On the Home Stretch~

It seems like the month of March has flown by - even if so many of those days have been gray, cold & rainy.  The work on the farm has taken up our free time & we're not complaining.

21st. - Butch installing the paddock gate~

We've been so lucky over all - it seems every Wednesday has dawned sunny & we'll take it - since it's the day that Butch gets off work earlier.  With Dean's help on the last pile, the barn floor was finally stripped clean of the old hay & straw!   

24th - Our first load of hay!  

Another challenge was finding hay this time of year - not an easy task.  Especially if you're looking for small square bales.  When I was asked if I was looking for small or large - I discovered that here - large is 4x4x6!  Very few growers even do square bales anymore.  I think horse ownership in the state has declined & with it, the requests for square bales.  We were referred to the same grower by two friends & after meeting Jon & seeing his hay - could understand why.  Very nice Alfalfa & he also had some nice bales of Orchard Grass mixed with Timothy.  Since Farah has been on Alfalfa without any issues, we're continuing with that, but plan on adding in the grass too, as we did in WA.

Depot - Shenandoah, IA

 By the time the 26 - 60lb. bales were loaded, we were ready for lunch before the drive back to the farm.  We really enjoyed our lunch at the Depot!  As you can tell from the photo above, a gray day here is as gray as any the pacific NW had to offer :-)

Inside the old train station~

As dark & cloudy as the day was, we managed to miss the rain!  The hay had been stored nice & dry, so the last thing we wanted to do was have it get wet.  I mentioned the feces that I'd found on all the old hay.  I'd thought it was probably from the wild cats, but Jon said it's common to have possums get into the hay too.

Ahh, the smell of fresh hay!

Once we had it all stacked, we covered it with a tarp & tied the tarp down.  We sure missed the help of Grandson Ben - but these bales are easier to move than the 100+ lb. bales from Ellensburg.

At the Auction!

Jon also owns & operates Sunshine Auction house & invited us to a farm estate auction on Sunday.  It was even colder than Sat., & gave us an excuse to take the morning off.  The building was full of about any item you can imagine & full of people too!  We returned to the farm with an upright cabinet that will work great for Farah's sundry's...

New steel!

It was four o'clock when we drove over to Farah's stable, where we spent 30-min. attacking her yet again with the shedding blade!  She's dropping her winter coat faster than she grew it!  Ryan shod Farah with her first shoes since July of last year.  Her feet hadn't grown much since her trim in January - he said none of the horses are showing much growth yet.  I'm still learning about how horses adapt to this climate.  We'll be moving Farah to the farm later this week.  Since I plan to find roads to ride, I don't want to have to worry about rock.

I'm hopeful that we'll be attending our first OCER ride on Memorial Day Weekend at the Flag Springs Conservation area, MO.  Jodi, ride manager of the Jo Tate Memorial Ride lived in WA until 1990 & we've ridden many of the same rides - only at different times :-)   It's been too wet to go to Waubonsie, all I can do is hope things dry out so we can get in the hill work.  The forecast is calling for four days of rain/snow later next week!  Fingers crossed that things warm up & dry out soon!