Ah, the Glamour!
Apr. 26th, 2004 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancinghorseHere we have a day in the life of the glamourous Lipizzaner breeder--lying around under crystal chandeliers, sipping champagne and nibbling Linzertorte and watching the white horses dance.
Right.
The barn has needed cleaning for a Long time. Years, actually. All sorts of odd bits of things were piled up all over the place. Storage boxes were disintegrating around their contents--plastic decay, horses kicking them or stepping on them, people getting a little too enthusiastic about rummaging through them. There were boxes of things so old they were unusable, and other boxes and buckets of things so dirty they were unidentifiable. And everything was creeping out into the spaces where the horses come and go.
So this morning, after the usual turn horses out-feed and water them all-clean corrals routine, fortified with a big jug of water, I tackled the mess. And tackled it. And tackled it some more.
Took all morning and then some. There's still a pile of very dirty tack and equipment to clean, and I need some more storage boxes. And some tarps. But there is now room to maneuver. And the horses didn't trip over things on their way in for dinner. Most of them just ran on through, but Camilla had to check out the rearranged space, and da Pook (who is her brother, after all) wanted to explore the whole feed area, which had suddenly quadrupled in size.
I am, to put it mildly, knackered. There was also a hay delivery, so there was more raking and sweeping to do, followed by tarping and fortifying--but it was worth it to get two truckloads of bee-YOOtiful bermuda and a few bales of alfalfa so rich the hay guy warned me to go easy on it. I feed it as a supplement anyway, not a staple, so that's OK. And he did all the heaving and stacking--bales run around 100lbs apiece, that's more than I can handle--so I got a break there.
70 bales. Three and a half tons. That's about seven weeks' worth for this crew. Maybe eight, if they all go on summer diets. Forget riding anybody--I done toted too dang many bales.
And tonight, there are still pages to write. A bale of another sort--baleful, one might say.
Right.
The barn has needed cleaning for a Long time. Years, actually. All sorts of odd bits of things were piled up all over the place. Storage boxes were disintegrating around their contents--plastic decay, horses kicking them or stepping on them, people getting a little too enthusiastic about rummaging through them. There were boxes of things so old they were unusable, and other boxes and buckets of things so dirty they were unidentifiable. And everything was creeping out into the spaces where the horses come and go.
So this morning, after the usual turn horses out-feed and water them all-clean corrals routine, fortified with a big jug of water, I tackled the mess. And tackled it. And tackled it some more.
Took all morning and then some. There's still a pile of very dirty tack and equipment to clean, and I need some more storage boxes. And some tarps. But there is now room to maneuver. And the horses didn't trip over things on their way in for dinner. Most of them just ran on through, but Camilla had to check out the rearranged space, and da Pook (who is her brother, after all) wanted to explore the whole feed area, which had suddenly quadrupled in size.
I am, to put it mildly, knackered. There was also a hay delivery, so there was more raking and sweeping to do, followed by tarping and fortifying--but it was worth it to get two truckloads of bee-YOOtiful bermuda and a few bales of alfalfa so rich the hay guy warned me to go easy on it. I feed it as a supplement anyway, not a staple, so that's OK. And he did all the heaving and stacking--bales run around 100lbs apiece, that's more than I can handle--so I got a break there.
70 bales. Three and a half tons. That's about seven weeks' worth for this crew. Maybe eight, if they all go on summer diets. Forget riding anybody--I done toted too dang many bales.
And tonight, there are still pages to write. A bale of another sort--baleful, one might say.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-27 04:50 am (UTC)I have been lifting and toting too, but in very small increments. Nothing like the junk you must have been wading thru.
Congratulations.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-27 07:04 am (UTC)That definitely counts on the awe scale (versus the Awwww scale, which is all about Pooka, or so he says).
Cathartic Cleaning?
Date: 2004-04-27 11:34 am (UTC)70 bales, whoo hoo. I got 20 bales of pure oat last week, my ponies' favorite. They bury their heads at feeding time on this batch and don't come up for air. It's messy but worth it, since they clean it up pretty well when it isn't windy!
news: Major Vulvar Activity, teats engorged, milkable but no wax. Pooklet isn't talking. I went out at 4:30 this morning thinking it was the Main Event with Ember sternally recumbent--she stayed down (first time ever) and chastised me for thinking it was time. Once she told me that though, I could sleep the rest of the night which was useful.
Lynne and the other great greys
Re: Cathartic Cleaning?
Date: 2004-04-27 12:26 pm (UTC)We've got your heat today. And the wind to go with. I'm glad I did the Big Clean and Tarp Wrangling yesterday. Today would have been too flappy and dusty for words. When I went out this morning, Pook was brown and Pissy--so much static in the air that when he rolled (because he itched) he got all dusty and it wouldn't shake off. He hates that.
Fingers crossed for Ember! What color's the milk? If it's gone from skim milk to yellow-sticky to white, you're almost there.
Btw, guys, a lot of these icons are Lynne's Fault(tm).
Re: Cathartic Cleaning?
Date: 2004-04-27 01:45 pm (UTC)I'm really enjoying the pictures of Judy's horses, Lynne