up. After all, one little goat can’t eat all that much newly growing grass – can she?
No Rhyme or Reason Farm 