Dry Ground

We might finally be drying out around here. When I went out to feed the girls this morning, I was happy to feel solid ground under my feet in both stalls and the corral. Siete’s side was the worst, and she’s been a very unhappy little horse. All the wood pellet bedding that I dumped into her stall to absorb the ground water that was coming up from underneath the barn has made the footing very deep. For a while, when the horses walked, their hoofprints would be filled with water oozing up. It was driving me crazy because I couldn’t compact the material enough to soak up the moisture.

Siete was getting really surly about it. One evening last week, she absolutely refused to go back into her stall for dinner. I was rushing and her resistance to leave her mother’s side of the barn really aggravated me. I tried to force her to go, but she wouldn’t budge. In frustration, I walked back to the house, leaving her dinner in her stall and both doors open, in case she changed her mind. Then, I realized that if I were Siete, I wouldn’t want to go in there either.

I felt bad for her, but the problem was that with both horses in the same stall all night, Silk wouldn’t have room to lie down. She needs to get off her feet at night with her arthritis. Siete didn’t want to lie down either, and as a result, off and on these past two weeks, I’ve been treating a hoof abscess in her back right foot. I couldn’t, in good conscience, force Siete to stay in her stall that night. When I went back after it got dark to check on her, she was still with her mom. As soon as they saw me, both horses ran into Siete’s stall and stood there together in solidarity. Nope, we’re not going to let you lock her in this place. I looked at their hoofprints in front of me, by the door, filling up with the ground water, and wanted to cry. There seemed to be no way to fix this problem. It was also starting to rain again. We had over 14 inches of rain in less than a week. As I left them, the girls headed back to Silk’s drier bedding on the other side of the barn.

The next night, Siete ran right into her stall as soon as I approached with the dinner buckets. I was glad I hadn’t forced the issue, and she seemed to accept that things were what they were. Even though I was doing the best that I could do, I felt so stressed out that I couldn’t fix the problem. I really believe that my horses are as calm and happy as they are because they have safe, comfortable stalls where they can get off their feet at night. Fortunately, the situation has been steadily improving now that we’ve had sunny warm weather for almost a week. Now, I know that we shouldn't anthropomorphisize our animals but... The strange thing was that every day, I’ve been telling Siete that she needs to lie down again to rest her feet. To my astonishment, when I fed her last night, she actually dropped down on her side and rolled around in her stall while I was standing there, as if to show me that it was okay again. That’s my girl.

A Tale of 3 Babkas

My mother is Polish, and as she approaches her 96th birthday, she is increasingly drawn to things that remind her of her heritage. A few weeks ago, she told me a story about how the women in her home baked a sweet bread called babka around Easter time. The children weren’t allowed in the kitchen for several days as the babka was rising and in the ovens because it couldn’t be disturbed. She loves these high-topped loaves, even though no one else in our family likes to eat them.

I found a Polish grocery store about forty-five minutes drive from our house and took her there. She was unimpressed. They had babka, but she insisted, speaking Polish to the woman behind the counter, that it wasn’t REAl babka. It wasn’t round, and there were no raisins, and it had cheese and strawberries. The woman replied that there are many types of babka. My mother sniffed contemptuously, but I bought some anyway. It wasn’t eaten by anyone in our house, and when I tore up the remains and fed it to the birds, only the crows would touch it. I told my friend who owns the UPS store about the search for real babka. She’s Polish and said that her mother makes it at this time of year. Yes, it had raisins in it and was tall and round. She offered to ask her mother to bake some for us. I came home and told my mother, thinking that the search for babka was over. No such luck. Every day for over a week, my mom would ask me again and again when that woman was going to bring the babka. Finally, I was at the Stop ‘n Shop buying groceries, and lo and behold, they had babka for sale! It looked like what my mother had described, so I bought it. Unfortunately, our resident babka expert proclaimed it was too dry and not sweet. Again, I sprinkled the remains for our neighbor’s chickens and other birds, but this time, only the squirrels ate it.

My mother grew more and more disappointed that the lady who promised to bake the babka didn’t deliver. Another friend suggested that I look on-line at Martha Stewart’s recipes because her mother was Polish and they were deliciously authentic. Sure enough, there was a video of Martha’s mom making babka. I decided to try it, even though the recipe called for yeast and I have a fear of anything that calls for yeast and rising and punching dough. My daughter offered to help, and together we toiled in the kitchen for several hours the night before Easter. Just as we were finally ready to bake the three loaves of babka, my oven broke. It was now about ten o’clock at night.

Luckily, I have a neighbor who plays backgammon on-line until the wee hours. We schlepped the three babkas to her house and put them in the oven. They were supposed to bake for a half hour, but it was obvious that they weren’t done and we were awkwardly sitting in her living room when she clearly didn’t want to be entertaining anyone. Martha Stewart’s mom said that you know that the babka is ready if it makes a hollow sound when you knock on it. My neighbor offered to call me when she had knocked and heard the babka’s appropriate reply. About twenty minutes later, the phone rang and we went back to retrieve our bread so she could go to bed.

The babka looked golden brown and very pretty, plus at this point, I’d been involved in this baking experiment for over six hours. I glazed the loaves with a sugary frosting and called it a night. After taking my mom to a Polish church to hear mass on Easter Sunday, we came home to eat the babka. As soon as I cut into the first one, I knew there was trouble. It wasn’t cooked all the way through. I tried the other two but they were also not baked enough. I promised my mother that I would try again once the oven was fixed. She said that enough was enough and this was a good babka recipe that we could make again next Easter.

I have to admit I was relieved to have a whole year to rest up before I tried it again. As I stood looking at a table full of chopped up half-baked babka, my neighbor’s rooster, the Chief, crowed outside my window. He’s a special guy. I confess he’s won my heart, so I crumbled up a whole babka and presented it to him. He wolfed it down, chasing away the hens when they tried to join in the feast.

At least someone loves my babka.
‘

More Sun Please

The ground is so saturated from all the rain that we’ve been having that water is just bubbling up in the horses’ stalls. Even the magical drainage ditch around the barn is still full of water, despite my frequent efforts to keep it flowing. We had a few days of sun, but more rain last night. Siete’s stall is worse than Silk’s, and she’s not a happy camper.

As soon as the sun comes out, the girls lie down in the pasture. I don’t think that Siete can get comfortable at night. Her usual secure routine has been disturbed. Now, the temperatures are dropping down into the 20’s tonight, so I’m wondering if I’ll have to contend with ice by tomorrow morning. Frankly, it’s getting to be a bit too much for all of us around here.

My computer is also in a funk. Without warning, the dear old laptop makes a small popping noise and the screen goes blank. It may need to have the logic board replaced. Don’t you wish that there were some people who could also be scheduled to have their logic boards replaced? It’s been a difficult week.

What I need right now is some nice and easy.

PS- I just noticed that Siete is lying in the same position in this photo as she was in the one posted in my profile to the right of it showing her when she was first born, with her mother behind her. What a difference 7 years makes - but she's still our baby!

Fumbling in the Dark

I found myself aware of something at 5 am this morning that I normally don’t question. As a result of moving the clocks ahead, my mornings are now significantly darker when I go outside. What struck me today was that it was also totally impossible to see as I tried to get dressed in my bedroom. There had been a brief alteration of my routine over the last couple of weeks , and I didn’t realize its effect until things went back to normal.

For many years, so as not to wake up my husband, I’ve been used to getting dressed in the dark. I leave my clothes neatly stacked up in order next to my bed so I can quickly pull them on without looking at them. I always feel for the tags on the back of my pants and shirts so I don’t get them on backwards. It’s never occurred to me that putting on my clothes this way is inconvenient, difficult or annoying. Until today. This says a lot about me, I think.

My husband has just returned from a lengthy business trip. During the time he was away, I was able to wake up, turn on the light next to my bed and see what I was doing when I got dressed. I could be spontaneous. I didn’t have to plan ahead. I didn’t have to feel if everything was going on in the right direction. It was liberating. So, now that he’s home and things are back to “normal”, I found myself fumbling around in the dark again. I had forgotten to prepare for this situation, so I couldn’t find anything I needed. Eventually, I resorted to turning on the flashlight that I keep on my nightstand. Of course, this woke up the hibernating bear that was sleeping in my bed. Growling ensued.

It made me consider how often we do things by rote and never question the discomfort that it causes us. I haven’t written anything here on my blog since we had all the flooding over the weekend. We got five inches of rain in one day, and it rocked my world. The basement flooded. The garage where I store my hay flooded. Both stalls in the barn flooded. Trees came down in my neighbor’s yard and blocked our road. The only good news was that we didn’t lose our electricity. The bad news was it just kept raining and blowing. Naturally, my husband was out of town. He has an uncanny way of missing all these big weather events around here.

Five hundred and fifty pounds of wood pellets later, the barn still is oozing up water when the horses step in the front of their stalls. Luckily, they have very large stalls, with doors at both ends. We’ve changed the routine so they eat in the back instead of the front. It’s disoriented Siete but not Silk. Occasionally, with old age, we become more adaptable. Siete hates being in the barn right now, and as soon as I open the door to the corral and the pasture, she rushes to dry land. Every day, I go out to shovel and invent new ways for the water to drain. It’s a lot like fumbling around in the dark.

Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to shift the balance. I realized that we can choose not to be frustrated and open ourselves to new possibilities. As I stumbled downstairs to make a pot of coffee, I came up with the brilliant idea that tomorrow, I would try getting dressed in the bathroom.

Almost Here

I can feel it. Spring is almost here. My orchids are blooming. Little green sprouts are poking out of the ground. The girls are feeling frisky, We’re going to get a whopping rainstorm tomorrow, so I’ve been prepping the corral, the drainage ditch and the barn for the last few days.

In an effort to flatten the craters that the horses’ hooves have carved into the corral in front of their stalls, I had one of my neighbor’s teenage son drive his quad over and roll back and forth across the corral to smooth it out. It worked well, and I didn’t really even think about how the horses would react to this shiny red vehicle with big tires churning and wheeling around in front of their stall doors while they watched from just inside the barn. The young driver’s dad showed up and loudly announced, “I’m impressed!” I assumed he was talking about his son’s efforts, but he was talking about my horses. He couldn’t believe how calm and nonchalant they were about the noise and commotion.

I realized that I just take it as a given that they will be good. When we lived in Virginia, there were always huge tractors and earthmovers rumbling around the farm while I rode them. It was no drama. I’ve seen my husband use his chainsaw to cut wood on the other side of the fence here while the horses just ignore him and eat grass. The weed-whacker is also not a big deal. The only thing that ever seems to bother Silk is if a man wears a baseball cap and sunglasses. I’ll never know what that association is, but I can bet it has something to do with the guy who abused her. There’s no doubt that it still takes her a while to warm up to most men because of those terrible experiences.

Anyway, after everyone left, I pulled out the carrots to let the girls know that I appreciated them. In case you can’t tell from this picture, they have perfected the art of begging.

Tag, I'm It

What a lovely treat to get an award in the middle of all this flooding and snow removal. We got an insane amount of rain yesterday, flooding Silk’s stall overnight. On top of the lakes of water, we now have about a foot of snow. So, while taking a break from all the backbreaking work, I checked in with my blog friends this afternoon and found this from Kate at A Year With Horses. Thanks for brightening this dreary day!

The rules are to link to the person who gave the award, tell you all 7 things about myself and send this game of tag on to 15 other bloggers. Since I’ve been seeing this award on so many of my favorite blogs, I’m not going to attempt to name anyone, but just invite all of you who want to play to pick up the award and have at it.

So, with no further ado, here are my 7 revelations:

1. One of my favorite things is a felt cowboy hat I’ve had for about 15 years. It’s stained and my daughter is a bit embarrassed when I wear it, but I love it. A hat for all seasons. It is the essence of me.

2. I love to read. I just finished “Let the Great World Spin” by Colum McCann. I am about to start “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot.

3. I have no strength in my arms. Can’t do a push up or pull up, even though I’ve been scooping 80 pounds of poop a day for the past 5 years. And today, after all that shoveling, I am really feeling like a total weakling. Don't ask me to hold anything valuable. My arms are jelly.

4. I’ll take vanilla over chocolate any day. Every night before bed, I have a glass that’s half vanilla soy milk and half 1% milk. And I love vanilla frosting.

5. When I start really laughing, it’s hard for me to stop - and why should I? I have a few friends that know how to get me going. And my husband, who has a wicked sense of humor. That’s one of the reasons I married him.

6. I used to be insanely skinny. When I was younger, I weighed less than 120 pounds and I’m almost 5’8”. Those days are long gone.

7. Silence is magical to me. I was just outside in the snow and it was perfectly quiet. There aren’t many moments in my day where it’s silent, and I treasure them.

Another Snow Day

If the Universe is sending me a message over and over in these last few days, it is that in an instant, everything can change. Yesterday, I was outside with the horses wearing only a sweatshirt, preparing for another storm. It’s always sort of magical to me that I can go to sleep at night with the world outside my window looking one way and then, in complete silence, the entire landscape is transformed, blanketed and beautiful.

As much as I complain about winter this year, there are always a few moments of delight when I see the snow falling and the perfect, pristine white expanse. The thought of “appreciate this while it’s here” is being drilled into me on so many different levels right now. What’s equally important is that I’m feeling a shift in energy around here in the last few days that opens me up to feeling hopeful and to being able to imagine and plan for the future. Maybe it takes going deep inside and asking myself what’s really important that allows the darkness and fog to clear. Maybe it’s reminding myself that I am not going to sink and drown despite anyone else's mood and problems. I’ve taken some time to go back to re-examine what my goals were a year ago and whether that’s still the direction I want to head. Some of these goals are still where my heart is, but others have shifted or fallen by the wayside.

I feel like I’m coming up from hibernation. As I walked along the path to the barn yesterday, I noticed the iris bulbs have started sprouting in the dirt and the lilac bushes are full of buds. At first, I thought, oh no, they will all die when it snows again tomorrow. Then, I realized that they would be fine and that this happens every year, so they will get through it. Despite a few setbacks, they will grow and bloom when the time is right.

Silk and Siete are accepting and patient today about the disappearance of those wonderful small bits of grass they nibbled in the pasture yesterday. Unfortunately, they don’t love the hay that I picked up for them on Sunday. Siete pooped all over hers. Silk knew that it’s all they’ve got, so she’s eating it. I reminded young Siete to just be thankful that they have hay as nice as this, but I didn’t need to tell that to my old red mare. She understands this life lesson a lot better than I do.