Fashion Victim

It happened again yesterday. This time it was a perfectly clean cashmere sweater.  As usual, I didn't even consider, let alone think through, the consequences of farm/barn/horse/dog related activity on a decent working wardrobe.

Yesterday I picked up three bales of wheat straw from the co-op to make a puppy chew-proof bed.  The puppy's real name is Indy, but the nickname should be "El Destructo", with apologies to my Texan roots.  We had thought the king of destruction was foxhound Rutherford, but there has been a coup. The nice man at the co-op loaded the bales in my car.  I got them out at home. You can guess what the sweater looked like afterwards.

Many horse people are aware that it is not the best idea to wear your nice work clothes into a boarding barn where others keep your horse for you.  It should come as a warning label--like those pre-made horse liability law signs-- on every property sold to a person about take care of horses on their own land "DO NOT WEAR NICE CLOTHES OR SHOES  TO DO ANY BARN/FARM CHORE--EVER".  And it should be posted prominently in Hunters Orange above the clothes closet hanging rack, the back door, over the shoe rack, on the coat closet door, and on the barn door, in addition to over the stall(s) and hay for at least the first year of ownership.

Rules of engagement so far:

1. Under NO circumstances should polar fleece ever be worn to clip or shave any dog or horse. The hair penetrates the fleece at a 90 degree angle; this results in wearing a porcupine around.  The same can be said for spring shedding season grooming. Summer tank tops are worse than t-shirts because horse grooming always winds up going down the front somehow, chafing the unmentionables.  This also happens if attempting to fill a hayrack hung higher on the wall than you are tall.
2. NEVER enter a stall in nice work shoes. You WILL manage to get manure on them, whether you clean the stall or not. It will harden before you get around to cleaning them off. They will join the pile of nice shoes you can't wear. Eventually, you will give up an afternoon to clean them off.  Repeat.
3. NEVER wear pants you really like to walk a fence line, or check fence work you're having done. You will find the only remaining piece of barbed wire and snag a hole in the pants.

Curse of weather events plus chores brings excitement too. Because there is now so much more to do on the daily routine, and the place is likely bigger than the last place occupied, everyday items get lost or misplaced regularly. About two weeks ago,  I used a very short window between rain and appointments to mulch leaves in the side pasture in order to put out more grass seed. I naturally could not find my watch, resorting instead to a wind up pocketwatch on a chain around my neck.

This look was originally popularized by Ice Cube ca. 1987, but is currently being revived by Flava Flav. Neither one of them were also wearing rolled up jeans over chartreuse rubber boots and ear protectors while covered in a light film of leaf mulch and dirt, but I prefer to contribute my own fashion interpretation instead of just copying the famous.

Hot Pursuit of Smokin' Grass

Pasture renovation on a horse farm is serious business. It is seriously yawn inducing in those who don't have horses, or own a yard yet. I remember a conversation in late college with a friend who had gone to her first party with People Who Now Had Property And/Or Children. It was the maiden voyage of conversation tag lines not being some variation on "So, what's your major?" She was both horrified and stultifyingly bored at the main topics: prices of heads of lettuce and kinds of lawn grass. I don't know how she survived long enough to tell me about it.

I began to grasp how difficult grass growing in the shade can be on Prescott Street's vast quarter acre (including house). Two enormous oak trees, a holly, a black walnut, a pecan, a dogwood, assorted other trees, heavy acid compacted clay soil, and Western exposure on the front yard, combine to make getting a stand of grass similar to winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning.  Now that I have more experience on Fat Pony Farms, I think I finally know how to fix it.

Here, the land was allowed to lie fallow and unmolested for at least 10, possibly more like 15- 20 years, if the size of the poison ivy is anything to go by. As a result, old aerial photos of open pasture are now shade forest, with some spectacularly large trees. The back had a small pine plantation coming up. And we had lots and lots of invasive 30' tall Chinese Privet (aka Ligustrum) and several acres of vibrant poison ivy. Plus some 8'w x6'h x40' long junk piles. Not much in the way of grass. Which is only important if you happen to be a hungry horse.

Adding to the complexity, we wanted to preserve and increase native wildlife habitat, and we had the two horse extremes:  one very hard keeper ("This food doesn't agree with my sensitive palette" Miss Charlotte) and one extremely easy keeper ("So are you gonna eat that?" Mr. Dublin).  I began to research grass varieties and forage management in earnest while we worked hard on landscape removal to gain area in which to grow pasture.

Emotions: We were happily surprised when bush hogging with the generous loan of a friend's tractor resulted in latent grass popping up. YAY!  Grossed out with the sheer quantity of ticks the privet hosted.  Elated when our experimental first pass with endophyte-free fescue with our itty-bitty spreader produced a two foot wide green ribbon of grass meandering through the property.  Grimly determined to mix Round Up at a concentration high enough for jurassic poison ivy removal. (Some of those vines had to be cut with a chain saw. No mere loppers were big enough.) Delight that landscape removal and tree pruning were actually going to WORK. Exultation at the incredible quantity of wildlife and grass increase this year over when we got here in 2007.

There will be more on pasture later, but that will have to wait for when the intended audience snaps out of the coma induced by this episode.