Days Getting Shorter

I always love the buildup to the first day of summer, the longest day of the year. But after that, we start to lose daylight and that too sends me into a panic. It's not like I don't know it's coming and it's not like it doesn't happen every year, but with such limited time to get everything done, it sends me into a tail spin.


With my current working predicament, I am home so I can go from working at the paying job straight to working on stuff at home (although more than half the time it's not sanctuary related). I love mornings in June when I can go out to the horses and already have the sun up and shining. Now the sun comes up after I'm already at work so I miss out on watching the sun rise over the hoses.


We did get one project done at home. It's not sanctuary related but it will make the place look better and make life easier if/when we do tours at the place. We poured a large concrete patio in the front of the house. It'll be nice to have some place to stand in the spring that's not mud. Or when I need to grab something from the house and have a horse in hand, I can have them on concrete and not tear up the yard. Of course there's all the cleanup that still needs to be done and that'll take a bit of my time to get wrapped up but I'm already moving on to scraping and painting the house. I'd started that project before we started the patio project so the house is looking exceptionally dumpy at the moment but hopefully we can get it looking sharp soon. I've already said I'm only painting this house once. After that, we'll be putting on different siding. The siding is too old to take on paint these days.


We don't know how old the place is, or the outbuildings, or even the fencing. We have to guess and my guess is about 80 years old. When we pulled out the concrete footings for a fence that went around the yard, there was a note saying it was from 1950. We've seen notes when remodeling the house that things were done in the 1940s. So I'm guessing the outbuildings and fencing are all 70 to 80 years old.


Sadly, after that many years of hard use, they don't work nearly as well. We need to contact the fence guy from last fall to see where we are on the schedule and get some fencing done. I walked the mare pasture the other day and noticed how bad the fence line really is. I don't think some of our fencing can handle another South Dakota winter.


There's just so many projects I want to get done and I don't think they will get done before the first snow. I realize it's only July 22nd but at the rate projects are getting done and with the number of projects we still have on the To Do list, I'm just not sure how they will get done. The pandemic and additional health problems have slowed our progress down to a crawl. And then comes August where sanctuary life is put on hold so that we can enjoy our children's birthdays and prepare for school. It's going to be a stressful but interesting August and I want to take advantage of the fun times while the kids are still excited for birthdays. I'm juggling three birthdays, school, and return to daycare all in two months on top of preparing for winter.


So if you don't hear from us when August rolls around, it's not that we aren't here. It's that the horses and sanctuary are pretty much on what I call auto pilot, where they enjoy their grazing time and nice weather and don't have me pestering them except to check to make sure everyone is doing ok. There's not much to report when they are on auto pilot and I'm not sure you want to hear me lament about not getting anything done because we are doing family stuff.


I do have a bunch of stuff that needs to get done for the sanctuary and it's all behind a computer. So if you want to help but don't know how, let me know and I'll set you up with a few different projects to choose from. Even with my brain struggling to muddle through a day during the pandemic, I have a ton of old ideas from when I could brainstorm clearly. And if you'd rather swing a hammer and get some physical activity, I have projects that need attention too and I'd LOVE to get them done before the first snow.


Here's to making the most of the remainder of summer and enjoying the sunlight and sunshine from sunup to sundown.