Hay! It's Hot Here!

It's still spring, but it feels like summer in Indiana. It was 89 degrees yesterday and the humidity was sky high!  

There is a ten acre hay field by the entrance to our neighborhood and the first cutting was just finished. No rain is expected in the near future, so that hay should dry quickly in this heat and be ready to bale soon.

Yesterday I headed back to Teacher Daughter Lisa's school and dropped off some cookie bars for her students.

They had been so respectful and kind when Pepper and I were there last week, I made them chocolate chip cookie bars to enjoy.

Next I headed out to the barn. Despite the heat, the horses were out in the field eating but they came right over when I pulled up by the new barn and parked my car.

Hokey loves water, and he began playing in the trough.

I grabbed my camera, and of course he stopped. Still, I got this short video of him messing about in the water.

Abby came over for a drink next, but she looked a little disgusted at the grass and clover that Hokey had left behind. But she got her drink, too.

I love how her ears twitch back and forth as she drinks!

Pony Pal Kate asked her mama to send me this picture of her as she headed off to school yesterday morning.

It was Idiom Day at her school and the students were invited to dress up as their favorite idiom. (What a clever idea for teaching them about idioms! Kind of wish I were still teaching so I could borrow it!)

Can you guess which idiom Kate has chosen? Put it in the comments - I'd love to hear your guesses! I'll reveal the answer tomorrow. 

Stay 'tooned!

Fall is Here

 Fall has arrived in Indiana.

Most of the corn is dry and ready to be harvested.

Soybeans, too - the beans from this field by the barn have already been harvested.

Tim has been doing some fall clean up around the property 

and getting it ready to be hauled away. 

Despite the dry conditions Indiana has been having, there is still forage in the pastures and Tim hasn't begun feeding hay. But that time is coming soon.

We have plenty of hay put up - rectangular bales in the hay mow of the old barn and round bales lined up along the west pasture. But next year, that may change.

The hay field and home adjoining the property is for sale. Tim harvests that hay field and keeps part of it in exchange for his labor. Whether or not the new owners will continue the arrangement remains to be seen.

We are prepared for days like these,

But I am not ready for them.

Just a Day at the Barn

I was out at the barn checking on Abby when I noticed the neighbor girl was out in the hayfield at the farm next door. Even though it was starting to rain (the white spots on the photo), she was out sitting on one of the round bales and enjoying a little summer freedom.

That took me right back to my own young-girl days when I, too, was happy to just hang out with the horses or around the barn. And who minds a little summer sprinkle when it's hot outside and the rain cools you off?

I continue to watch the odd bump on Abby's neck. I spoke with a vet about it and showed him some photos.

He says it could indeed be a sarcoid. His advice was to continue watching it, but that if it began growing or changing, then I should consider having it removed. 

Other than that, she's in great shape, and despite it being July, the pastures continue to be lush and flourishing.

Haying Time and More Tadpoles

I love haying time - the smell of the freshly cut hay wafts on the breeze and you know, without a doubt, that it is SUMMER! (It's also a sign that winter will be coming, but let's not talk about that in June!)

There are four horse properties off the lane that takes you back to the barn,

and all four of them were haying this week.

That included us - these round bales are for Abby and the herd. We need twenty round bales for the winter, and we got that the first cutting. We already have around 75 square bales in the hay mow of the old barn so we are in good shape.

I also did a second tadpole wrangling Saturday. While there are far fewer than there were the first wrangling,

I was able to pull about 100 more tadpoles out of the tank and release them in the lake across from my home.

I'll keep my net and bucket in the trunk of my car and check the trough again - I suspect I still have at least one more tadpole wrangling ahead of me!

Take the Long Way 'Round

In the eight and a half years that I have had Abby at Tim's, I have never walked out to the western edge of the property and along the fence line. When I bought her, I was 100 pounds overweight, I'd recently had a hip and both knees replaced, needed a spinal fusion, and absolutely did not feel well enough to hike back there.

A lot has changed since then. My spine has been fused and now I can stand and walk for long periods of time. In 2019 I lost that excess weight. I was sidelined last summer with pancreatic surgery and then this summer with some repairs to that first surgery, but now I feel great. It was time to walk around that perimeter.

It started with the notion of just getting a close look at the hay that we got from my sister's field.

A friend who cans a lot of produce from her garden said that when she's finished for the day and sees all those jars of food cooling on the counter, that she feels ready for winter.

I feel the same way when I look at a row of round bales or a hay mow stacked to the rafters with hay.

Tim made pallets to keep the hay off the ground.

The round bale feeder that is used in this section of the pasture. There is another hay rack by the old barn where the square bales are fed.

The northwest pasture is temporarily divided into two pastures. You can tell that right now the horses are in the pasture that I am walking through - look at the difference in the heights of the growth.

As I walked along the perimeter and then back up towards the new barn, I came across this pretty flower in the lane.

I'd seen it in the past but didn't know what it was, so I took a photo of it and ran it through Seek, the naturalist app that my daughter-in-love, Emily, recommended I use.

I had to laugh - how ironic to have Horseweed in a horse pasture!

Seek is a free app and a lot of fun to use to figure out plants, insects, and other wildlife.

I highly recommend it if you've ever seen something that you wanted to identify. 

A much healthier me with my girl (who has her tongue out - again!) happy that I feel so good and am able to do more than I could just a few short years ago.

I took the long way 'round the pasture today, but I've also done so health-wise. Both were worth it.

Hay's In!

 The hay is in! Tim has hauled it back from my sister's farm and gotten it settled into the storage area, ready for winter.

The round bales stacked out by the northwest pasture.

I followed the tractor marks as I walked back to check them out.

I felt a little like Hansel and Gretel, only instead of following bread crumbs, I was following wisps of hay that had fallen off the hay wagon.

Tim had gone back and raked up the excess hay and put it into the loafing shed. It will stay dry there until it is needed.

Hard to believe that this is coming shortly,

 but we will be ready when winter hits.

Abby in the snow last January.

Making Hay

The second cutting of hay at my sister's hay field has been cut, dried, and baled at last. Now, Tim is getting ready to haul 21 round bales from her place in Brookston back to the barn here in West Lafayette, a distance of 16 miles each way. 

It's complicated by the fact that Tim wanted square bales as he has the means to transport them, but the farmer splitting the yield with him (and doing the cutting and baling) decided to do round ones. Tim had to rent equipment to load and unload those round bales. And, getting them back to the barn will entail multiple trips.

It was spitting rain (the spots on the photo) when I went out to check Abby and her friends. The hay wagon was ready to be hitched to the truck

and the tractor ready to haul the wagon out to the northwest field where the bales will be stored.

It's fun to watch round bales being made. The hay is raked into rows and then the farmer drives over the rows and the hay baler picks it up.

And even more fun to see those bales pop out of the baler! (Sometimes hay baling makes me think of Dr. Seuss illustrations.)

We still have plenty of good pasture now, but fall is just around the corner, so it feels good to be putting up the hay.

Busy at the Barn

There is a lot happening at the barn right now and for a variety of reasons.

It's haying season, and so the hayfield next to the southwest pasture has been cut and baled. (That's a hose draped on the fence posts - it goes to the southwest pasture where there is no running water so we can fill that trough. Tim has hung it up and out of the way of the mower.)

Because one of their dogs was hurt on the road by a car, the agribusiness next door is putting in a six foot high chain link fence and their dogs will no longer be allowed to roam freely.

Part of that fence borders the paddock north of the new barn so currently we cannot put the horses out there. I'm glad the dogs will be restrained; they're two big mastiffs and while they don't run the horses, they have gotten into the pastures a time or two. 

Tim is home a lot due to the pandemic and he is spending much of that time doing repairs, like these boards on the fence by the old barn. 

I had no idea what these are or what he was doing with them, so I had to text and ask him about it.

He is using them to build a storage unit somewhere on the property, and since the herd is currently in the southwest pasture and nursery paddock, he has them propped up against the fence by the old barn.

Despite the busy-ness around the place, the horses are relaxed and happy, and enjoying the knee deep pastures.

As the Cole Porter song goes, "Summertime! And the livin's easy!"