It's always something

So we just get our hay put up, and I'm feeling pretty smug about things. I'm planning our next home improvement (front porch) and what to our wondering eyes does appear but nasty fluid bubbling up from the ground in one of the paddocks. Yup, that's where the leach field is. So we have a pretty serious septic system problem. Yesterday JD dug a hole behind the house, and pretty quickly found the septic tank cover. Now he just has to call to get someone to come and pump it out. He spoke to a friend that's a civil engineer, who thinks that the break the leach field will get when the tank is empty might help rectify things. Let's hope. We would have to take down horse fence to install a whole new leach field, and it would be very expensive. Ugh. I'm just trying to be optimistic, and not paranoid every time I flush the toilet. Country life!

Gorgeous view

Here is the view from Phil Hodge's place in Hartford, NY, where we get our hay. It is beautiful countryside.

Hay there

Here's our last load of hay for the year. It's the biggest load we've ever put on our little Toyota pickup - 30 bales. We just had 3 miles to go to get home, so it wasn't bad. This is the sweetest, sofest, second-cut hay I've ever seen. It's almost like cotton candy. And of course, the horses go crazy for it. I can't believe it's only July 18 and we already have all our hay for the next year (300 bales).

Here's my husband JD unloading bales from the hay wagon. It's a workout unloading the wagon, loading up the truck, then unloading the truck and putting it up in the hayloft. We don't have an elevator, so it's all done by muscle power (his and mine). We never get second cut this early, but our supplier, Phil, cut one field before our 5 weeks of rain started, so that field regrew, and voila - we've got second cut. What a relief to know we're all set.

HAY!

Finally - after a month of rain, we got 2 days of dry weather and my hay supplier was able to cut. So yesterday and today JD and I made repeated trips with his pickup to start filling the hayloft for the coming year. Right now we've got 135 bales of first cut, and 50 bales of second cut, because there was one field he was able to cut over a month ago that regrew. The second cut is awesome! The first cut is as would be expected for mature hay. It's got some stalky stuff in it, but also some of the mid-summer grass hay that had grown into it. But the best part is that it is clean hay, no undesirable stuff or weeds in it. We just need to get about 115 more bales to have our year's worth. I'm going to wait for the second cut for that.

Tonight it feels like October. It's cool and the sky has those fall-looking clouds. We still haven't had much summer weather yet. I hear that places like Texas have triple digit temperatures, which is hard to imagine right now. The farrier comes tomorrow morning, so at least it will be comfortable for him to work. I'm going to put front shoes on Sailor, so we can start working her more with the idea of riding her.

My mom continues to do amazing well on her new med. She is back to where she was over a year ago. And I think the memory medicine "nemeda" has worked to help her cognition. She is astoundingly sharp for someone who could not even converse a couple of months ago. I just hope this continues. That's all for now - got to go out and throw the horses a little bit of night time hay.

Happy 4th!

Fourth of July for me meant doing some work around the house, some gardening and barn cleaning. In the evening though, we went out for dinner, something we haven't done in a long time. We went to one of our favorite places, located in Pawlet, VT, called The Barn. It's a 100 year old barn that has been turned into a restaurant, and still is very much a barn inside. It was a nice dinner and a nice time.

Today the sun came out! Maybe because it has been raining non-stop for a month, but the sky seemed more blue than I'd seen it in some time. I couldn't stop staring at the wonder of it. I did something I haven't been able to do yet this year: sit out on my deck and soak up a few rays. It's hard to believe we haven't had a decent day until July 5. In celebration of the nice weather, and so I could say we did something on this holiday weekend, JD and I went to a lakeside party at a restaurant on a local lake (Glen Lake). This place used to be our hangout when we lived in Queensbury, so we know the owner well. She had booked a band, which played on the lawn by the lake. We ran into tons of people we hadn't seen in a long time, and my son Craig even joined us for a while. It was a relaxing way to spend the afternoon, and I think JD enjoyed it after working long hours on the Minne-Ha-Ha on Thursday and Friday.

So no horse time this weekend, but maybe tomorrow I will be able to work Sailor. She responded well to our work last week, so it's important to continue. It would be a huge accomplishment for me to be riding her again sometime soon.