Hoses for horses!
May. 8th, 2005 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoSpring is officially here. Saw the first oriole and the first hummingbird. Heard the first wood thrush (beautiful, like a panpipe among the trees.) Our barnswallows, who nest in the small horsebarn every year, also appeared this morning, swooping in and out the windows while I was cleaning the boys' stalls and scolding me incessantly.
Most importantly though, we have water in the garden and pastures. It takes over 900 feet of hose (hosepipe to some of you?) to do this.
Our land, like many 5 acre parcels in the midwest, is deep and narrow. It goes back a quarter mile from the road front. The well is near the house, and though we have water hydrants in both barns, the one farthest back is still a long way from the fenced pastures and the garden. We got quotes one year for burying a water line and putting a couple of frost free hydrants back there, and it would cost nearly $3000. Originally we had thought to have a new well put in back there but that would be even more, at least $5000. It's much cheaper to run a lot of hoses, though they're a nuisance. You can't leave them out in winter or they will be ruined. You have to pick sections up in order to mow anywhere. But even with the cost of replacing worn out hoses, we can go the rest of our lives without getting to $3000 I think.
Today the hoses went out. Around the outside of the arena, over the creek, through the woodlot. Lots of poison ivy coming up, and I discovered an old apple tree in there that we have never noticed. It's blooming in spite of being in the deep shade of a grove of oaks and hickories. Out the north end of the woodlot, past the beehives to the garden. Add a Y-connector there so one line goes to the garden, the other continues back to the first pasture gate. A quickconnect and valve there so we can fill one horsetrough at that point, or add on another 150 feet that just lies along the fenceline to get to the second horsetrough in the other field. All done, joints checked, troughs filled. It works. One more not-so-little task completed, and there'll be no thirsty horses which is good.
Oh, and the bluebirds have a nest in one of our boxes back there. They like old pastures. We often see them sitting on top of the fence posts waiting for an unlucky bug to move in the grass. I also spotted treeswallows hunting flies and mosquitoes over the horses' heads as they grazed.
Horses are getting used to the summer routine now. Without Dawn here to cause constant disruptions, they have settled in well. A little hay in the corrals in the morning, and around noon if the weather looks good they get to walk back to the pasture on lead and graze all afternoon. We bring them back into the barn at night unless the weather is excessively hot. They were a bit spooky about the walk through the woods for the first few days, but it's getting to be a ho-hum affair now (just the way we all like it.)
Most importantly though, we have water in the garden and pastures. It takes over 900 feet of hose (hosepipe to some of you?) to do this.
Our land, like many 5 acre parcels in the midwest, is deep and narrow. It goes back a quarter mile from the road front. The well is near the house, and though we have water hydrants in both barns, the one farthest back is still a long way from the fenced pastures and the garden. We got quotes one year for burying a water line and putting a couple of frost free hydrants back there, and it would cost nearly $3000. Originally we had thought to have a new well put in back there but that would be even more, at least $5000. It's much cheaper to run a lot of hoses, though they're a nuisance. You can't leave them out in winter or they will be ruined. You have to pick sections up in order to mow anywhere. But even with the cost of replacing worn out hoses, we can go the rest of our lives without getting to $3000 I think.
Today the hoses went out. Around the outside of the arena, over the creek, through the woodlot. Lots of poison ivy coming up, and I discovered an old apple tree in there that we have never noticed. It's blooming in spite of being in the deep shade of a grove of oaks and hickories. Out the north end of the woodlot, past the beehives to the garden. Add a Y-connector there so one line goes to the garden, the other continues back to the first pasture gate. A quickconnect and valve there so we can fill one horsetrough at that point, or add on another 150 feet that just lies along the fenceline to get to the second horsetrough in the other field. All done, joints checked, troughs filled. It works. One more not-so-little task completed, and there'll be no thirsty horses which is good.
Oh, and the bluebirds have a nest in one of our boxes back there. They like old pastures. We often see them sitting on top of the fence posts waiting for an unlucky bug to move in the grass. I also spotted treeswallows hunting flies and mosquitoes over the horses' heads as they grazed.
Horses are getting used to the summer routine now. Without Dawn here to cause constant disruptions, they have settled in well. A little hay in the corrals in the morning, and around noon if the weather looks good they get to walk back to the pasture on lead and graze all afternoon. We bring them back into the barn at night unless the weather is excessively hot. They were a bit spooky about the walk through the woods for the first few days, but it's getting to be a ho-hum affair now (just the way we all like it.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-08 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-09 03:22 am (UTC)Growing up in your area, I always yearned to see bluebirds. Their population was in decline for unknown reasons, possibly DDT, and I never did see one in Michigan. These are the first ones I've ever seen and they arrived within days of our having put up two bluebird houses out on the fenceline. A friend who is a naturalist tells me that bluebirds are on the increase again, and just as the decline from the 50s to the 80s was mysterious, the reason for their renewal is uncertain. But they are here, and certainly colorful.
In spite of much that has been written about their song, though, I find it unremarkable. We have many other birds who are better musicians. The rosebreasted grosbeak, the brown thrasher, the wood thrush I mentioned, and the orioles are among my favorites.
We keep a mechanic's mirror on a long handle in the barn, for spying on the swallow's nests, counting eggs and chicks. The chicks are the ugliest things, but once they get their feathers they become the most agile fliers you have ever seen.
Other summer birds here include downy, hairy, red-bellied, and red-headed woodpeckers. Crows the size of chickens, bluejays, many kinds of sparrow, meadow and horned larks, phoebe, towhee, chickadee, dove, peewee, cardinals in great numbers, and several finches. The bobwhite quail and wrens are often heard but seldom seen.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-09 07:52 am (UTC)The swallows were a lot of fun. We put up a box for tree swallows, and for years we had a pair of them. Mom called them Pat and Mike, maybe because of their green sheen. Then we had barn swallows nesting on top of a column in the corner of the front porch. We usually used the back porch so it wasn't much of a problem to let them have the front for their home. They were fun to watch. Scraggly little babies, they were, until they grew all their feathers.
Wood thrushes are ethereal. I love their song.
My all-time favorites were the red-tailed hawks that were fairly common around the place. I could watch them for hours even when they were just sitting in a tree.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-09 08:45 am (UTC)Yes, the wood thrush has the most haunting sound I have ever heard in nature. It takes very little for me to imagine I'm hearing the god Pan in the forest, playing his pipes.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-08 10:44 pm (UTC)I am definitely an avian aficionado. My first 'furry handle' was, in fact, "Eagle."
no subject
Date: 2005-05-09 02:42 am (UTC)