Mosquitoes

Well, the week was fairly quiet but the weekend...crazy busy. Unfortunately crazy busy but not with the Sanctuary. Friday and Saturday night I performed with my drill team, Dakota Thunder. We performed in the rain Saturday night. Luckily we didn't have serious weather but it still made riding interesting. So with being gone two afternoons and evenings, I didn't get anything accomplished Friday or Saturday.

While everyone else slept yesterday, I went and hand sprayed thistles in the pasture. We didn't get a chance to spray this spring. The days kept getting away from us so we opted to skip spraying. But the thistles are getting bad so I thought I would go out and spray.

The mosquitoes are B.A.D. They aren't just bad, they are horrific. They can carry a body away if you aren't fully protected. And even when you are fully protected, they still carry you around the yard. It's terrible. We didn't have any mosquitoes two weeks ago. But with all the bad weather and now standing water, the mosquitoes are coming out in masses.

Luckily while I was spraying, I didn't get eaten alive (but that was during the middle of the day) and there was a breeze. I know, I know. You aren't supposed to spray when there's a breeze but I was only hand spraying and there's enough thistles that if there's any drift, it would just hit the next thistle.

After an hour of spraying, I had to call it quits (I emptied the bottle but didn't want to do round two). I am so out of shape. Normally, I would be able to do a lot more but I just couldn't. The horses had wandered up to the barn so I grabbed Chaos thinking I would ride. I had about five minutes on him before we were both irritated and annoyed. The flies and mosquitoes started to eat Chaos alive and he wasn't thrilled with just walking around the yard. So I called it quits on that as well. I was disappointed to not be able to ride more. I've had a few other opportunities to ride but the mosquitoes are so bad that it makes it impossible to do anything but hunker down and wait for the first frost. :-(

In the evening, I decided that I would help reduce the mosquito population or at least their homes. I normally leave the ponies out on the lawn so I don't want to mow. But some of the spots that the mosquitoes were really bad are also the spots that no horse normally eats. I guess it's bad grass. So I put the lawnmower to work and we tackled some of the weeds. Of course, in my negligence, I missed that there was a block that we'd used for the stock trailer and I ran it over. (We run everything over with the lawnmower). Luckily it didn't do any damage and I kept going. I was able to get all the bad spots where no horse would normally eat.

Later this week I'll move the ponies around and see if we can't get them better lawn pasture and I can  mow down the weeds in the lawn pasture where they are at right now.  The goal is to de-redneck the place. It's been four years of no repairs and no major work on the place so everything is looking tough. So my goal is to start making the place look better. It'll take more than just a few hours here and there but at least it's a start. I should have been working in the hay barn and hay shed to get things ready in there but I didn't.

I did have the farrier come out Saturday morning to trim up King. We'd talked about putting shoes on but opted out. We don't ride King all that much and we are dealing with mud. So I am thinking of sucking it up and buying a pair of Easy Boots. I bought two pairs a few years ago but they were the wrong size. Apparently King's feet have gotten bigger. The farrier said he'll never shrink the size of his feet so I want to start looking at other shoeing options. King did ok for the farrier but the mosquitoes came out.

I know the bugs are bad in other places but we went to two different parks on Sunday and there were no bugs. So I am wondering if part of our problem is that we dont' spray for bugs and we have a few breeding grounds for mosquitoes. This week I am going to go to SAMs and pick up a big jug of vegetable oil and put it in the creek that has standing water. The water doesn't really drain out of the pasture, it typically seeps back in. So to reduce the number of mosquitoes, I think I'll add some vegetable oil (at least that's what someone said would help and I'm willing to try anything at this point).

So where's to hoping that we can get rid of some of these awful mosquitoes that don't carry you away even when there's a stiff wind. I'm hoping to keep plugging along on getting things done around the place. We could always use more help. We still have a bunch of work that needs to be done to repair the damage on the barn and leanto (i.e., put the roof back on the leanto). The horses wont' go in the leanto now, now that the roof isn't there. So if you're bored, we could sure use your help!