Quick Fix

September 19, 2021

Hello everybody,

We had a magnificent full moon this week, starting with a blood orange color as it first peaked over the eastern horizon before turning into a radiant, luminescent white as it climbed the sky to a more overhead position, creating the infamous Comanche Moon that that tribe liked to use for overnight raids in this area. As the nights are getting longer and the days are getting shorter, I'm going out earlier and earlier to feed the horses at night and was in the perfect position to see the moon rising. There have been other adventures with the horses over the past week, too. We had a colicky horse for a few days that we were a little worried about. I think that I actually saw him lying down on the first night I noticed it(not good), as well as regularly turning his head to try and reach his stomach, although he's the most skittish and won't ever let me get very close . Horses can't regurgitate and whenever they eat something that they have trouble passing, it can become very dangerous, and even deadly, for them. He seemed better the next morning, although much more bloated, but moving around normally. By lunch it had all seemed to pass and that night you'd have never known that anything was ever amiss. Still, a lesson learned and a disaster averted. It was a reminder to keep the feeders spotless from all of the dirt and stones that fall out of the bales at each feeding and to also do a better, more consistent job of giving them their supplement that keeps their digestive tracts clean and clear. These guys are not wild in the least when it comes to eating hay and hip-checking me out of the way to get near it, but when it comes to applying spot-on insect repellent or giving them their digestive aid, you find out really quickly that you're not dealing with stall horses!

On the same night that I first started to notice the one stallion fighting colic, I also noticed on my way out to the feeders that there was a small stream starting at the horse trough and running off into the pasture. When I finally had a chance to inspect it after I was done feeding, after dark at this point, I found that one of the horses had stomped on the drain plug de-icer and broken it, thus breaking the seal and creating a small leak. By now the trough was down to about a foot deep with water. I didn't know if we had any additional drain plugs or de-icers, and was nearly the walking dead by this time, so I just ran back to the house and grabbed our basket of corks and was able to find a big, fat champagne one that was fat on the top and skinny on the bottom. It plugged it up perfectly and is still there doing the job for me until I can get a new de-icer installed(I later found two of them while organizing the tool depot). That also afforded me a chance to spend about 45 minutes filling the trough back up by the light of a nearly-full moon, as it was chased across the sky by one of the planets. Just another day on the ranch. It's usually pretty slow-paced and you're never quite sprinting, but there's still always a lot to do. We're taking care of 25 animals now: 11 cats; 10 horses; and four, soon to be five, dogs. Something always needs done with one of them, let alone finding time to keep up with the landscaping and the equipment and organizing our tool depot(where all the workers on the jobsite deposit anything that they don't know what to do with, thus keeping the chaos factor going). We have made some friends that really like to bust loose on the weekend and are always trying to incorporate us into the fun, but we most often have to decline the invitation because hay's coming, or the boss is gone all weekend but her animals are home, or the kittens need caged up by dark...of course, now that we're starting to approach a half century on this earth, maybe we're just trying to find an excuse to carve out a little front porch, rocking chair time!

So, now for the best part. First, a shot of the moonrise the other night that I played around with graphically. Then, two shots of the first few minutes that the full moon was rising while I was out feeding the horses, with Starvation Peak in the background. Next, three shots of my water trough escapade: the first two showing the cork patch from inside and out; the last one showing the size of my tool kit! Then, two shots of the newly-cleaned and re-organized tool depot...hopefully it will stay this nice for at least a week. Then, three shots of the dimming western sky as I road back to the barn from feeding the horses. The silhouette of the new house that we're building can be seen in all three shots. Next, two shots of the moon rising a few nights before full moon. Finally, three shots of the moon reflecting in the horses' water trough: the first from the night of the full moon; the latter two from a few nights earlier, after the cork patch.

Be well.