No Rest for the Wicked

And I'm apparently extra wicked, so this cliche applies to me ten-fold. Take the following picture, for example:

I've crudely circled the plethora of projects that await me. (1) Patch up Paula's shoulder guard--that was $60 well-spent, wasn't it? (2) Betty's feet. We're almost there. Their appearance upsets me, but I have to remind myself that a little patience with her training right now will pay off a lot later down the road. (3) Patch up Betty's turnout blanket--for the second time this year. (4) Pick up manure in this pen--for the one thousandth time this year. (5) Fix feeder that the horses love to rub their butts on, which strips out the bolts that hold it to the fence--thanks, kids. (6) Put new tires on the hay wagon and unload it. (7) Take a load of scrap metal (aka, horse-destroyed fencing) to the landfill. (8) Finish roofing the garage/carriage house.

And that's just in one tiny picture. Oh, and Paula's feet are due to be trimmed. And fecal samples need to be done on everyone so I can see who to worm and what to use, and Moose needs his boosters, and everyone needs their bridle paths trimmed, and I need to take the shedding blade to everyone again and.... *sigh*

By the way, I mainly took this picture to demonstrate the irony of horses that have 100-pounds shy of a literal ton of dairy-quality alfalfa free-choice right before them, but who choose to chew the bark off a tree branch instead (they all love to do this, by the way). Whomever said that horses only chew on trees when they're starving obviously never owned horses.

Also, I threw them a couple of branches as a treat--while they were supervised--and I took them over to the burn pile when I finished up in the evening. I don't take the chance that they'll get hurt on them. It's happened--remember Bambi's incident?

Anyway, I had the branches because Dad came over last weekend and trimmed back a ton of brush in the southeast pen so I could re-fence it. It's still the temporary fencing, but it needed to be improved. One of these days I'll get a dozer back here and take out a bunch of these trees (it's a tree row, so there are several layers--I'd just take out one or two), and then put up nice continuous, permanent fencing. Here's my truck all backed up with the third load of the morning.

It's not the greatest, but considering there was just a wire fence here before, and the trees were overgrown, it's quite an improvement--cattle panels and capped t-posts, plus trimming the trees way back.

To my surprise, I managed to get all the limbs picked up AND all the fencing done. That meant I could leave all the horses together and they could have the run of the smaller pen with the roundbale, plus a larger pen to stretch their legs and not be too cramped.

I was thrilled to get all that done, so now I can concentrate on getting the north side fenced with continuous fencing. There is still so much work that needs to be done, but despite living on this little dilapidated farm, I think the "kids" are pretty happy....

Sometimes I curse my opposable thumbs.

Wicked but weary,