Divets, Leaks, and Floats - in that Order!

What a busy time it's been the last  3 days.  Since my horse Jack got out of the pasture and had a merry ole time running around the property late last week, we were left with lots of deep divets because the ground is so soft.  Lots of very deep gouges..... can we say tripping hazard?  So, I enlisted help from my daughter and grand daughter to help fill in the holes with sand.  Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full, shoveling sand, filling holes, stomping the holes after filling them with sand (that was my grand daughters job!), but we ran out of sand before we finished filling all the divets, so we didn't get to finish.  Oh well, that's for another day. 

Back at the beginning of December, right before our first freeze, I had some dirt work done on the paddock behind the barn. We've had a leak on the other side of the paddock fence ever since then, so either the tractor was so heavy it busted a pipe under ground, or we have a pipe running under one of the fence posts and the tractor hit the post causing a pipe to bust. My BB and I tried digging around to find the busted water pipe, but since the weather was freezing and the ground was hard, we couldn't get that job completed until this past weekend. Our water pressure was affected by the leak too. Not as strong as it could be. Also, a water leak creates a lot of mud and a lot of "where is the leak coming from" discussions. Boy, digging in mud is tough. We finally located the water pipe after a couple hours of digging....and wouldn't you know it! The pipe was right under the fence post that must have been hit with the tractor. It took us digging a few holes until we found the right location. The pipe was actually running through the cement used for the fence post! About 2 and a 1/2 feet under the fence post. So of course we had to remove the fence post first, which means we had to tear out a good portion of the fence mesh wire, and break concrete to get to the busted section of the pipe. When I say we were covered in mud, believe me! Sorry, there's no pics of all this because I was covered in mud... did I mention we were covered in mud? Anyway, after a few hours, we got the pipe repaired and the fence (somewhat) put back together. I gotta say, even though it was a tough chore, we feel relieved that our water is running at full strength again and this job is over!

The "before" shot of the water leak.  See the standing water?

Today was dental float day for Jack. For all the non-horsey people, that means he had a date with the dentist! First, the horse gets sedated. That's always fun to see....the animal gets so loopy from the sedation but does a magical job of somehow staying on their feet, but does some swaying sometimes. After a few minutes to let the medication take affect, the dentist then inserts a metal contraption into their mouths, lifts their head up through a rope looped over the barn roof rafter, then proceeds to turn on an electric dental filing machine. The dentist files the teeth back into an even and smooth form. A horse chews it's food from side to side causing the teeth to wear uneven and sometimes causing "hooks" or "points" on their teeth which can become quite painful to them. My horses teeth had a couple of points which caused a couple of mouth ulcers. Imagine having mouth ulcers in your mouth....might be a little painful eating right? All in all, Jack was a pretty good patient, and the procedure was uneventful. He eventually came out of his stupor and is now eating fine.

After the dentist left, I got out the old trusty wheelbarrow again and cleaned up the barn stalls of all the horse and donkey poop! After these last 3 days, I too am totally "pooped"! And my body is sore like you'd feel after a vigorous work out. Not that I ever go to a gym and work out.... I have my own gym called farm work!

I caught the fog rolling in Friday around dusk time.  It was really weird watching it coming on really fast.  I saw the donkeys standing in the field watching something intently and when I turned around, this is what I saw.  They were enthralled watching the fog roll over them.  In just under a minute, our whole property was covered in fog and the air became a lot cooler.  It was kind of creepy, but awesome at the same time!