Weekend Work

To get everyone caught up on the going-ons at Borderland I’ll start you off at the beginning of the weekend.

Friday I pulled up barbed wire to get the start of the new mare pasture. I have an entire stretch gone! I’m excited. The next line of fence is from the manure pile south to the big pasture. It’ll take longer but I walked that fence line last year and pulled much of the fence up to a weed free zone.

Sunlight Siouxdana arrived Saturday morning about 11am. I still haven’t done anything with her other than food and water. I haven’t had a chance to mess with her at all. I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t played with her more. But I figure, this way she’ll meet all the horses from afar and get to know me. And she’s very much herd bound so this will help her adjust to the many changes that occur around the place.

A little later on mom and dad came down and we spent the entire afternoon Saturday putting up more fence and securing the old fence in the old mare pasture. Last year we’d thrown one strand to keep the mares in but with the new mare coming in and knowing that only one strand won’t hold all summer, we decided to do some actual fencing.

We drove fence posts in and strung a second line. I’m hoping to get a third strand in shortly. I’d feel more secure if the mares were in three strands of barbless fence instead of two. There’s too much temptation from the seeing horses to push past the fence and get into the CRP.

By Saturday late afternoon everyone was exhausted. Mom and dad headed home to do chores one last night. I realized then that we needed to unload the alfalfa. Mike and I had unloaded a couple but they were all starting to mold. Some were good but others were bad. I didn’t know what to do but we needed the flat bed. So I scrutinized the bales and any good bales went into the hay barn and the rest that were bad went into the hay shed. It’s so stinking hot in the hay shed my hope is that the heat will burn it out. I’m guessing that wont’ be the case and I really need to just put an ad on CraigsList to get them out of here.

With the addition of Sunny, I had to do some more quick thinking. I put Sunny in the ponies’ night pen but that left the ponies out. So I put the ponies’ day pen back together (we’d torn it down when we were doing waste management) and I never got it back together. So In the ponies went into their day pen. I’m sure they enjoyed it, getting to be so close to the big horses to torment.

Sunday was the big day. We were headed to Madison to pick up the two mares. I was a bit apprehensive on taking them home and introducing the new mare. I’m always worried about what will happen. We ended up spending the entire afternoon in Madison and didn’t head home to Borderlands until 5:30pm.

Then the real work began. I unloaded Babe and Queen and set about putting fly spray on them and giving them their evening meal. Not sure how it’ll work for their evening meal when the new horse is added to the pasture.

I then started setting up corral panels and other fence to release the mares into their mare pasture. I’m hoping that this pasture will hold out long enough for us to get the other mare pasture done. It’s only two acres and it’ll end up holding three horses. I hope to get at least a month if not more out of that pasture before I have to switch to the other pasture, which isn’t done yet.

The girls were excited to be back home. Queen went right for the fence line to hang out with the horses. She is smart. She stood just far enough inside the mare pasture so that the boys couldn’t harass her. Babe on the other hand is a social butterfly and has to touch noses. Of course, since she’s blind she needs to smell to know who is who. So there was a lot of squealing and hoof tossing. I did try to introduce Babe and Sunny but once again, lots of hoof tossing. I’m not too fond of that. I realized that it would be too hard on Babe to dump her into a new pasture and introduce a new herd mate. So I refrained from putting Sunny in the pasture. I want Babe to get her bearings straight and then I’ll add Sunny tonight. I’m not sure how Sunny will do. She’ll get to meet both new mares in the pasture and then she gets to meet the geldings. I’m a bit nervous but I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes. I’m a bit overprotective of Babe though. She’s blind so I want to protect her. I’m also a bit over protective of Queen. She’s simply old so I don’t want to put too much stress on her.

I guess we’ll just have to see how tonight goes. I hope to ride Maverick and feed the girls before introducing Sunny into the mare herd. But the sooner I do, the sooner everyone can adjust. I do expect to hear a lot of squealing for the next 24 hours. There’s been a TON of whinnying from Sunny and Maverick over the past 24 hours. It’s never dull around here.