I've about had it with winter and all its snowing, blowing, below freezing, insulator snapping glory!! When I left work last night it was about twenty below with a wind chill advisory, not sure what the temp was with the wind chill, blowing to beat h*ll, and had snowed about a foot. OK, maybe not quite a foot, but close enough!! I needed to pull a round bale in with the horses still, plus go home and pack for my trip to my mom's today for the Midwest Spanish Mustang Club meeting on Sunday. My "help" as I like to call him, had fallen asleep and wasn't waking up to my phone calls. He had taken my house key with him so I was locked out of my own apartment!! I had to go bust into his parent's house at 2 am and wake him up. We drive to the farm, and I already know there's trouble when I see hoof prints next to the garage door outside my car window as I'm layering scarves on. Horses are no where to be found, except for Token. Who, bless his heart, never escapes. Until that night. I saw his head behind the fence one minute, and the next he's racing around the yard screaming for the other horses. Which I guess helped us out, because they must have heard him and came crashing across the field headed for home. I went about my usual "the horses have escaped" routine. Figuring out where the fence is down, then grain, some bucket shaking, maneuvering the horses through the hole, dumping grain, runing back to the fence to repair it before they get done eating, and generally swearing like a sailor. Token took a little more convincing, and he and Adella had it out for a few minutes once I had him back in. He and Remme will stay in with the rest of the herd for the weekend until I get back. Their back paddock is in no shape for horses right now! I've heard, supposedly, that nicer weather is on its way. Guess that's when the major repair work will get done. Josh and I have a new plan for the fence, one that will hopefully make it stronger. These plastic insulators don't hold up to the northern Minnesota weather at all!! Plus there's no tree cover on the one side since they cut all the trees down the year before I moved out there. That doesn't help with the blowing. Some of the drifts are up to the top of the fence in some places!!
Plans are being put in place for new paddocks. I think the guy I rent from is going to gravel the one side he said I could have. He's going to probably give me the field on the other side. Which is good and bad. Good cause it's larger, bad cause it's more open and surrounded by CRP that they hunt during deer season. I am excited for more room!!
Thursday is tentative for a trip to Kim's. My friend is going to buy a gelding from him. We are going to pick up him and another horse to take to the trainer's. Should be interesting because I will be picking up my new trailer also!! :) Can't wait!!
Hopefully I don't get any late night calls from my landlord or Josh about horses running loose. I need a vacation where they all behave!! Meetings on Sunday. Will report back on that!
Becky
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Becky I would love to learn more about how fences hold up in the extreme winters. How does you fence remin electric if the snow is building up on it. Does Snow not ground out the electricity?
ReplyDeleteHave a great time at the meeting!
;)S
They don't!! LOL. My biggest problem is the corner spool insulators. I was on a budget last year and bought the fairly in expensive version. They've been snapping left and right all winter long. I invested in some thicker plastic and some porcelain ones for the repairs. Can't do much about the insulators on the actual t-posts, they are all the same and will just have to be replaced. Only the top wire of the fence was hot when we started. The grass was so long we thought it would short it out if we wired up the whole thing. Once they ate the grass down we hooked up the second wire in the front by the gate but left just the top wire hot the rest of the way around. Worked awesome, horses never went near the fence. Helps that the fencer is at least a 10-miler and pumps out 7000 volts. Come winter time the outlet in the barn stopped working for some reason, so I had to re-route the fencer and the water heaters to the shed across the yard. Nothings worked right ever since. I'm going to have to get on my landlord about fixing that outlet! So the electric was working basically when it felt like it and now isn't on at all. Those 2 am feeding times (and fence repair) in the dark leads to a lot of wire wrapping around t-posts and broken insulators. There's no way that electric is going to work until the fence gets a major re-haul. Pray for warm weather!! I will have to try and post pics of how it looks once we get it done.
ReplyDeleteBecky