You Call This Blustery?

We had a fairly quiet weekend at the Sanctuary. The wind was so fierce, it made it hard to be outside for much of the day.

Friday was absolutely gorgeous. No wind, beautiful sunny skies, and just an overall gorgeous day. We woke Saturday morning to 30mph wind and gusts of up to 40mph, making life miserable. I had to do some fancy footwork to get the hay in piles that wouldn’t blow away. I’m glad we don’t have any mud because it would have made feeding time that much more difficult. I am NOT a fan of gale force wind.

Saturday I went to the HorsePower Horse Show to perform with the drill team. I opted to head home and get stuff done instead of staying and playing. I think I would have had more fun playing. It was too windy to do too much outside so I ended up doing a bunch of skirt work instead. Although, when I came home and parked the truck and trailer, I had a few moments of questioning.

The windmill is broken. It’s been mostly broken since we moved in. But over the past few weeks, the gear box that makes the windmill actually turn, broke and fell. It’s now resting on the wooden platform. I’d take a picture but I’m too lazy to wander out. The tail of the windmill is also jammed into the wooden platform. But with the wind from the east, I was worried that it would finally make it’s final decent and crash into the truck, either totaling the truck or causing a couple thousand dollars of damage. So instead, I pulled the truck a little farther to the south. I debated on doing that as well. We have two hog barns. One which we converted into the hay barn and then another hog barn that doesn’t have a hay loft. We would tear it down but it’s a good wind block so it stays. The previous owner put tin on the roof. And for the past year or so, small pieces of tin have been flying off. Well, with the winds we had yesterday, the rest of the tin decided to make a rapid decent. I was in the haybarn with a barn door open (actually it blew open and I hadn’t had time to close it yet). I was messing around with Bo and I heard a terrible CRASH! I didn’t hear the scraping noise of tin on metal or glass breaking so I thought maybe I was in the clear. I peeked out the door and saw that the tin had missed the truck by only a few feet. I thought I was safe from any more tin falling after that. But when I went in to do the skirtwork and Mike went out to play in the wind, he heard more of the same CRASHING and saw the tin fly off the roof and just miss the truck. We opted to move the truck (which I should have done immediately).  Of course, the windmill never moved an inch. That’ll teach me.

Because we had such terrible winds, instead of throwing hay from the big squares, I opted to pull the small squares out and feed that hay instead. The horses weren’t as pleased with me but they got over it in a hurry. The weatherman had called for a slight chance of severe storms, with a potential for hail. I decided I would pull Rabbit and Mayhem into their stalls so they could get a break from the wind. I also figured when it started raining and with the wind, that they might appreciate a bit of cozy stall time. Because of the chance for hail and rain, we opted to put the tractor and manure spreader away as well. Mike has been working on the manure spreader to get it ready for hopefully this coming weekend.

Of course, the weatherman is just jumpy because it’s the beginning of severe storm season. I’m going to have to be a bit more patient with the weatherman and his constant calling for potential hail. We didn’t get a drop of rain Saturday night, nor Sunday.

We were supposed to go on a trail ride Sunday but the wind was too fierce. I knew it wasn’t going to be any fun for either me or the horses so I opted to keep them at home where they could get out of the wind.  Instead we had family time in Madison (much needed and appreciated).  We still had gale force winds Sunday evening so out went the small squares instead of fighting the big squares and losing half the hay either in my clothes or into the next county.

I was so hoping that the wind would die down and we’d have another beautiful day like Friday. Nope, more wind. The wind out of the east hasn’t let up since Saturday morning.  At least there’s no snow with it. Although there is snow in the western part of the state and predicted slush in the northern part. We are only supposed to get rain. When I went to do chores this morning, I thought I felt a sprinkle but figured it was my imagination. Twenty minutes later when I left for the paying job, the skies had darkened and it was sprinkling/misting.  Looking at the weather forecast, it looks like we are supposed to get rain for the next three days.  The weatherman also mentioned that we’d get 2-3 inches of rain over the next five days. I’m afraid the next few days are going to be trying.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of work to do before this coming weekend. We had someone graciously donate 60 small squares of hay. We were going to pick them up on Saturday but I had to go to the HorsePower Horse Show. So we made arrangements to pick the hay up this coming Saturday. I need to clean out the hay barn (I pulled Bo and Ivan in on Saturday to groom and they made a mess). So now I need to do some major cleaning. I’m also trying to do a bit of extra cleaning and keep up with my mess so we don’t have as many eye sores. We have a trailer full of junk that needs to go to the dump. I’m trying to figure out how to make it to the dump this week so that we can use the trailer again this weekend for another junk dump run. I guess we’ll have to see how things go.

I know there’s more going on and I’m sure to remember in a bit but the past few days have been a bit of a blur. I’m guessing the next few days are going to be an even bigger blur. Hopefully I’ll have more horse posts instead of weather posts in the very near future.

The grass is starting to grow and I’m getting anxious to get the horses out on the lawn to adjust to grass. I know they are all itching to get out on some grass. I pulled Bo out for a little bit on Saturday to eat grass and then decided to pull Brego out and put up a couple corral panels by the hay barn so he could eat the grass that’s coming up along the building. He did a pretty good job of trimming up the grass. My theory is that I’m trying to keep the place looking a little less dumpy. Not sure I’m succeeding.

Brego, Bo, and Rain have also lost a bit of weight so I’m anxious for them to get on grass. I thought with the warmer weather that I could cut back on their grain ration. I guess not.

I’m sure there’s more to write about but I’m drawing a blank all of a sudden. Here’s to hoping that the wind will die down and I won’t have to do some major work to keep the hay in THIS county, rather than three counties from here.