Proactive vs. Reactive

I feel like we are always in Reactive Mode instead of Proactive Mode. It’s a little frustrating but I guess you learn to live with it until we can get caught up. I was looking at pictures of the herd the other day. I’ve taken to looking at the picture and then looking at the environment around the main focus of the picture. I’m not sure when I started doing that but least to say, what I saw in the picture disgusted me. It wasn’t exactly a flattering picture of one of the herd, but what really disgusted me was the extra clutter and junk in the background. It looked dreadful.

As I’ve said in other posts, we moved in to an old farm that used to run cattle. The horses are currently in the old, cleaned out feedlot but it still leaves much to be desired. If you think horses are hard on fencing and equipment, cattle are way worse. The previous owners made due with the feedlot fencing and we have been too up until now. Now we simply look trashy.

We fixed some of the fencing in the drylot last fall. When you run cattle in a feedlot, the nitrogen in the soil rots fenceposts and trees more quickly than out in a pasture. After seven years of having horses in the drylot after having cattle in the same location for ten plus years prior, the wood fenceposts started rotting away and we were left to scramble to make repairs. Now that one fenceline is repaired, we have another fenceline that is deplorable. I’ve ignored it for as long as I can but this summer we are going to have to tackle the issue.

The problem, the original fenceposts were halfway concreted in to the ground. So now there’s no way to replace the fenceposts in the same location but we also now have to deal with a two foot concrete dropoff. It’s a bit hard to explain and I’m too embarrassed to take pictures to explain it better.  I think the original setup was thought out but the maintenance has gone on too long (even before we got there). I have some extravagant ideas I’d like to do for that particular portion of the fenceline. I doubt we’ll be able to do it due to cost but a girl can always dream.

I know it’s time to do something about the fenceline though.  Maverick was waiting for the four hard keepers to finish up their grain and for me to toss out hay last night. To keep himself entertained, he took to fiddling with a portion of the debilitated fenceline. One of these days, Maverick’s antics are going to take that entire fence down and we’ll have a loose herd on our hands. I feel bad that Maverick is bored (if he would only have worked for drill team!)

So this summer I’m going to have to see if I can scrounge up enough money to buy enough fencing materials to repair that fenceline. It’s fairly short but it’s going to be a bit of an issue to get it to work correctly (and look nice). We also need to paint the hay barn. It’s been looking worse and worse every year and I think this summer is the year we finally tackle scraping and painting the old barn. It’s time the outbuildings get a facelift. Hopefully this year we can focus on repairs and possibly do some proactive work instead of reactive to whenever things break.