Anticlimatic

Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but that really wasn't much of a storm last night.

After all the extravagant claims on the weather web sites, all we ended up getting was a short period of gusty wind, and a quick downpour. The sheep shelters are all still in one piece this morning, and now the sun is out in a clear blue sky.

Much better than the damaging wind, rain, hail, and thunderstorms they were predicting!

I'm reminded of the years when Ken and I lived in Illinois, when we would make fun of the TV weather casters because they were always trying to make their weather reports sound more urgent than they really were.

My favorite was a day one November when the manic-sounding weather man was raving about how today was going to be the "COLDEST DAY IN SIX MONTHS!!!!"

Ummm.... yeah. A day in November is going to be the coldest day since May? Shocking!

Storm Is Coming

Well, apparently I was so sad about Char leaving that I got the date wrong. No, not the date that David is arriving---I actually lost track of what day of the week it was yesterday. My only excuse is that my insomnia is back, so I am somewhat sleep deprived. Either that, or I'm simply becoming a flaky airhead in my old (middle?) age. :-)

So anyway, I have another day before Char and Scylla leave, maybe more than one, if the weather delays David on the road. There's a storm coming this way that is supposed to give us damaging wind, heavy rain, and thunder tonight. Our temperatures are unseasonably warm here (mid 70s!), but further west and north, the storm has been dropping snow and ice.

Ken and I fed the horses early, to get it done before the storm hits. Then we spend some time reinforcing some of the sheep's tarp shelters so they (hopefully) don't tear themselves to shreds in the wind. The big, wooden-framed tarp shelter Ken built for the ewe pen was catching the wind and trying to lift itself up and flip over, even though it's firmly attached to the fence, so we actually roped the uphill edge of it down with extra pieces of baling twine tied to cinder blocks and to the fence.

Things you can never have too much of on a farm: baling twine, duct tape, tarps, cinder blocks, hoses, buckets, and fence panels.

And, of course, a good supply of quality hay!

Ugly Shoes Save the Day

I'm not a shoe person.

Unlike "normal" women, I care nothing for shoe fashions. I'd go barefoot all the time if I could. In my mind, the best qualities a shoe can have are to be so comfortable and inconspicuous that I never have to think about them. (For the record, I feel the same way about cars: I want only a vehicle that will carry me and my stuff to my destination with zero fuss, so I don't have to think about the car at all.)

Because of this indifferent attitude toward shoes, most of my footwear is either simple black or simple white, because those colors go with everything.

But uncharacteristically, this past summer, while shopping for sheep feed at Tractor Supply, on a whim I bought a pair of bright lime green rubber clogs.

They are really, REALLY ugly shoes. They are lumpy in shape. They are garishly colored. And for weeks after I bought them, they made obnoxious farting sounds every time I took a step.

You'd think these loud, bright, rude shoes would be exactly the kind of thing I would hate, but instead I LOVE them, and wear them every day, even during the winter!

Because they are clogs, they are easy to slip on and off. I can pop my feet in them quickly to run outside to do a chore, and kick them off just as easily when I come back inside. They are lightweight, soft, and flexible, so my feet don't feel confined. Because they are rubber, they are waterproof, so as long as I don't step in any deep puddles, I can walk through muddy horse paddocks or accidentally splash myself with the hose while filling water troughs, without my feet getting wet.

And best of all, because the shoes are so incredibly ugly, I don't care what happens to them. They can get grungy and manure-stained. The cats can sharpen their claws on them. Whatever. It doesn't matter, because they are already as ugly as they can be.

They are the ultimate shoe for me!

Yesterday, they also saved me from what could have been a very painful injury. I was walking across the sheep paddock, tending the sheep, when all of a sudden my shoe felt funny. I looked down and saw that there was a large twig stuck to the sole. I tried to brush it off, but the twig wouldn't budge. Then I realized it was a locust twig.

Our driveway, next to the sheep paddock, is lined with large honey locust trees. The sheep love to eat the seed pods that fall from these trees all fall and winter. But the trees have huge thorns. If you've never seen them, you have no idea what I mean by huge.

Think of what you would consider a large thorn. Double the size of that. Got it? That's the size of the small thorns that stick out of the sides of the big thorns on these trees. Yes, that's right. Honey locust thorns have thorns of their own. The longest ones are longer than my hand! Here's an example of what they look like.

Anyway, whenever it's really windy here, the trees tend to drop a few small twigs and branches. I had stepped on one, and one of the thorns drove itself diagonally into the thick rubber sole of the clog. When I pulled it out, the thorn was nearly 2 inches long. OUCH! That sure could have hurt.

I know, I know, if I'd been wearing something with harder soles, the thorn would have been deflected and wouldn't have poked into the shoe at all. But my feet hate the constrictive feeling of hard soles. So I'm just happy that my ugly clogs saved the day (and my feet).

Heartbreak Ahead

I've been crying all morning.

I just can't put it off and avoid thinking about it any longer. Today I have to gather up all the paperwork for Char and Scylla and write up a sales contract for the Trading-Horses-For-Sheep deal.

Char and Scylla's new owner, David, is already on the road, driving here from Wisconsin with a trailer full of sheep. He'll arrive sometime tomorrow, drop off the sheep, and the next morning he'll leave for home, taking Char and Scylla with him. After that, it's very likely I will never see my Char-char again.

This is a really good trade for both of us. David is getting a couple of gorgeous, high-quality horses, and I'm getting a group of gorgeous, high-quality sheep. The only trouble is, I LOVE those horses, and he LOVES those sheep, so even though we know it's a great trade, we're both going to be really sad about it at the same time that we're excited.

This whole time I've been working out the details of the trade, I've been able to concentrate on the facts: Adding the new sheep to my flock is an excellent business decision. Value-for-value, if I count the lambs that the bred ewes will have in a few months, I'm getting more in "sheep" currency than I could sell the mares for in cash right now. The sheep will eat less hay than the horses, so we'll save money there. And I know that David will give the mares a fantastic home where they can be very happy.

I know all those facts. I've been clinging to them for weeks. I've been able to go about my life, do the chores, spend time petting and talking to Char and Scylla, and I've been pretty much okay.

But today, every time I so much as look out the window and see one of them, I start crying. It's a beautiful day out, warm and sunny. It would be an ideal day to go out and spend one last day playing with Char before I have to say goodbye. But I can't bear it. I can't stand to spend time cementing that bond we have, only to have to break it forever tomorrow.

(Sheesh, now I'm crying again, just writing about it. Part of me feels stupid for getting this worked up about a horse---I'm a grown woman, for Pete's sake. I made an excellent business deal that will help our farm. So shut up and stop crying about it, already!)

It would make it easier, I think, if parting with Char and Scylla was the magic sacrifice that would instantly cure all of our endless worries about money. But that's not the case. On Friday morning, they'll leave here, and on Friday afternoon, we're still going to be wondering how to pay our electricity bill and how to stretch the last of Ken's paycheck until the next one arrives.

That's not NEW, of course, we've been in that situation for months now. It just makes it harder to think that parting with Char and Scylla makes no difference in our situation at all. It makes it feel like they were never here or that my sacrifice doesn't matter.

I know that's not really true. Parting with Char and Scylla will help our finances in several ways. It's just that those ways are more gradual: saving money through decreased hay usage (using 1 fewer bale per day at $7 a bale saves us more than $2500 in a year) and earning more money through increased sheep sales later this summer (the lambs those new sheep produce in the spring should sell for about $6500 by fall).

But those are not quick fixes that my heart can latch onto. The heart is all about the NOW. No matter what the mind knows, the heart is never content to trade sorrow today for some distant future reward, because today is all the heart knows.

The only way the heart can find solace is to turn to some greater love. For me it is this: Even more than I love my beautiful Char-char, I love my farm and I love my husband. Our financial situation has been very hard on both of them, and this sacrifice will help ease the burden.

And that is how I am able to do this with a willing (although sorrowful) heart.

Ice Storm

On Friday (Feb. 1), we had an ice storm. In our current, impoverished circumstances, that's one of the things I dread hearing outside, because we don't have proper shelter for all the horses.

The young horses in the back pasture have a run in bay to the barn that they can go into, to get out of the rain.

The mares in the front pasture used to have a big run-in shed---one of those large, curved tarp sheds on a metal framework. But the destructive power of a bunch of large horses, plus the ferocious winds we get on our hilltop ripped the thing to tatters in the course of a year.

This summer, when it became a hazard, we tore it down, planning to build a real wood run-in shed before winter. We paid our neighbor come with his backhoe and level out the spot where we were going to put it.

Then the drought hit, hay prices went up, and horse sales plummeted. The money we had planned to use to build the shelter had to go instead to just barely manage to feed the horses. So now, whenever it's cold and rainy, I run out and open the gate to release the mares into the big pasture, so they can go find shelter among the thick cedar trees.

If the weather is just cold, or just wet, the big horses aren't bothered by it. But on Friday it was pouring rain and about 34 degrees (F). They are big, hefty girls, so they were not chilled or shivering, but they certainly weren't very happy with the situation.

We fed them early and extra, so their bellies were full to help them produce body heat, then they ran around a bit to get warm, and then they went and stood under the cedar thicket.

My one comfort was that I had seen that the weather was supposed to be getting warmer and warmer, so I knew they wouldn't be cold for much longer. Now today, it's nearly 70 degrees!

I'm looking forward to getting our herd down to the 5 fillies we plan to keep, because then they can all easily share the run-in bay that is attached to our barn, and I won't have to worry about the weather so much. Maybe someday we'll be able to afford to put up that shelter in the front pasture too.

At the moment, I just have to concentrate on selling the last few horses we have for sale. We're feeling the financial pinch again. I really need to earn some extra money in the next couple of weeks to buy more hay, since Ken's paycheck is stretched to the limit already.

Time to start listing a few more things on EBay, and to finally get around to advertising my fleeces for sale, and anything else I can think of to keep us going until the last few horses sell.

If I can just keep us going until summer, our sheep sales should generate enough money to buy our winter's hay and get us through another year.

Of course, the other thing I dread about the wind and rain and ice storms that come through here is that the house's roof leaks in my upstairs office. The winds are so fierce, they've torn off a lot of the shingles (which, of course, were installed as cheaply as possible by the house's former owners).

We had someone come out and price how much it would cost to redo the roof with new, high-quality architectural shingles, and were given a quote of $27,000! That is so ridiculously beyond any price we can even remotely foresee being able to afford, we had to just laugh, because otherwise we might cry!

I know there are other options for fixing the roof that are less expensive, and we will have to look into them when we can. But at the moment, we're concentrating on trying to raise enough to just pay the electric bill and buy hay to feed the horses, so the roof will have to wait.

Fun With Buckets

One of my sheep, a young black ewe named Simone, had some health problems in the Fall that left her very thin. She has been gradually climbing back to health, but it's taking her a long time to regain all the weight she lost, so I have taken to sneaking her extra food when the other sheep aren't looking.

As a consequence, Simone has become fixated on me, and convinced that I serve no other purpose than to be her feed dispenser. When I'm in the yard, she follows me everywhere, so close on my heels that she often steps on the back of my shoes. When I'm inside the house, she wanders around mournfully outside, searching all the nooks and corners of the yard, hoping to find some hidden stash of food I may have left for her. Sometimes she comes up onto the back porch, stares into the kitchen through the glass door, and bleats for me to come out.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to the sound of the wind roaring across our hill. I also heard the distinctive, hollow, bump-bump-bump sound of one of our plastic buckets being blown across the back yard.

Raising myself up from my bed, I looked out the window in time to see the bright yellow bucket go tumbling at high speed down the driveway. Startled by this unexpected apparition, several of the other sheep scattered in panic.

Then I had to laugh because, running along behind the flying bucket as fast as she could go, was Simone---completely convinced that the bucket must be full of food for her!

This afternoon, the sheep had another bucket adventure.

A few days ago, when my filly Libby got sick with colic, I made up a bucket of warm molasses water to try to encourage her to drink. She didn't want it at the time, and eventually recovered without drinking any of it.

Rather than dumping it out, I left it in the back yard for the sheep to find. For a few days, the water remained frozen but lately, with milder temperatures, I've noticed the level of the molasses water dropping each day as more and more of the sheep discovered the tasty treat.

Today, the bucket was empty except for a sweet film of molasses in the bottom. I looked out the back door to see a mob of sheep descend upon the bucket, fighting to see who would be the lucky one who would get to lick up the last of the "candy."

Through size and sheer determination, after a lot of scuffling, that honor fell to my senior ewe, Moriah (who, coincidentally, happens to be Simone's mother). Victorious, she shoved her face into the bucket, forcing her nose to the sweet stuff at the bottom, even though her wide horns would barely wedge into the bucket.

Unfortunately for her, they wedged a little too well! Suddenly, she lifted her head up, with the heavy-duty 5-gallon bucket still attached to her face. Blinded, she started careening around the yard, crashing into all the other sheep that were crowded around. Finally the bucket shifted so that it was dangling from one of her horns by the handle. A moment later, she managed to flip it off onto the ground.

So much for the dignity of the flock's matriarch!

Windy Morning, Fillies at Play

It rained all night, and now this morning the wind is roaring across our hill: a perfect recipe for feisty horses.

When I got up, I decided to let all the horses, both mares and fillies, out into the big pasture to play while I tried to capture some pretty photos in the morning light.

Here are a few:

Safe and Sound

We got home after midnight last night, so I was too tired to post a blog entry before collapsing into bed. But we have good news all around on the horse front:

1. Boo and Shane arrived safe and sound at their new home in Florida.

2. Libby seems to be mostly recovered from her bout of colic.

3. Senter made his trip to the trainers just fine, and is now starting his educational career.

I wanted to spend some time with Senter yesterday to put him in a happy, interactive frame of mind before we suddenly put him on a trailer and hauled him away. So yesterday afternoon I groomed him for a while (That gray stone dust footing in his paddock really puts a fine gray powder into his coat and makes his white patches look very dingy).

Then I took him out to the round pen and let him romp for a few minutes. I didn't really ask anything hard from him---mostly just let him play and stretch his legs and get out any excess friskiness. Then I took him out on the grass and let him graze for a while, which is his method of favorite relaxation.

It was nice to have a fun, relaxing afternoon with him before sending him away. I'll miss him, but I'm so pleased that he has this opportunity.

When it came time to load him up in the trailer, he was really good. Even though he's only ever been on a trailer once before in his whole life, when I led him up to the entrance, he stepped his two front feet right up in, stood their looking and sniffing for a couple of minutes, and then hopped right in. (Maybe it helped that I told him that there would be mares waiting for him at the other end of the trip!)

Ken and I followed the trailer in our own car, because we wanted to be there to see him settled in to his new place, to give him a little continuity. We heard him whinny in the trailer a couple of times, but other than that it was a pretty peaceful ride.

When he stepped off the trailer at the trainer's farm, there were hordes of mares all standing by the fence watching, so he really wanted to prance around and show off. He especially had eyes for one Art Deco mare named Alura, who he will probably be breeding later.

The trainer handled him for a few minutes in the stable yard, letting him know that he had to pay attention to his handler, and not just go flirting with the girls. He responded well to her, and soon was settled down enough to go into his new stall.

They'd given him a stall where he could sniff noses with his neighbor gelding through the bars, so of course Senter had to show off and snort and prance around the stall for a few minutes, just in case the gelding turned out to be a mare. But before long he settled down and started eating hay.

He's going to have so much fun there, with so much to see and do, so many things to learn and keep his mind busy. He's just such a basically happy horse, pleased to have attention, eager for praise, I think he's going to do great.

Two Down, One to Go

Boo and Shane finally left today. They were supposed to leave a few days ago, but the shipper got delayed, so today was the big day. Boo did not want to load up into that trailer at all, and when a horse weighs 1,600 lbs. and doesn't want to go somewhere, it can be a trick to make her do it.

Given the choice, I would have given her more time. I would have sat on the end of the trailer and let her relax about it, but the shipper took charge of her and tried to load her himself without even giving me the chance to ask her.

He was okay with her---not mean or abusive or anything at all like that---but he had more of the "traditional" handling methods rather than the natural horsemanship ones. He tried to rush her a little, and she got flustered and anxious, which led to her getting resistive and defiant.

We had such a hard time loading her that we finally tried loading Shane instead. He'd never been on a trailer before, so we had no idea how that would go. He didn't really want to go on, but with enough encouragement he finally did.

By that time, Boo had had a chance to calm down a bit, and with her buddy Shane already on the trailer, she was a little more willing to consider getting in herself. It took a bit more effort, but finally she loaded up.

So now they're gone on their way to their new home in Florida, where they will be loved and spoiled by their new family. I think they will love the attention!

Senter is leaving tomorrow to go to the trainer's. I'm pretty excited about this opportunity for him. He's going to learn so much! He's been really bored here and not being used to his full potential at all, so he's going to really thrive in a more active environment.

When the shipper saw Senter trotting around in his paddock, he was completely wowed. He kept commenting on what an impressive animal he was, and asking questions about him. That's pretty much everyone's first reaction to seeing Senter. Now, with the chance to get a better education, he's going to be even more stunning. I'm so happy for him!

Libby is still not feeling completely well today, but she didn't have a fever and she ran around some playing with the other fillies, so I think she's on the mend.

We had just gotten a large shipment of the alfalfa hay in yesterday, but we had to call our hay supplier and get another shipment of the grass hay too, so that we could take all the babies completely off the alfalfa for now, until Libby is feeling better. Eventually, we'll introduce a little alfalfa back into their mix, but probably will try to keep feeding some grass hay too, to prevent this from happening again.

We thought we were getting a good deal with the alfalfa hay. All of the hay is $7.00 or more per bale now, and prices are still going up, up, up! When our hay guy said the alfalfa, which is richer and more nutritious, was the same price as the grass hay, we thought we were lucky to get it. We thought if we introduced it gradually enough, the horses would be able to make the switch with no problem. But according to our vet, it may just plain be too rich for the baby horses, regardless of how slowly we introduce it.

So, after yesterday's $400 vet bill, it doesn't look like much of a bargain after all.

Sick Day

I woke up today with a splitting headache. All morning, it didn't go away. I was feeling kind of stuffy, so I thought it might be a sinus headache, which is something I almost never get. Hoping to clear it up, I took one of my husband's decongestants.

All midday, the headache didn't go away. I took ibuprofen, without any noticeable effect. Finally, even though I had a lot of things I really should have been doing, I went to lie down for a while, hoping a little nap would help.

I dozed for about an hour, and felt somewhat better when I got up. For some reason, I decided to cook dinner early, so Ken and I could eat before we did evening chores. It's a good thing I did, because it turned out I didn't get back in the house for the evening until almost 9:00 o'clock.

When we went out to do chores, we noticed one of the fillies, Libby, was lying down and was extremely filthy. It was a little unusual, but didn't strike me as extremely odd, since the baby horses lie down all over the field to nap all day, every day.

But after we'd finished chores, I was walking back through the paddock and saw that Libby was collapsed on the ground beside the hay feeder.

A chill went through me. Colic!

Colic in horses is a very serious and sometimes life-threatening thing. Because horses can't burp or vomit, any digestive disturbance has to make it all the way through the horse. Anything that causes a lot of gas or anything that causes any kind of blockage, causes a lot of pain. A horse that is in a lot of pain will sometime roll on the ground, which can sometimes cause its intestines to twist, which leads to more problems and pain and sometimes death.

So any horse person who sees one of her horses with any symptoms of colic knows that fast treatment is imperative.

I went and forced Libby to her feet, and though she was reluctant to even move, I dragged her out into the yard so I could walk her and prevent her from rolling. She had laid down in a puddle, so she was wet, chilled, and shivering, so I got a blanket and draped it over her.

I took her temperature, which was normal, and listened to her belly for gut sounds. There were almost none. Not a good sign. Horses' guts should always be gurgling, an indication that things are moving along inside as they should be.

I got some warm molasses water and tried to get her to drink, but she refused. I gave her a dose of Banamine to ease the pain, and had Ken call the vet.

We walked her around the back yard for over an hour, waiting for the vet to arrive. Eventually, the Banamine kicked in, and she started feeling a little better. Shortly after that, her belly started gurgling a lot. A little later: a giant, liquid burst of diarrhea!

Okay. Well, at least that meant she wasn't impacted. After dealing with Scylla's impaction colic two years ago, which led to a trip to the horse hospital and several thousand dollars worth of vet bills, I had been fearing the worst again.

But by the time the vet arrived, there wasn't a lot left for him to do. He took blood samples to test that it wasn't some kind of infection, but we agreed that it seemed more like Libby was simply having a hard time adjusting to our new hay, which was supposed to be a grass/alfalfa blend, but turned out to be almost entirely alfalfa.

We transitioned the horses over to the new stuff over the course of a week, and we thought they'd all adjusted just fine. But apparently Libby had a bit harder time with the change.

She's resting now in the run-in bay, with clean dry bedding on the floor for her to sleep on, and a hay bag full of grass hay to sooth her upset tummy. With any luck, she'll be on the mend and feeling better by tomorrow.

But me... after a day like today, what I need is a drink!