No Shooting Required

We’ve been busy with rather boring and uninteresting tasks the last couple of days. Since one of my least favorite jobs on the farm is handling dirty horse blankets, last year I outdid myself by waiting until July to get them sorted, folded, stacked and ready to go the lady who does our blanket cleaning and repairs.

I learned a lesson last year. I learned that waiting until July to deal with the dirty horse blankets only makes dealing with them even more miserable. No, it isn’t because they are dirtier or smell worse. It is because wasps think that building nests behind blankets is a fabulous idea. Last year I had ample opportunities to get my exercise in and perfect my shooting skills as I went through a bazillion cans of wasp spray. If I may brag on myself for a moment, my aim was excellent and I watched many wasps fall out of the air and onto the ground.

I decided that this year I didn’t want to rely on my excellent shooting skills with wasp spray, nor did I want to repeatedly sprint out of the barn(s) dragging a dirty horse blanket behind me. So I forced myself to do one of my least favorite things and handled every single dirty blanket on the farm. They are now relabeled, folded, sorted and ready to be sent off for cleaning and repair. A few unlucky blankets had to be trashed as they were beyond repair. Thanks to my lack of procrastination I only found one wasp nest total in all three barns. Even better, it was a tiny nest with only one half dead wasp on it. I finished the half dead wasp off by stomping him with my boot, no shooting required.

two of my many blanket piles

In other events we decided (or I should say Jason decided) that we were going to move one group of horses to our large, empty paddock that has grass in it up to my knees. Jason was lamenting having to hook up the bush hog and mow, so he decided to employ some of our built-in lawnmowers. Yesterday we moved them from their pasture to the paddock so they can spend a few days eating down the grass. The horses across from the normally empty paddock found this all terribly interesting and lined up at the fence to spectate.

Dirty blankets and a temporary pasture change to avoid mowing has been all the excitement we’ve had the last couple of days.

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There was some intense staring when we moved the horses into the paddock to graze it down. Silver, Cocomo, Lofty, Lotus, Romeo, Donneur and Flyer were starting hard at their new neighbors across the driveway.

Silky, Bruno and Lightning exploring their new temporary home.

Walden taking a trot around his temporary home

Merlin, Lucky, Lightning and Walden saying “hey guys, did you see all of these grass?!”

Lighty and Mick