Visiting the Herd

Today as we worked on stacking hay and sweating when Deborah called from the house. There had been a call from the folks we are renting pasture from that one of the mares, Sidney, had foaled. Deborah insisted that we all take a break from hay and come look at the herd.

No arguments there. We all piled in the car and took a short trip down the road to the pasture. You know I think the herd missed us because no soon did we step into the pasture then we were greeted and nuzzled. Man of man did those horses look good. All were filled out and showed a rick sheen on their Sorrel coats. We walked a bit look at this horse and that horse talking at the conformation or personality or how the two year olds looked so awkward in there half filled out bodies. The foals...oh my were the foals big! They have grown and changed the color of there coats a bit and they look fine it was exciting to see all of them again. Finally we walked about found Sidney and here new foal, a filly and a real beauty. No name for her yet but she has the must interesting blaze and star on here face that looks something like a upside down "!" like you see in spanish. It was a real treat to go and visit the herd, they filled we with such joy just to walk among them. It was a great refresher but that hay wasn't going to put its self away (damn) so we returned to work in the hay shed and in the garden.

That haying... It can be stressful

So goes one of Davids mentors sayings. And it is all so true. The biggest point of stress?? Time. Or more specifically time. "While the growing season will allow for four crops the haying season only allows for three". The main reason is simple. Rain. Being from California this is a bit of a shocker. Its hard if not nearly impossible to think of a time when it rained in the summer. But Oregon is a different place with many nuanced local climates and here in the Pine Valley seeing some rain and thunderstorms is not at all uncommon. 

The crop in question is Alfalfa. Must of the fields that we have here can be cut in one long day or two long ones so long as we can keep at least mowers running. The same field that took one day to mow however might take two or three days to rake into windrows that the baler can pick up and this is only after the hay has had time to dry on the ground for 3 to 4 days before raking and one to none after. Raking takes long for several straight forward reasons. 

One... There is only one rake

Two... There is highly limited time window from raking begin between when the dew is off the leaf to when there is too much leaf shatter from the heat. Typically this is about 5 am to 10 or 11 am on days when there is cloud cover at night and 6 am to 10 or so am on days without such cover.

Three... Making a windrow requires two passes through the field to make one row.

Four... It is hard work and exhausts the horses. 

All that said raking is a fair amount of fun and working in the early morning cool sure beats the heat of the day.

Baling too takes time. The first 20 acres that we mowed yielded 770 bales and took two days of baling to do. The majority of those bales are still in the field and needed to be moved today. We moved some of these bales yesterday so that we could water our garlic crop which shares the low laying area of the same field. Using the horses we moved 70 or bales in two wagon runs. We did about 30 in one run and 40 in the next. Because the bales are very fresh they still have a slight amount of water weigh and the wagon loads come to 1 ton and 1 and 1/2 tons respectively in hay along. in simple terms this is hard work for man and horse. Likely be have a bale stacker that can grab bales from where they lay in the field and make nice neat 70 bale stacks with the tractor. Sadly the thing doesn't fit in the hay shed so it has to be unload next to it and restacked inside. As many of those bales as possible need to come in off the field today.

Why all that rush? Well its that rain. Two to Three days from now we can expect some thunderstorms with rain. Last time we had such storms it was a down pour. At the moment in addition to the 650 some bales left in the field there is about 10 acres of windrowed hay ready for baling with a a small amount of raking to be done in the same field and the associated moving of the bales. There is a 10 to 15 acres field of cut hay that needs to be raked, baled and moved also all in the period of the next two days.

Solution... lots of hard work and long hours and working into the night to get it done.

CSA

This week we delivered our first Community Supported Agriculture baskets to our 24 farm shareholders. Each shareholder pays in advance for a share of the farms harvest and receives a basket of assort food through our the growing season each week. So what was in the first basket?

Strawberries - very good (I think I've tasted from every plant we have some a bad one in the bunch)

Mint- Fresh and Tasty

Garlic Scape- when I first got here I had to ask "what the heck is a garlic scape". Well a garlic scape is the unopened flower stock or hard neck garlic  that grows with a twist or curl in it. The scape tastes like garlic, some times mildly or things sharply, and are some thing of a delicacy. They are only around for about 2 to 4 weeks so they need to be pick (and with 18000 or so plants we are a little behind on this) quickly.

Lettuce- When all fails there is always lettuce.

Radishes- Colorfully red and with a nice kick to them these are great eats.

Whats come next week....

Snap Peas

New Potatoes

Everything from above

Working with Ben Horse

Ben has a sore foot. So sore that he is limping on it. We discovered this as we moved him into the round pen to do some work with him. The hoof in question, the right front, needed to be worked. "Worked" means that someone has to come up to the horse on his uncomfortable side reach down to his fetlock, say "foot" and "catch" Ben's foot as he lifted it. Then this person has to maneuver the foot between his or her own legs so that the hoof can be trimmed and clean to reduce the pain. Ben had very had his feet worked before. Once before he was hurting I was able to reach down to his fetlock and he lift, but did nor give, his foot and this was on his comfortable side. So we had to teach Ben a whole bag of new tricks. First we worked on getting him to allow someone to come up on his uncomfortable side. This took some doing. When a horse doesn't respond favorably the he is run in order to reenforce the social dominance you have over him. Running a horse with a hoof injury fells terrible. As he goes round and round you can see his pain as he staggers on his bad hoof. After about five or six attempts we got him to allow David around on his side. Than began the work of teaching him to give his foot.We had tried this once before and all we accomplish was David getting his butt bite. This is a difficult situation because it is very hard not to laugh. After about 5 or more attempts with running Ben gave his foot (and no biting). David than work his foot cutting back part of a split hoof and removing as much manure that had become packed in has he could. This seems to have mad life better for Ben but for the time being he is on training hiatus.

Cotton Dancing in the Moonlight or Haying with Horses

Not three days ago from the moment I am writing this we started to make hay with the horses. The first step with to cut the hay. This was something we apprentices were rather excited about. The mowers are old International Harvester #9 High Gears and we had two working ones and one in restoration. The mowers were all made up until World War II when horses and tractors were being used at the same time. Several million #9's were made meaning that today there are literally hundreds of thousands that are in good enough condition to be restored and put to work. The #9 is a purely horse drawn tool, no fossil fuel required. As the team was hitched to the mower we all wait in anticipation. Deborah drove it out towards the field and we all followed. She finally got to the hay crop and let down the sickle bar and engaged the gears. With a series of clicks the horses began to pull and the sickle bar began to thwact and the hay fell with a silent swoosh and the horses tugs jingled metallically. All one could do was to stare wide eyed and follow quickly behind the mower. And so we all did admiring the simply novelty and practicality of this 60 or 70 year old machine as it preformed its tasks just as it had been engineered to do. After about two rounds of the of the 20 or so acres Deborah switch with David and went in with Willa to work on training a horse. Lisa and I continued to follow David around in circles. Haying is a hypnotic thing, when you are doing it consumes your attention. David made another 4 or 5 rounds and then Lisa got her first chance at driving. We did another 3 rounds and suddenly we realized that we were working more by moonlight then sunlight. A beautiful thing happened on one of the rounds. As Lisa drove the mower cut through a patch of hay that cottonwood cotton trapped within it. The cotton sprang up and on the slight breeze of the evening danced in the moonlight over the yet uncut hay. It was a magical thing to see. I got my first chance to drive the mower that night too and it is simply the most fun and demanding tool to drive on the farm. Over the next two days we had four 5 to 6 hour sessions of hay mowing and now the first portion of the flat flied is drying in the sun. There is more to come and I am looking forward towards it.

Starry Night

For two weeks be waited. Jane looked really or almost ready the whole time. Because Jane was a filly and had never foaled before see ended up showing waxing(a drip of colostrum on her teats) nearly that whole two weeks. But finally at 3am on a cloudless and clear night the she had her foal. The foal was small and darkly colored with a large white star on her forehead. When we all ventured down to inspect here around 5:30 it didn't take long to settle on a name. Starry Night. The cute little foal is doing well and growing quickly in typical foal fashion... nurse, sleep, nurse, sleep, run run run, nurse, sleep... repeat.

Ben Horse

Ben is a horse. A Belgian gelding to be exact. He is tall, muscular, and three years old. He is blond sorrel in color with a cream or blonde mane that is curly and long. His only face markings are a star between his eyes and a snip near his lips. He is intelligent and inquisitive. Finally he is the horse that I have been assigned to train from scratch. I've very excited about this opportunity, frankly I didn't think that I would be training a green as green horse after only 6 or so weeks on the farm. But here I am. I've worked with Ben twice now in the round pen, both times on the same day. Here is how it went.

I came down to the round pen in the late morning. Lisa was just finishing up some work with her horse Wendy, a beautiful red roan bay Belgian of 4 years of age. She had been about to touch her which is a major break thru and I was wondering if Ben would be more like Wendy or more like Willa's horse Flag who presently was excelling in running in circles and sometimes stopping. As Lisa finished up Deborah went over what had happened in the round pen thus far today and the successes and challenges that had been faced. Then it was my turn. I pushed Ben into the round pen from the adjoining dry pen and push Wendy out. I had interacted with Ben a few times when I walk in the herd, as he acted as part of a welcoming committee of 4 or so horses that greeted and inspected newcomers to the herd. As I walked into the pen I brought with me that training whip and carefully wrapped it around itself. Then I sent Ben for a few laps of running around the pen in order to establish my dominance. This went very well and Ben chewed and looked at me after which were both good signs. I then "asked" something of him. I moved closer to him without the whip to gauge how close I could get without him become scared or bolting. I got to with in a few feet of him without incident with Ben looking me the whole way (a good sign). I decided to try to touch Ben and went back for the whip. Walking back towards Ben with the whip I talked to him in a low voice and offer the whip for him to smell. He took several long inhales and looked back at me. I stopped at about 2 or 3 feet from him and then used the wand of the whip to touch Ben on the shoulder. Nothing happened. I was shocked. Usually a horse the first time it is touch will run or at the very least quiver in the shoulder with slight discomfort. Ben was motionless. I moved the wand up towards the top of his shoulders, the withers, and Ben quivered. I was somehow relieved and decided to take the pressure off of Ben and walked back to the center of the pen. I was feeling bolder now that things had done so well so I decided to try and touch Ben with my hand. I walked towards him slowing talking to him as I came. When I was within a foot of him I stopped and allowed him to smell me. He was highly curious and smelled deeply. I moved my hand up to his shoulder and stopped about half an inch from his skin. He seemed nervous and was breathing very deeply. I wanted to keep the interact positive and back off. As I walk to the center of the pen. "Did you touch him?" Willa asked from outside then pen. "No" I replied "this close" showing how close I had come with my fingers. I turned back to Ben and found him looking at me. I walked towards him and came to the same place I had just been this time I moved slowly and touched him on the shoulder he quivered slightly but this settled quickly. I stood there was a moment and than began to scrub his withers and then between his front legs. This went well so Deborah suggested that I might try holtering him. It was such a rush to have accomplished so much so fast. Lisa pass a holter into the round pen and I took it back to the middle of the pen. Ben stood on the rail of the pen looking at me. I walked towards him and attempted to holter him. This didn't go so well. As I passed the holter over his neck things seemed fine but as I moved the holter up towards his ear he bolted. I made him run and we did few laps. At this point Deborah suggested that I try to work Ben's feet. No pun intended but Ben didn't stand for this. Feeling it was time to end I moved back to something that had worked and touched been between his legs and on this withers. I put Ben back out in the dry pen at this point and went bout doing some other work round the farm. Later we came back to the dry pen and decided to work the horses in the round pen again. Simply put the lesson I learned from this is that once a day seems to be a green horses learning limit.

The big move and a horse of my own

A few days ago we finally moved the horses off of our pasture and on to a neighbors rented pasture. All that remained was to sort of some 4 or 6 horses from the herd to sort out for training and for pregnancy related reasons. Simply right? Well no. First things first it started to rain. We continued undaunted and started by moving a large beautiful horse named Nel in with the stud and removing this current partner Becky who was moving onto pasture. After a few circles of round and round we got Nel in and Becky out. Turns out Nel who is pregnant was none to fancy on the studs advances and as we walked away there was plenty of kicks and screams. Next cleared out the dry pen of all the horses we could lead out and let the rest in. Next came the horse from our pasture down the lane. We got them right where we wanted them and then the chaos began. The rain started to fall harder and the plan we had laid out in the house was redrawn on the spot. At the same time the horse, there being about 40 or so of them cramped in the narrow lane, broke the electric fence that held them in on one side and spread out in the now open dry pen. In the process Miah, a horse will a leg injury, got his bad leg wrapped in wire. We cut him free and a new plan was firmed out and we set to sorting horses. This completed we started the push to move the horses to the new pasture down the road. Well some of the horses we had sorted out really wanted to go with the herd, so much so that they broke down cattle panels and rejoined it. We were able to sort out 2 of the 3 horses that escape and decided to call that good. This finally completed we start again for the pasture. As the push started I jumped in the car and head with Deborah and Willa through the herd of fast moving horses in order to get ahead of them. Horses are not accustom to cars driving through there herd, nor am I accustom to begin in a car bolting through a herd of horses. The horses don't know what to do around cars and a yearling dart in front of us. A hard hit to the brakes kept us inches from him and we then quickly got through the rest of the herd. I jump out at neighbors gate to kept the horses from turning in. I only had to wait about a minute before a one ton horse came by at full gallop. Then came the rush of the main herd a few horses turn a head towards me but a few quick swings my rope convinced them to move on. As the last horse went by I walked out and push the herd from behind, not that they needed my help they were far up the road. All this completed we headed back to the farm after counting the number of horses in the new pasture. Arriving back we, interns, discovered that we were each to have a horse to train on our own from scratch. My horse is named Ben. He is a three year old blond sorrel gelding with a long curry mane and a white star on his head. I will write more about him later.