Boarders, Benches, and Sawdust

With new boarders slated to move in this winter, I have a few projects to work on. The first one is a new set of benches and saddle racks for the tack room. I also need to add a new shelter for horses, but that's going to take a bit more time.

Our tack room is a little crowded, but we made things work better by building a bench along one wall and then putting saddle racks on the wall above them. You can see the end of one bench, and the start of the second one. The second one was my project this week.

I got some wood and screwed together braces earlier in the week, and with a quiet night, I headed out to put the bench together. It only took about an hour, mostly because I had to move slow and switch bits out 3 times for each hole. When I got done, it looked pretty good and gives us more space for storage.

Now I just need to get 3 or 4 more saddle racks together. That's on the list for tomorrow.

Vehicle on the Ranch

I never really realized that the vehicles we have on the ranch are really required. I knew we needed them to knock down manure with the harrow or run the spreader, and I know the tractor has gotten us unstuck, cleared snow, and cut grass, but I didn't realize how important these things were until they were gone. My wife let me know multiple times that we needed them fixed for chores.

On consecutive weeks, the ATV and the riding mower died on us. The ATV went to the shop, since I wasn't sure what was wrong there. I've never worked with a belt, and when the belt light comes on, I take it in.

The mower was another story. Over the years I've fixed a variety of things on this mower and since it was running fine and then died, I figured I could fix this. First I checked fuel, and a steady stream out of the fuel filter onto my boot convinced me this wasn't the issue. Next was the spark plug, and when I held it in my hand and didn't see a spark while cranking, I decided to get a new one.

I did, and I held it up after plugging on the wife to check for a spark while I cranked it. I didn't see a spark, but I felt one. Just a hint, hold the rubber boot of the spark plug wire, not the metal of the spark plug itself when you check it. I think I grounded things out. Fortunately it didn't break when I dropped it as the cord held it off the floor, swinging back and forth.

It seemed to be working, so I screwed it in, and sure enough it was cranked up and back to chore duty that day.

Fence Man

I went out to help my wife get some fencing up recently. We have 3 pastures that are fenced off with various materials, one of which has a natural horse track. This is a 12-15ft wide track circling the pasture that should help to get the horses moving more often. It seems to work since not much grows on the track, but that's a topic for another day.

We bought some posts and ribbon to build another track on the second pasture, but first we needed to cover the barbed wire along one side. Our plan was to take down the barbed wire and install a mesh fence instead (and electrical wire), but somewhere along the way my wife decided we didn't need to take the barned wire down and we could clip the new stuff over top. Made sense to me, so we headed out there one Saturday with that in mind.

My wife had done the calculations, 29 posts, estimating 8-10 ft apart, and had purchased 330' of mesh. That would have been fine if the posts were that far apart. I think some were 14ft, and some maybe 16', but in either case, it meant we were fairly short. Not a big deal, and I was tired when we ran out of wire.

You see me wife is also trying to train horses, and while she is happy to do chores, they seem to have a lower priority than playing with horses. In this case, they had a lower priority than her helping her sister play with horses, so when we were about half done with the roll, she went back to see if she could help her sister. Not a big deal as I could have stopped and waited, but it was getting later, the sun going down and insects likely waiting up. Plus I have a bit of OCD and hate to leave something undone. If I had lost the momentum that day, it might have been  a week or two for me to get it back up and go out there again.

So I wrestled the slightly smaller, but still large and heavy roll along, clipping mesh to the t-posts as I went.

330' of fencing up, excluding posts, makes a good day of work.

Pasture Cutting Delayed - Rotary Cutter Parts Needed

I usually start cutting the pasture in April, and it goes through May and June. The 4 pastures I cut on our 35 acres take me a good 40 solid hours and since I actually have to do other work for a living, this gets spread over a couple months.

This year I haven’t started yet. To be fair, things weren’t bad for April and most of May as they were dry months for us. So I wasn’t too worried. However things have sprouted lately, so it’s time to get going.

One problem. The rotary cutter doesn’t work. The blade assembly to the left here fell off the deck late last year. Not sure what happened, and honestly, I don’t know how it was connected to the rest of the cutter.

The company we bought it from went out of business, it’s a generic (we didn’t know better then) and I have had trouble with repairs before. Last year I managed to track down the guy at the old company and he had some old replacement blades lying around that he gave me, but he’s not there now. And there’s no one answering the number. Apparently he was closing out the bankrupt company when I called last year, luck I called that week), and now they’re gone gone.

So I took a picture of the bottom of the deck:

and I’ve sent these two images to a few people, hoping someone can help me get a nut or assembly to connect things up. If that works, then I’ll be in good shape for cutting.

If not, I’m out $1000-1200 for a new cutter.

These horses sure are trouble.

Manure Movement

I came in the house the other day smelling of horse manure. It was on my clothes, in my hair, and a shower was the first thing on the agenda.

How did I end up in this state?

My wife has been feeding on the west side of the barn all winter. We set up three large tubs for the 8 horses and we would put hay in them. If you're familiar with horses you'll realize that they tend to poop where they're standing with the urge comes over them, and with them standing near the hay in cold weather, there's a lot of droppings nearby.

Not a hug big deal as we harrow it down to break it up, but across 3-4 months, mainly because I've done a lot of feeding, we have about 1-2" of manure dust on the ground. I didn't realize it until the last snow storm when there were clumps of old manure appearing.

I've been meaning to scrape it off with the rear blade, and putting it off, but this past weekend, with my wife hurt in bed, it seemed like this was the time for me to do it. I know, I should have done something else, but I needed to be close to home and she usually has other chores for me. So I hooked up the rear blade and started scraping.

It's a little challenge to get the manure and not dig into the dirt, and I seemed to hit and miss (too high or low) regularly. But the 1 ft high x 6ft x 3 ft pile of old manure grew to one that's 5-6ft high in places. I didn't get all the manure near the barn, but I got a lot of it and it's down to dirt in places.

Good for preventing thrush, which results in me spending more time near the horses' feet helping my wife soak them than I want.

Now I have a new chore. Get all that manure spread out on the pastures as fertilizer.