Run-in Shed Stain Application

I really thought this job wouldn't take that long, but I was wrong! It took all day, and by all day I mean I started before 8:00 a.m. and finished after 7:30 p.m. Long day. I was wearing lots of this oil-based stain, too, and threw my painting outfit away, which were my go-to pajamas that I've had for nearly 15 years.

The weather was absolutely perfect for this kind of work. Low humidity, high barely 80 and bright blue sky.

Exterior House Painting Project

A beautiful Sunday! Let's stay home and PAINT THE HOUSE!

And so we did, twice! We painted the rear of the house, took nearly all day. It looks fantastic!

We'll move on to scraping another side, another day.

Snake Patrol

Beginning this week, the Ring-neck snakes are hatching. In the house. As of this writing there have been eight, five alive and three dead. Irene is on the job and making sure these invaders are vanquished. Three were in the basement, two were already dead. The other snakes were in the back hallway or kitchen.

I relocated the live snakes to more appropriate locations around the farm.

Twilight Ride - Again!

I was surprised we rode another evening in a row! And I will say that KC was much better behaved, and didn't try to buck like he did on the first ride. And there was all sorts of things going on with the trail clearing equipment we were carrying.

Hubby's goal is to make it to the river. We didn't last night, we didn't tonight. But tonight we concentrated on the front end of the trail. And of course we got lost! right from the beginning we went too far, about 20 feet, and had to come back.

I started out carrying the batter-operated chainsaw. In a small backpack. This didn't work out that well. At the bottom of field #1 it wanted to fall out, so I moved the backpack to the front, hanging off my chest. This didn't work out very well, either. The blade, although sheathed, was going to hit me in the face.

When we got to the little marshy spot on the power lines I let it down on the ground, and the second crossing KC heaved himself over and I would surely have caught that saw blade in my face. He got off and loaded it onto his back, carried it the rest of the way, into the woods.

In the woods, I got off and tried to use the saw, but KC was very attentive and I spent too much time fussing at him and Skip to be effective with sawing downed wood. I finally tied them to a tree and left them on the trail. I tied several hot pink tape ribbons on the trees, too. It probably was a waste of time carrying the saw because I didn't get a chance to use it as much as I would have wanted to.

We really did make some progress, and getting back through the woods in the dark was pretty good. We were able to make good time because all the trees and bushes had been trimmed and the trail was obvious. It's always darker in the woods than in the open field.

The deer were jumping away from us. On the way back I carried the sickle and the folding saw blade. He carried the chain saw across his lap.

We ate dinner at 9:15, feed the horses at 9:30 and got into bed soon after that.

Twilight Ride

We're trying to forge a new access trail to the river in the park from behind our place. We have permission from our neighbor to go across her right-of-way. Yesterday he got a tool, a hand-held grass trimmer. We HAD to try it out.

We headed out behind the neighbor's house, down the fence line, around the corner and into the wood's path. So peaceful back there!

Down the power line cut, across the two marshy crossings, up the hill and down to the cornfield. The boys think this is a hitching post and did not want to move past this.

We got into the park, and wound our way around, getting off the trail and not quite right and then we found the trail. We need to do better than this! The muli-flora rose is abundant in this area.

We got down to the area where we had left off and he started swinging, like teeing off on a golf course. The weeds and tree branches are flying!

Instead of fusing with each other about how to get out of park in the dark, Skip took us out, quickly and perfectly. What a great horse!

Home Bound

Spent most all day scraping and cleaning up the back of the house. I also trimmed the bushes in the front of the house, that being a paint-removal destination soon and needed to be done. I pulled up volunteer Maple babies, too. Hauled all the trimming to the burn pile.

Sara texted me and said she had a cancellation, but I missed that message, and texted her back nearly an hour later. She had filled the time with a project pony and said she would be over after that. It was 6:00 p.m. when she finally pulled in.

She did both boys because she wants them on the same schedule and their appointment was within a week.

Sara left so late, after 9:30 p.m. and the boys had been in since noon, I gave KC a treat and left him out all night with Skip in field #1. He was delighted to run out into freedom!

Exterior Paint Project - Ongoing

The day dawned cool and clear, low humidity. Doesn't even seem like August, almost an autumn chill in the air. Not a cloud in the sky. We wanted to ride, but with summer winding down, time evaporating, we decided we would work on scraping, and more scraping.

While we were busy working on the back of the house, the horses were all in. I heard a loud bang, but thought maybe it was our neighbor, who is working on his shed's roof. When I went out to check on them, KC had twisted his shoe and the clip was imbedded in his frog.

Tom got the pliers and pulled the shoe off, and hammered out the remaining broken nail in the hoof wall. Crap. No ride tomorrow, either.

I texted our farrier and she said she would be out on Monday after 6pm. OK, we'll scrap more paint.