Hay Hey Hay

Today, now that we have 4 feet of snow on the ground, the boys needed more hay.  Now I'm not going to get angry by going into the hay situation and why there wasn't enough hay were going to concentrate on the present. 

Normal People, have a tractor, that can drive in the snow, I do not have such a luxury, we sold our tractor when mom got hurt.  SO taking the greener route we have to drag our hay out over the snow.  To add to the difficulty I am moving Alfalfa, which weighs roughly 80lbs a bale. 

Enter Bart the wonderhorse; Bart is my good ol man, who for all 21 years of his life has done whatever my mother or I needed him to do, he is very good at setting his boundaries, and very good to listening to ours, and other than that he is the most useful animal I have ever met.  So as I walk out to catch him from the field for use in my mothers latest idea I am curious if he'll still love me at the end of the day. 

Here's the Goal: Get roughly 7 bales of hay down to the boys shed, which is about 350 yards from the barn door, in 4 feet of snow.  The plan is to fashion a sled out of a tarp my boyfriend picked up, and drag this behind poor Bart, loaded with hay, down to the shed using a long line, and the western saddle.

May I also mention that both Bart and I are severely out of shape at this point in the winter.  

Step One: Fashion a Hay-Dragging-Device
materials; Tarp, Twine; lounge line; 3 bales of hay

I got about half way done this when my boyfriend mentioned I might want to close up the sides as well so the hay didn't slip out to the right or left.  In the end this pretty much turned into a giant Santa Clause Present Sack.  I then took the loops of twine attached to the corners of the tarp and brought them all together with the lounge line to create a tow line.

 

Now Bart looked at this as if it were an alien at first but it was quickly resolved when he realized what I had done was wrap up a big hay burrito for him.

 

Now I'm pretty sure the only reason my boyfriend and I managed to actually get bart to drag this heavy, noisy, and uncomfortable object out to his shed was because it was at this point that he realized the purpose of this entire process was to benefit him. 

...And you said horses weren't smart!?

Step Two: Take a deep breath, give Bart a kiss and wrap the rope around the horn of the western saddle hoping he doesn't jump on top of me.  He takes it quite well; there was a definite learning curve in the carving of a path down the alleyway to the shed, as well as in my steering as to not get the hay sack stuck in the fence line.  Bart and I were both tripping over ourselves and each other in the snow but we got the first load down the hill and to the shed.

 

  

Step Three:  Throw my wonderful amazing horse a flake of hay to eat while I unload the hay into the shed feeder, and return back to the top of the hill for load two. 

The really exciting part of the entire process was when the tow rope (Lunge line) snapped on trip two and smacked poor Bart in the ass.  This sends him bucking and running away, and me stumbling after to console him.  We made up, got a new rope and moved on with the haul.  

Looking back on these pictures I realize why I have few friends outside of the horse/school world.  Because this is how I spend my Friday mornings. 

Snowing down my day.

Im just going to be honest and blunt- I only like snow for about... 10 minutes, and then once the "oooooooo look how pretty it looks on the trees!" gets out of my system, Im good for the entire winter- In the past, this has not been a problem in the state of Maryland, because we dont get "snow" we get what my boyfriend and I fondly call, Wintry Mayland Mix of Hell- because it is, it rains/sleets/snows for several hours, everything freezes and gets iced over, and then were done for the day because its melted by morning.

While this may seem like it sucks, because it does- the nice part about it is you deal with it for a day, and it goes away.  Snow on the other hand has a sneaky habit of insulating itself, melting, icing, snowing again, accumulating, and never fucking going away.  Which makes both my horses and myself more than a little miffed.  Everything takes longer in the snow, and being that my horses are what my mother and I like to call "Brumbies" (which is a slang term for  the Australian wild horse adopted by us) they are outside 24/7.

I learned two things this weekend, 1) My highly opinionated, tough ass mare Terra's blanket wasn't cutting it for her with the wind/snow/18 degree weather that we were experiencing on Saturday so she needed to come inside and 2) That our mares are bloody pigs. At the Beginning of January both the mares, of which there are two, and the Geldings, of which there are also two received 18 bales of hay in their shed feeders.  Now my gelding Bart, is a notorious eater; they should erect monuments to the amount of food that he is capable of eating on a regular basis. Once we had what must have been a bad bag of grain because none of the normal horses wouldn't eat it.  Perplexed because the grain wasn't dusty nor did it smell bad we offered a handful to Bart.  When he turned the grain down we immediately were on the phone with the grain company, "no, you don't understand... BART wont eat it there has to be something wrong with it!"  Getting back to the root of this discussion, The mares have eaten all of their hay... ALL OF IT.  The geldings have at-least 10 bales left.  the art of out-eating Bart had never been mastered until this weekend.  So because my mares are fat-asses, I again, need to find more hay to purchase, in the snow.

My 10 minutes of snow enjoyment were extended this weekend due to the fact that I was able to go for a ride in the snow with my best friend Lisa.  Shes more or less a beginner but works really hard and improves every time she rides; shes also not too easily intimidated. All qualifications for an excellent riding buddy.  I was happy to introduce to her how easily one can get lost in the scenery of a hack along with the rhythm of a trot.

Currently I am truly living my double life, and back at school contrasting city life in the snow with country life and understand why urbanites when asked about snow will spout out depictions such as, romantic, scenic, relaxing and call it their favorite part of winter, because when I stepped off the shuttle this morning, my tuition has paid someone to clear all of the paths I need to take from building to building of all snow and ice.  As I chuckle a little bit to myself about the sheltered lives of those who don't experience the weekends I do, I trod to class and pretend to be "normal"