Joe and the Barn

Last night I decided to pull Joe out of the pasture. This is the first time since bringing him home that I've done anything with him outside the pasture. He willingly went into the barn for his grain mash. I think where there's grain, Joe will follow!

I wanted to see if Joe would lick up all the grain like Sam does or if he would leave some behind like Jim. Joe is like Jim but not to the same degree. I think Joe simply gets tired of eating. But I would like to start pulling Joe out in the evenings so he doesn't have to fight flies and mosquitoes.

Thor is not impressed. He whinnied until the herd came up for the evening. Then he settled down. I do prefer that the horses have a best friend but I do require the ability to pull a horse out at any time and not have them so herd bound that I can't even work with them or have to worry about the other horse blowing through a fence. I do the majority of the chores alone and can't risk getting hurt or having a loose horse on the place.

I'm planning on continuing to pull Joe out so that he associates the barn with good things. I did the same thing with Sam and he prefers the barn to any other place (as do most of the other horses).

With Mike digging the holes, we were able to get the cedar trees planted before being carried away by mosquitoes. Oh what I would give for a 20 stall barn so that I could run the horses in at night to protect them from mosquitoes and bad weather.

We also had a terrible storm blow through last night. I saw the lightening as I was falling asleep around 11:30pm last night. I think the only reason I woke up was that the wind was blowing the rain on me. I hustled to shut windows and fell back to sleep immediately. I did worry about the horses standing out in the storm. Mike stayed up until 2am when the storm finally passed. Silly guy! But if we had a nice 20 stall barn with fans and AC I wouldn't worry so much about storms and protecting my "kids" from insects.

I guess having that big of a barn will be the dream goal. Maybe some day. At this point, I'd be happy with enough stalls to keep the horses out of bad weather in the winter along with a few additional open fronts.

Not sure what the plan will be tonight. If there's no wind, there will be no riding. The mosquitoes are just too bad these days. If there's wind and the horses are up, I may try to sneak a ride in. Otherwise I'll just putter around with the horses.