Rain in December

What a weekend. Who would have thought we would get rain in the middle of December? I don’t know how much rain we got but it was enough to make everything a muddy mess by Saturday night. The weatherman wasn’t sure where the cutoff was going to be for rain, freezing rain, and snow. Luckily we had rain and then snow and barely any freezing rain.

I braved the elements and took Rain to a riding clinic. Hopefully I’ll be able to remember what I learned and use it on Rain. One downfall of having a four month old is that my time is limited so that I the only time I get to ride is when I’m at drill team practice. I guess it’s better than not riding at all. The worst part of the drive was our gravel road. The county hasn’t maintained our road very well so we are turning back into a mud road instead of a gravel road.

We normally push in round bales Saturday morning but with all that rain, there was no way we could do any hay pushing. We would have either torn up the yard, gotten stuck in the mud lot (er…drylot), or broken a bale in the yard. We opted to wait until the ground froze. The horses didn’t eat as much on the round bales and had plenty to get them through for a few more days. Thank goodness for that cinch net.

Sunday morning the ground was nice and frozen but we had an appointment in town so we couldn’t mess around with pushing bales in. It usually takes us two hours to push bales and we have to wait for the Bear to go down before we can do it. Not conducive when we have to be in town at a specific time. I thought maybe we could push in bales when we got home. Nope. The ground was nice and hard but it was too late and we were all too exhausted (except for the Bear who was wide awake).

So hopefully tonight when I get home, the Bear will go down early and we can go out and push bales before the temps drop later this week. I don’t want to be throwing hay just yet. We have round bales to get through first.  I need to work up to the thought of throwing hay both morning and night.

I also discovered that I have to keep a close eye on Bo to make sure that he drinks water. He’s the only one without a heated water tank. Once there’s even a light coating of ice, he won’t drink out of it. I’ve taken to hauling warm water out in the morning. I’m not sure how much he drank this morning but at least I know he drank.  I need to figure out some other way to get water to him at all times. The mares and ponies are going to kill me with hauling water. Mom came up with a solution but we still need to implement. Until then I’m forced to haul back 10 gallons of water at a time. My body can’t hold out much longer. It was warm enough Saturday morning I pulled the hoses out and topped off their water. But I haven’t had time to haul water since then so I’m sure they are down to ¾ empty (I must be in a glass half empty kind of mood today).

 We are supposed to have decent weather until Thursday when it’s supposed to snow again. But we had flurries this morning. It was rather pretty even though I was out in the dark and cold this morning. I can say with 100% assurance that I am ready for spring to get here already. Sad when the shortest day of the year isn’t even here yet.  Hard to believe that Christmas is just around the corner. I’ve been frantically trying to get everything done but I’m exhausted.

 I put Brego on my “watch” list. He’s turning in to a hard keeper. Even with a bale in front of him 24x7 he seems to not be flourishing like the others. Frustrating. Guess I’ll be bringing him into the barn as well to grain. He usually turns into a hard keeper around March but I think with this quality of hay, he’s having a tougher time adjusting. It’s probably a good thing we aren’t in a really cold snap as of yet. But Brego is on the watch list, along with Babe, Bo, Rain, Zeke, and Jim.

 I finally have pictures from this summer. Once  I dig them out of the thousands of pictures, I’ll try to post some. As always, I’m late but at least the thought is there.