Super Crazy Busy

We've been crazy busy with non Sanctuary activities over the past few days. I hope everyone had a great Easter. Hard to believe that Easter has already come and gone. Although, this time of year reminds me of April 2011 when we attended the Sioux Falls Regional Livestock Horse Sale and brought home Savanna and Sahara (and unbeknownst to us, Sir Prize, aka Jett). It was the last weekend in April and Easter to boot that we brought home the trio. So much has happened in such a short period of time. But I digress.

Thursday  night I decided that I would take Bo along with to drill team practice. I wanted to see how he would react to being hauled and possibly ridden in an indoor arena. He's such a champ. Although he did whinny when we were all standing still. But when we were riding, he kept an eye on Zeke and just watched. I think Bo may either want a job or want to participate in drill team. :-) He's such a trooper. Now to just get him over his bridling/headshy issue and reassure him that when we load into the trailer, that he'll always, ALWAYS come home! We will get there. It'll just take time. We also need to figure out how to bulk him up. Looking at him from a different view and a different eye, he's still too thin. He's going to stress me out worrying about how to gain weight on him.

Friday ended up being drill team practice with the other team. I contemplated taking Maverick but chickened out. I'll be using Maverick tonight to see what he's like playing "horse soccer". It should be interesting. But Maverick desperately needs a job. He is B.O.R.E.D.

Last week we were also contacted to see if we wanted some free hay. Why of course we do! We need to make arrangements to go pick it up. Our substitute road maintenance guy stopped out this past weekend and dropped off a small square bale. It's so nice to go out to do chores and have hay mysteriously appear. I know who it is so it just makes me giggle a little.

But I WASN'T giggling come Friday night. Our useless yard light quit AGAIN! It didn't quit exactly but it turns on for 1 minute and then goes out for 2 minutes. It's rather frustrating because I'm out in the DARK and not having a yard light this time of year is dangerous. Not only do I have crabby horses that want their food and are starting to feel frisky now that it's warm out, we also have varmints starting to come out. Luckily the only varmints we have right now are raccoons and they stay hidden away in the grain bin. They refuse to come out and I only know that they are there because when I walk by in the  morning and night I can hear them scurrying around. Creeps me out but nothing I can really do until they venture out. But I've had to deal with doing chores in the dark three nights in a row. This morning was just as irritating having the yard light go off while I'm out doing chores in the dark. Mornings are still dark. I'm very displeased with Sioux Valley Electric. We were forced into renting the yard light and this is the second time in as many months that we've had to deal with this ^@#$%@$%^!*$%^ yard light. Least to say, I'm not happy.

On the bright side, we scored a tractor. We already own a tractor but it can't do as much as we need it to do. The Massey just isn't up to all the hard work we need it to do. We found a tractor that will be able to life and move bales (or at least has the capacity to do it). We still need to buy a bale spear but we at least will now have a tractor that can lift a round bale. So instead of it taking us two hours to push in two round bales, it'll take us 20 minutes. I'm excited! And it'll be set up so that we can use it to scoop manure.

We are now starting to gear up to do some manure hauling. The only problem is, the new tractor isn't at our place yet, the Massey still needs a little bit of work, and the manure spreader (because it has a flat bottom), is completely full of other stuff. So now we need to find a new storage location for the stuff that the manure spreader is holding so we can actually use it. I'm looking forward to "waste management". It's been YEARS since we were able to do some serious cleaning. It's been at least three if not four years. I need to go back through the blog to see when. It was our first and only attempt at spreading manure but we are in desperate need to get rid of our current piles. Now that we won't have to ask to use someone else's tractor, I'm itching to do some serious "spring cleaning"

I'm also finally tackling the stalls. I have some serious work ahead of me to get everything back in order.  But the days are getting longer and we are able to get our son to go down for bed earlier in the night (and we won't fall asleep). So hopefully we can start getting our projects done in the evenings. We just have to make sure that we don't burn ourselves out. I swear I'm burning the candle at both ends. But I guess that'll be what it is for the summer and we can sleep and relax all winter!