Category: Farm

Water Woes

updates and setbacks

First some updates

  • Hand/wrist update: After a second round of steroids and occupational hand therapy we decided I need to have the carpel tunnel surgery. The question now is timing. I’m not allowed to lift more than 10 pounds for 3-4 months and with horse chores that is going to be a challenge. Particularly for someone like me who can’t seem to recognize my body’s limits (see this post for a prime example). This means Nate will have to do most (all?) the horse chores for 3-4 months, so it has to be a time that is compatible with both our jobs, which right now looks like late spring or early summer.
  • Barn update: Hansen Pole Buildings sells just the materials to build a pole barn and I have been getting quotes for them for the roughly the same building since 2019 which has been an interesting way to track how insane prices have been the last few years. In 2019 we got a quote for x dollars, in 2020 the cost was 3*x , in 2021 it was 5*x, and now, it’s only 1.5*x! We might actually be able to afford this barn! There are still lots of other things we need numbers for, like labor and foundation work, but before this the cost of  materials alone exceeded our budget and now the materials are at least within our budget so there is a small ray of hope.
  • Mental health update: Overall I am doing better, but this week demonstrated that I’m still not fully back to where I would like to be. I was slightly busier this week than the previous two weeks and those fairly minor tasks used way more mental and emotional energy than they would have in the past so I didn’t get nearly as much done this week as I had planned (and would have been able to do in the past). That being said, I am still doing better than I was at the end of December/early January and am heading in the right direction. I am also trying to get my sleep back to a solid uninterrupted eight hours every night, which will hopefully help with everything. I don’t have insomnia, but I wake up several times a night every night. I usually fall back to sleep quickly but if it happens too close to my normal wakeup time it takes me much longer to fall back asleep and then when my alarm does go off, I feel like I didn’t get any sleep at all. I’m trying to be better about wearing my blue-light blocking glasses at night and attempting to end all screen time by 9:00 PM. Hopefully this will help get me sleeping through the night again and sleeping better helps with everything else.

Now the water woes.

We placed the water tank where it is so we could use the spigot on the front of the house to fill it and plug the tank heater into the outlet on the porch. We know spigots and water and freezing temperatures don’t always mix well so we have an expandable hose that we hook up and unhook every time we have to fill the tank and we shut the water off to the spigot inside the house every time. When they built our house the siding people did not place the framed cutout around the spigot correctly and the spigot is too close to the frame making it extremely difficult to get a hose on or off in the best of weather. Nate and I thought it would be better if we put a quick-disconnect hose attachment on it to get the hose on and off more easily while wearing winter gear. It had been working relatively well, though once we had to use the hairdryer to thaw the quick-disconnect piece. The same thing seemed to have happened this week. I used the hairdryer to get it warm enough that the quick-disconnect moved again then attached the hose, turned the water on and…. water came out of all parts of the spigot. Water everywhere in negative everything degree weather is not good. We got that water all turned off and started trouble shooting. We could try the spigot on the back of the house, but we would need to use our two long hoses. The long hoses did not like negative everything degree weather and refused to uncoil. After what felt like hours wrestling with uncooperative hoses I finally got them all hooked up (or so I thought) and turned on the water. I had to go into the house to turn the water on to the spigot and saw water shooting out from everywhere as soon as I stepped outside so I immediately ran back in and tuned the water off to the spigot and assumed I simply hadn’t gotten the hose attached correctly in this stupid weather and decided I needed to get a hose that could handle the cold and another quick-disconnect attachment. After a trip to Fleet Farm for a new 150-foot super special winter proof hose (that discount comes in super handy!) and another quick-disconnect we hooked everything up again, ran the hose from the back of the house out to the water (the new hose is FAR more cooperative in this weather), turned the water on and…. water came out of all parts of the spigot. Insert your expletive of choice.

The girls of course need water, so we’ve been hauling buckets of water to the water tank every day. Though annoying, this option works fine for Leeloo, it doesn’t work for picky miss Juniper. Juniper demonstrated in that previous terrible cold snap that she doesn’t like the taste of the water from inside the house. We got her to drink that time by adding molasses to her water, but I’m not dumping molasses into all of their drinking water, also having PPID means added sugar isn’t good for her (added sugar isn’t good for any of us!). This time I tried some apple cider vinegar and that seems to be working, which is good, but I don’t want to pour that into our already rusty and not in great condition water tank either. The result is that we’ve been hauling individual buckets of water out to Juniper, which means we’re also hauling individual buckets of water out to Leeloo because if Juniper gets something Leeloo wants it too. Leeloo drinks at a normal rate of speed for a horse and usually downs her bucket very quickly.

Here is a video of Leeloo drinking (which also involves a certain amount of playing):

Juniper, of course, takes forever to drink. FOREVER. You would think we could just leave it there for her to finish in her own sweet time but Leeloo, having finished her water ages ago, gets bored and decides Juniper’s bucket looks like a great toy and will promptly dumps the water out everywhere and start playing with the bucket unless we stand there and guard it.

Remind me again why I wanted to have my horse at home with me?!

Here is a video of Juniper drinking and if you turn the sound on you can hear my conversation with Leeloo as I try to keep her distracted.

We have contacted a plumber who can come out next Tuesday and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that (a) we didn’t do any actual damage to the house and (b) he can figure out some sort of winter solution so we can stop with the buckets.

Hoping that next year we have a barn with winter safe water supplies!

Time for a Change?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I haven’t talked much about my full time job; I’ve been teaching math at a post-secondary two-year school in Minnesota since 2005 and for much of that time I have found my job to be highly rewarding. I felt like I was doing good work and making the world a better place by helping students open the doors that a solid math education offers. Unfortunately, I haven’t been feeling that way the last few years. This last year in particular I feel like my desire to provide a solid math education is now directly at odds with what those in charge want and what many of my students want, which is to just get people to and through my classes, learning need not apply. I should add that by the end of the semester many of my students start to see the value in understanding mathematics, but they don’t often feel that way in the beginning and they can be very vocal about it. I have spent untold hours of my time and untold amounts of my mental and emotional energy fighting back against the forces that want to take the learning out of education and I’m tired. I’m not sure I want to spend what is rest of my working life fighting this fight.

I have a degree in mathematics so there are a lot of other job options out there, but throughout my searching I haven’t found anything that I actually want to do or that gives back to our world or our society in some way. Most of the positions I’ve seen feel like made-up busy work for companies that not only don’t make our world better, but are actively destroying our planet, exploiting their employees, communities, and customers, and in general are everything that is wrong with the world today. I don’t want to spend the rest of my working life caught in the crushing wheels of late stage capitalism.

So what DO I want to do… that is the question I have been pondering for months now. As I said in this post, dreaming about what I would all do if we won the Mega Millions really got me thinking. Up until maybe three years ago, if we were talking about winning a lottery or getting a giant inheritance or something, I said I would stop teaching full time, but I would still want to teach part time because I really do like teaching and I think I’m pretty good at it. This year, when thinking about the Mega Millions, my very first thought was to quit my current soul-destroying job and become a full-time rancher/farmer. Not the giant fifty-stall horse breeding barn of my teenage dreams, but something involving healthy food production that improves the land we are on instead of exploiting it and actively tries to heal our planet instead of destroying it. I want to be a regenerative farmer with a small side business breeding and raising quality horses. 

You may be thinking – wait a minute, in this last post you were saying that you weren’t sure you could ever afford to have even your realistic Plan A horse farm, how the h*** are you affording the start-up costs to begin regenerative farming? That of course is the question I have been obsessing over for a while now and I may have some ideas …

Now here is a video of Leeloo and Juniper being extra frisky before breakfast. 

 

Dream vs. Reality

Who will win?

When the Mega Millions was over a billion dollars the mathematician in me who understands that lotteries are just a tax on people who don’t understand statistics lost out to the dreamer in me who could not help but think of what we could do with that much money! Here is just part of the list I started thinking of:

  • Build the barn and arena I really want 
  • Finish the basement 
  • Finish and pave the driveway 
  • Plant native prairie-based pasture and hay field
  • Put in the fence for the permanent paddock paradise track system
  • Find that third mare (and a donkey, and maybe a gelding)
  • Get a tractor and all the hay making equipment
  • Get an electric pick-up truck
  • Get a horse trailer
  • Build hay and equipment storage buildings
  • Plant more trees

We of course did not win the Mega Millions, which the mathematician in me knew we wouldn’t but the dreamer in me could not help but be disappointed. However, having started really listing all the things that I would like to fulfil my life long dream of having a horse farm I have been facing the reality that without something bordering on the miraculous (like getting picked up as a reality show on the Magnolia Network) or inventing a time machine and getting things done before 2020 (stupid pandemic messing up the stupid economy) that despite having a full time job and working three separate side gigs I don’t think it will happen and I’m not okay with it. This winter has really hammered home that we need to have some sort of indoor space where we can get out of the weather; I know other people have horses in cold climates without any indoor space but I am not those people. I don’t know if I can be happy with only ever having the Plan B version of this dream when my realistic Plan A is already a reality checked version of my ideal Plan A which itself is a massive (and practical) step down from high school Sara’s dream (see drawing below which includes a 50-stall barn, a 100’ x 150’ indoor riding arena, a 100’ x 140’ outdoor riding arena, and a pretty small house – at least teenage Sara and adult Sara still have the same priorities even if teenage Sara had way more energy). As I said in this post, I know this entire thing is a big giant want and that I am lucky and privileged beyond words to even have what we do have, but my heart is just not having it and I’m struggling right now being reasonable when I see other people getting their impractical and expensive dreams and I’m working my a** off and still unable to reach mine.

I’m not giving up on realistic Plan A yet. I am currently waiting on numbers from a few builders, since lumber prices have finally started to come down, and I’ve discovered a site that sells clearance steel buildings and I’m monitoring that regularly, but it has been a struggle to stay hopeful.

 

p.s. this post was written by an actual human and not an AI, you can tell because of all the run on sentences. 

 

2023 – Here We Come

a variety pack of goals and plans for the year

As I was writing this in my head it was quickly turning into a monstrously long and somewhat overwhelming post – so instead of detailing all of the goals and plans we have for the year I’m going to briefly outline them here and then write a few additional posts with more details about some of the bigger and/or more involved goals and plans.

Here are the things we will be focusing on for 2023:

  • Get that barn! As I said in one of the very first posts, I am an indoor cat with an outdoor hobby. This recent extreme cold snap has also convinced Nate that getting the barn built should indeed be priority number one. Luckily the cost of building materials is finally starting to come down so I am hopeful that 2023 will be the year of our barn!
  • Find that third horse. Leeloo and Juniper still make it clear every day that they would really, really, like a third horse. It is not that they spend all day fighting, they just clearly do not like each other and would rather be with pretty much anyone else. I also want a horse I can reliably ride; Leeloo’s lameness is better but it’s hard to know how much better without a decent place to work her. And then there are the future foals. I want to have at least one more foal, hopefully more than one, and I need a mare worth breeding for that to happen.
  • Get the hay field and pastures planted. I still very much want to be able to make our own hay. There is more to it then planting the appropriate grass, but that is step one and I’m hoping we can get that done this year. I also really would like to stop spraying toxins and poisons onto the land we live on and into the water we drink, which means we need to stop leasing it out for traditional agricultural use.
  • Continue the many projects around our current Plan B horse operation:
    • Finish and install the hay box lids for the existing hay boxes
    • Build another six hay boxes and lids
    • Clear out the second stall in the “barn” shelter and find something to block the wind
    • Get some cameras and lights set up around the horse areas
    • Is that it?! There must be more…
  • Get a handle on my mental health. I have been dealing with depression, anxiety, (and maybe ADHD?) since college and I have mostly been able to manage it with lifestyle choices, but this past year has been extra challenging for me and I need to get it back under control.
  • Get a handle on my physical health. My biggest fear in starting this adventure was that my body would not handle the extra physical strain and I was right to be concerned. My back, neck, shoulders, and wrists have not been doing well and I need to find some solution so this adventure can continue.
  • Figure out the purpose and goals of this website. Why did I create this site? Why am I writing these blog posts? What exactly am I hoping to achieve with these efforts?

I have been thinking about many of these things for a while. For some I already have clear steps in mind, others still need a lot more thought. I however am going to be keeping a new mantra in mind for this year. It came to me while cleaning out the shelters after that ridiculous cold snap and feeling a bit overwhelmed by the mess. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just better. 

No matter what happens I am hopeful that 2023 will be a good year – not perfect, but better!

Where Did The Year Go

2022 – Year-End Recap

I was starting to write a “goals for next year” post and was feeling a bit disheartened by all the things I had wanted to get done this year but haven’t gotten to yet and decided that it would be good for my mental health to take some time to reflect on the many things we did accomplish this year.

Just the decision to bring Leeloo home without having the full barn setup that I had been dreaming of was a big deal. There were many conversations with many people, and a lot of thinking about goals for myself and for Leeloo, before we even got to the starting gate. That process was the main focus of these posts:

Then there was putting the fence up and electrifying it, which took the whole summer. I understand now why people are willing to pay an extra $30,000+ to have a fence installed. The entire fence process is detailed in these posts: (Fence Part 1, Fence Part 2, Fence Part 3, Fence Part 4, Fence Part 5, Fence Part 6, Fence Part 7, Fence Part 8) and I need to remind myself how much work that was or I start feeling like we should have gotten more done over the summer.

Getting the first two shelters, anchoring them, starting to build the third shelter, then deciding that building it just wasn’t going to happen, was also more work and stress than I imagined. It is obvious now that we never could have built them ourselves, we just don’t have those skills yet, but that wasn’t always easy for me to accept. I am very happy now that we opted to buy them already constructed and that for the third one we went with the company that anchors them for you. The drama around the shelters was discussed in these posts: Give Me Shelter – Part 1 and Part 2, Second Interlude, So Much to Do, Mish Mash, Know When to Fold Them,  Hayshed – Delivered.

Finding and installing the round pen wasn’t part of the original plan but I am so glad we have it! We haven’t gotten to use it for its intended purpose very often but, it was so very helpful when we brought the girls home and has been very handy many times since then; including helping to separate Leeloo and Juniper each morning during feeding time. Though we are currently having some issues with Juniper turning into a picky eater; if it isn’t one thing it’s another. We discuss the round pen in Gate Expectations and the Fifth Interlude.

HAY! I had been a little worried about getting decent hay for a price we could afford. One of my long-term goals is to have our own hay field and I still feel that way, finding quality hay has been a challenge particularly since we also need it delivered. Luckily we were able to find a variety of hay for this year, including several different people who would deliver, though the quality has been all over the place. The girls like the most expensive hay best (of course) but now that we finally have some hay nets and some haybox lids they at least can’t toss it all over the ground and waste it (I’m looking at you Leeloo).  Hay post – Fourth Interlude.

Then there was finding Juniper – I didn’t talk much about that process on the website but it took a while for us to find the right pony, even when her only job is to keep Leeloo company, well and be cute of course. Finding that next mare, who will be the cornerstone of whatever comes next for us, is going to take much, much longer (Looking For a Baby Maker) – but now we’re starting to get into future goals and that is for the next post.

The ultimate goal of all of this work was to bring Leeloo and Juniper (once we found her) home, which we did! I sometimes forget what an accomplishment that is – it is the culmination of decades of dreaming. Here are the posts about bringing them home and the fun that has been: Coming Home, First Two Weeks, Sugar is Evil, Copy Paste, She’s Lucky She’s Cute, First Real Snow, Work Harder Not Smarter, Winter Woe-nderland.

One of the things I feel the biggest sense of accomplishment about (now that it is over) was something that we hadn’t planned for at all; dealing with Juniper’s eye infection. That was a huge, huge deal, both in terms of time and money, and I am so very, very, happy we were able to heal it (First Two Weeks, The Joys of Medicating Ponies, Mish Mash, Copy Paste, Juniper Eye Update). There was a very real chance she could have lost that eye and we saved it!

Though we weren’t able to build any shelters, we did get several building projects done including the six hay boxes (First Two Weeks, Projects Galore, Hay Contained) and the three compost bays (How to Make Compost Bays). The lids for the hay boxes are so close to being all done and hopefully we’ll get a chance to finish installing them during this “warm” period.

We’re once again getting into future goals but taking time to look back over this year has done what I had hoped, reset my perspective on what we all accomplished in the last few months and made me feel better. We got a ton done, pushed ourselves way, WAY, out of our comfort zones, and, more often than not, accomplished what we set out to do (even if it almost always took longer and cost more than expected).

One other huge accomplishment that I haven’t written about was getting this website up and running. I have never done anything even remotely like this and every aspect of this website has been a learning experience and has been the cause of a lot of swearing and a lot of crying, mostly in the beginning – the website hasn’t made me cry in weeks. I am very happy with how it has turned out and am really proud of myself.

Looking forward to another year of adventures. And of course Leeloo will be there to help:

 

Merry Christmas

We had hoped to get a holiday card out this year but that didn’t happen (unsurprisingly). So instead enjoy the card from a few years ago. The photo was taken at Leeloo’s previous boarding barn by our friend.

Hopefully we’ll have enough spare time next year to get a card done.

We did however get some videos of Leeloo and Juniper enjoying their Christmas presents. 

Here is Leeloo playing with hers:

 

The treat ball toy was a recommendation from a friend. It took a little practice to figure out what treats she could actually get to come out but we came up with a combination that seems to be working. A mix of oats (to fill in the space around the opening where everything was getting stuck), timothy grass pellets, alfalfa pellets, and cut up apples and/or carrots. This thing keeps Leeloo very occupied for at least a little while every day, which is great.

Here is Juniper enjoying her Christmas present:

 

Juniper’s present is Leeloo being occupied for at least a little while every day.

Winter Woe-nderland

at least there are no bugs

The weather this week has not been fun. Look at this drift – that is a five-foot-tall fence!

Luckily most of our upgrades have been working well:

  • New boots – awesome!
  • Sled – very happy.
  • Carhart overalls (which are not new but were brought out for the weather) – wonderful, as always.
  • Make-shift hay nets – working marginally well, though they managed to put a hole in one of my seams already and the twine I use to shut them is a pain to loosen and tighten every time. Waiting with eager anticipation for the real ones to get here.
  • Poop fork handle upgrades – mixed. The extra length has been nice, but the second handle was a total flop, literally; it will not stay fixed in place. This is most likely because it is primarily designed to be used with a snow shovel and you usually scoop snow directly away from you, but when your picking up poop and putting it in a cart you tend to tip it to the side (or at least I have to or I misjudge and most of the poop just winds up on the other side of the cart) and the second handle is not able to, well, handle that twisting motion. While trying to figure out if I could make that second handle work for me I realized the biggest issue is the angles between the basket portion of the poop fork and the actual handle. To get the basket to lay flat on the ground (which one needs to do to pick up the poop) it forces the handle into a really high and awkward angle that it terrible on my wrists and shoulders. Anyone else notice this or am I just special? When I have some time and the roads aren’t extra stupid, I’m going to drive to some other places that carry horse supplies and see if other brands have the same issue.

The one thing we still really need to find a decent solution for is goggles. The pair we got claim to be antifog but that is an outright lie! Within 20 minutes I can’t see anything and wind up taking them off, which defeats the purpose. Still searching for a decent solution for that.

We were still feeding them primarily out of the hay boxes when it was relatively “warm” and not particularly windy.

But now that it is truly terrible out there, we are feeding them everything out of the shelters and bringing down additional warm water to them so they don’t have to make the trek to the water tank. Apparently, our tap water tastes funny (this is according to Juniper who refused to touch it the first two times) but I added some molasses and now she’ll drink it.

Leeloo of course thinks everything, even the water, is a toy.

 

They are both still blanket-less but I have been checking them both obsessively for any sign of being too cold. At one point Juniper was shivering a little bit, but I was just about to put out more hay and figured finishing that up quickly would help warm her up and then I could deal with getting towels to dry her off with and her blanket. By the time I finished putting out the hay however she wasn’t shivering any more so I finished up the rest of my chores, checking her every few minutes, and she never shivered again. I was already feeding a flake of the really good hay on the ground in each shelter bay as well as a flake of the good stuff and some of the only so-so hay (in Leeloo and Juniper’s opinion, since they now only grudgingly eat the other hay and only after every morsel of the good hay is gone) in each net. But after Juniper’s short shiver episode I decided to double the amount of the good hay I was feeding them lose on the ground. It has meant a little bit of wasted good hay (when it was only the one flake per bay they ate every piece that was on the ground!), but in this weather it is worth it.

I know some people have very strong feelings about blanketing versus not. I’m trying to let the girls tell me what they want. Though this cold snap makes me want to try this experiment on them! Here is a shorter summary of what they did.

Bunny Problems

why did it have to be bunnies?

As some of you may know, the first pet Nate and I had as a couple was our rabbit Zoey, pictured below.

Zoey’s favorite pastime was hanging out under the coffee table passing judgement on all, as seen in the second photo. She had a permanent hutch and play area that was tucked behind a couch and then when we were home, we would let her out to run around the house. She categorically refused to take even one hop onto the wood floors which meant she kept herself contained to the carpeted living room. If she knew Nate and I were home but hadn’t let her out of her permanent area yet she would rattle her cage (she would grab one of the horizontal pieces with her mouth and shake that thing for all she was worth) until we would open it up – at which point she would continue to hangout right in the threshold of her permanent area making it clear that she was there by her choice, not ours. She was a bunny after my own heart.

I tell you this because we currently have a rabbit living in our hay shed. Which wouldn’t bother me except that it likes to hop up, and on, and over, all the bales and seems to be using all of them as one giant litter box. There is bunny poop, and I can only assume pee, on almost every bale that has an exposed top and I want it to stop.

Though I’m not one of those people who cannot handle the though of killing an animal I don’t like doing it. I felt really bad every time one of our water traps took out a thirteen-lined ground squirrel and I hated them. I’m not sure I can make myself kill a bunny. There’s also the issue of not knowing how to go about doing it. As outlined in this post I am unwilling to use poison and if we use a live trap what am I going to do once we catch it?

I know cats can be a deterrent (or end) to things like the ground squirrels and rabbits, but my concern with outdoor cats is they also kill a lot of birds, and birds eat the bugs which I hate even more than the rodents. If we had the time for a dog, I would be tempted to get one and train it to hunt nuisance animals but that isn’t a project I have the energy for right now.

Any other suggestions for discouraging the bunny from using all of the hay as a giant litter box?

Work Harder, Not Smarter

wait, that’s not right

The inch of rain on one day followed by wet heavy snow for two days has not been fun to deal with, but we have made several upgrades over the past week or so and they have made chores slightly less awful.

First upgrade – sled for hay.

We found this sled at Fleet Farm and in addition to the 20% employee discount (the only reason I have that job) it was also on sale! It’s been working really well though it did play a role in our first ever loose horse incident.

Because we live in the north and they make us get rid of daylight savings time it gets dark at 4:00 PM, which means we are doing evening chores in the dark and we don’t have any lights anywhere near the girls. We did get two LED headlamps (also from Fleet Farm) that have made chores do-able but they aren’t the same as having lights. I had checked to make sure Juniper and Leeloo weren’t around before opening the gate and I didn’t see anybody. I’m pulling the sled through and realizing I need to pull it just a bit farther in to get the gate to swing shut when I catch motion out of the corner of my eye and turn to look. My headlamp reflects off of these two large glowing eyes coming at me and I let out an undignified shriek which of course startled Leeloo, the owner of said large glowing eyes, and she jumped forward. I realize that if she keeps going forward her only option would be to go right out the gate since the gate itself, the sled, and my own body were blocking any other route she’d have. I tried to lunge forward into her path but the sled was also partially in my way so the slight delay meant I literally chased her out the gate. GREAT. Thankfully Leeloo’s first reaction to anything, including things she is somewhat afraid of, is “Can I eat this?” So after a few strides of a snorting, tail-flagging, prancing trot she realized there was a lot of uneaten (and unmowed because we had better things to do this fall) grass just below the snow and she stopped and started eating her head off. The challenge was then getting her to actually stop eating long enough that I could get her halter on to lead her back. She has been very much AT THE GATE every day since then, so Nate is very worried another escape attempt is imminent, and it probably is.  But now that she knows there’s grass I also know she won’t go very far so I’m not as worried about her running on the road or trying to bolt back to her old home. Still a heart stopping few moments, though the sled is still worth it.

 

Second upgrade – actual winter boots!

I’ve been using Nate’s boots for a while, which sort of, kind of, fit, but not well. Boots that actually fit make lumbering through the snow easier. I went with Muck boots because (you guessed it!) they were on sale at Fleet Farm plus 20% employee discount. Working retail during the holiday season isn’t fun but I am loving that discount!

 

Third upgrade – poop fork handle.

As mentioned in this post we got a piece of copper pipe and a dowel to use to extend the handle of the poop fork to make it easier on both my back and wrists. It has not been as resounding of a success as I had hoped. I apparently had a definite poop picking up technique and I’m having to figure out a new one with the longer handle. We also added this extra second handle to shift where I have to grip it with my other hand. I’m hopeful that once I get over the learning curve and have a new technique figured out it will be better for my back and my wrists (which still feel like electric currents are going through them pretty much all the time – probably should be doing something about that).

 

Fourth upgrade – hay net for shelter hay.

Rain when the temperatures are in the 30s sucks so hard! Despite the paddock paradise rule of keeping all needs spread out in different areas we are not making the girls stand in the rain while its in the 30s so we’re feeding them hay in the shelters. The problem is they are picky about said hay and have been wasting quite a bit of it. I had a miss-cut hay-net piece from an early hay-box lid attempt that I wove shut along two sides to turn into a hay net and that has been working pretty well and helping the hay stay clean and dry in at least one of the shelter bays, which has been lovely. We purchased a few more hay nets from Hay Chix during their 12-days of Christmas Sale so looking forward to even less wasted hay once they get here.

Still sometimes questioning why the heck I wanted to do all this work – but then I get to watch moments like Juniper looking for grass under the snow and I remember why.

 

 

Hay – Contained

Hopefully

We have our first new lid!

We got four pieces of pipe (yes one of them is shorter, that is a stand-in for the actual piece of pipe which I had already started weaving through the hay net) and four of these new SIMPush push to install conduit fittings. They need a special piece to detach them, seen in the bag, but otherwise you need no tools to put them together. We also got two loop clamps to use as hinges. 

The always helpful employees at LeVahn Brothers were kind enough to cut the pipe down to size for us. We had to make the one dimension a little longer than planned so the corners would fit into the haybox since they jut out on the ends and aren’t perfectly square.

The pipe was way more expensive than the wood was, since the wood lid was made of those cut-off pieces, but it doesn’t matter how cheap something is if it doesn’t work. These lids went together so much faster. So. Much. Faster. Weaving the hay-net onto the rough-cut lumber was a tedious and splinter causing headache that took forever and literally hurt sometimes. The hay-net just slipped onto the metal without any effort. Cutting down the wood corners to get them to fit together snuggly took forever and even then they weren’t very strong. These metal corners literally just snap in place with no tools and no effort. Putting together this lid was so easy!

As for attachment, the little metal loop clamps with rubber inside just snap around the pipe and then you screw them into the side of the haybox. We didn’t screw them in all the way tight allowing the pipe to still turn easily, thus they act as hinges.

On the side that moves we looped a single bucket strap around the pipe and then it’s latch part hooks into a tie ring plate (supposed to be used to tie horses to) that we screwed onto the bottom of the box.

There are a few refinements we’ll be making. I now know how much to compensate for the hay net width and the corner pieces so my measurements for the other lids should be more accurate.  We will also be adding a second bucket strap on the side that opens, and the bucket strap was the perfect length so we can get a different loop (i.e. cheaper) to attach them to on the bottom of the haybox. Overall, very happy; though I’m going to give Leeloo a few days to try and destroy it before we make more – I do eventually learn.

Here are some videos of the lid in use:

 

AND! The lid was still in place the next morning and almost all the hay inside the box was eaten!