It's Defnitely Summer

The first day of June rolled in like it was summer. Hot and humid! At one point, I saw 99 degrees. That's a bit of a switch when just the week before we were wearing winter coats (of course that was out in the Black Hills for a much needed vacation and break from reality). But it's a hard switch even going from 70s to 90s in just a day.


I noticed Skippy and Farley (the dog) were both having issues with the heat yesterday. We have another day of heat on the books and they are talking storms for this afternoon. I moved corral panels around so that we could get the mares, Diavlo, and the ponies out onto the lawn to graze it down and to adjust to pasture life.


I honestly dont' want to put Jessie out on the pasture near the road. She's lost so much weight. I feel like I've done her an injustice. That saying "Out of the frying pan, into the fire" keeps coming to mind. I realize she couldn't stay at her previous home but I'm not sure that I did her any good. She has 24x7 access to hay and gets grained nightly and yet the pounds keep falling off of her. I keep racking my brain to figure out what I'm doing wrong. For some reason I feel like I've failed her and am doing something wrong. I realize that at 26-ish and with either five loose or missing teeth, that she's having a hard time eating and that's the cause. I could pump her full of grain but she decides when she's done. I've never really had a self regulating horse before. The other day I grained her and she didn't eat it all. She's gotten much slower when she's wandering the pasture. Oh she still insists on pacing the fence line if she doesn't like the situation. I moved her over to the pony pen so she could eat that bale of hay. It didn't work out (much to her delight). Now she's back to where she wants to be. She's very opinionated on what she does and does not like. At least it's easy to know and fix But I still can't figure out what to do. She's now on the lawn pasture and grazing 24x7. If she doesn't pick up any weight in the next few weeks, we are going to have to make a decision.


I'm not sure what we'll end up doing with Diavlo. He's going to be devastated. He's already so protective of her it drives me nuts. Even now while out on pasture, if I'm standing there and she comes up, Diavlo pushes his way in so that he is in between me and Jessie. It has nothing to do with me. It's Diavlo being protective (to the point of driving both me and Jessie crazy). Mayhem tags along for the ride. The ponies stay far away from Diavlo. He hates them but I dont' have much choice right now in where the mares and ponies go so they have to be together at least for the time being. It'll change in another week when I need to move them to a different location on the lawn. Diavlo is going to be devastated when we lose Jessie


The big herd is finally out to pasture. We were supposed to have fence guys come to redo the pasture fence and the drylot and I'm still waiting. I think it's just a phone call but now I don't want them trampling what little precious grass we do have. If the summer is going to be as hot as it is now, I want to conserve as much grass as possible. Having gone through a drought eight years ago, I don't want to go through that again. Our neighbors aren't the same as we had eight years ago who let us use their pasture (and they put a for sale sign out so we'll have new neighbors again). But hopefully we can get on the books for getting refencing done this fall when the grass isn't as lush and we'll be supplementing with hay. Although having my corral panels back would be nice


The herd is happy to be out in grass but they are already making their normal routine of standing in the run in shed off the barn. We finally got it cleaned out and now they are making a huge mess. I need to remember to start being better about clean up duty but life has been pretty busy lately.


We went on a much needed vacation over Memorial Weekend. It was the first time my entire family has been together since January. We normally get together every few weeks. We've been dealing with some extra family stuff and that's added a lot more stress than I had realized. Ever since we found out, it's been at least every other night of crying myself to sleep so the break where we can all be together was a definite must. I needed a break mentally and emotionally. What's that saying, you're no good if you dont' take care of yourself? Well, I know I'm more than a little stressed and needed to get away. I don't know what this summer will bring. With the added stress and then add on covid, I'm pretty well done in. We had plans to start moving forward on some projects, but we are putting those on pause for a little longer. Juggling work from home, kids all day (not at daycare), and the horses doesnt' leave me time to look into really getting our programs going like I wanted. We will have to simply see how things progress through the summer. For now, it's a pause on the activities and not a completely stop. It's not like I haven't had to pause on these programs before. It's all stuff up in my head that I'd love  to get going but for now, we'll just have to hold off or start much smaller than I had hoped. I'm more than a little sad to put a pause on them. We were making leaps and bounds on some and I was so excited but, it is what it is.


We will simply stick closer to home and work on a bunch of home/sanctuary improvements that need to be done and I've been putting off. It's not that I've wanted to put them off but when you aren't home, you can't work on them. So hopefully now that we are home all the time, we can start working on these projects.