Thaw... or looking a little rough

February 24, 2021

Yesterday was wonderful. It was above forty degrees and sunny. It was wonderful to be outside again without having to wear five different layers. I took advantage of it to spend some time grooming horses and cleaning out the tack room. When is it a high of 6 for weeks on end, nothing gets put away, just thrown in the general direction of where it needs to go so you can get back inside as soon as possible. Things had becomes... not good. Here is my newly nice and tidy tack room.

Everything thing is put back into the correct bin, garbage thrown out, and everything swept. I even got all my horse meds sorted into my new hard case (a Christmas gift) so that the mice wouldn't eat them.

The tack side. I still need some more saddle racks, but those have been in short supply during the pandemic. No, I realize that doesn't make any sense, but there you are.

And some student art work hung on the wall.

So that's the nice looking part of the post. Today, we were still above freezing, but it wasn't quite as warm or sunny. The snow is still around, though at the very slushy and hard to walk through phase. Pushing the (very full) wheelbarrow to the muck pile is tough. When it is really full and heavy, it often means that it takes two people to do it as it keeps sinking into the slush. I'm impressed that G. can do the dumping trek all by herself.

The thaw also means that the dry lots are starting to thaw out. For the past couple of months we've had significantly cold weather alternating with snow. It is nearly impossible to really clean out a dry lot under these conditions. They are bad. Very, very bad and it is slightly killing me because I really like to keep the dry lots clean.

This is Emmy's dry lot. You can see the amount of snow in it. This is what all three of them looked like just a few days ago. But with the sun and warmer temperatures, here is what is now being exposed.

Java's there on the right gets the most sun and is looking the worst. I spent a good hour out there today cleaning off the top layer only to discover another layer of ice covering another layer of muck. To look at it, you would never know that I filled an entire wheelbarrow. It just looks bad. I would love to be able to get them clean again before any rain comes. I just can't even imagine what this would look like after a heavy rain. Ugh.

Then there is Emmy herself. Java and Bristol don't grow super thick coats and they haven't started to shed yet, but Emmy is blowing her coat in significant ways. It is a somewhat long process and she is not looking her most beautiful during the process.

Here's the bizarrely shaggy horse.

She loses hair in sections. This spot on her shoulder is nearly shed out and you can see her flea-bitten grey color under that long hair which is surrounding it. So she has sections like this surrounded by sections of long, shaggy hair.

Her face is the last bit to shed, and here you can see the long hair hanging off her cheek. She looks a bit like a billy goat.

There is so much snow that needs to melt, I'm not sure where all the water is going to go. Here is the barn floor. It is dirt so all the thawing snow from around it is seeping in. I took this about 2pm today and by 6, when I brought in the horses the seepage had tripled in size.

Here is where some of that water is coming from.

This is the drip line from the roof of the barn.

The rest of the pasture isn't looking much better.

That dark line in front of the horses is the path that they have made through the snow. It is now just a trench filled with water. I don't know how much longer they are going to be able to be turned out in the slush.

Emmy's pasture is looking a little more pristine because she much prefers to stand in her stall.