Big change at Finally Farm

If you’ve paid close attention you’ll know that our little farm is not made for horses, but we forced that by creating a steep path down to our ponds and then cutting across the pond area and then after a steep climb, the horse can reach our pasture. This steep, exhausting (for me) descent/climb is necessary because we do not own the wooded lot that separates our house from our pasture. The hippies do, and they’re not selling, even though I ask every year. (At some point, they just have to!)



So the next best thing happened. They gave us permission to make a path across their land so my aging horse can make the journey to the pasture without risk. That risk is serious – the path is so steep we’ve had to install steps for us to go up and down it, and it has several (8-10) large stumps every meter or two. The roots from these stumps catch your feet sometimes as you try to go up or down. We would remove them but there is no way for a tractor to access our “backyard” area.

Baasha can navigate up and down, except for twice when he tripped, fell, and wedged himself on a stump so he couldn’t rise. Scary. In Winter the path becomes deep mud, and when that freezes, well horse people know how dangerous frozen-solid hoof-pocked mud can be – made worse because it’s on a 45 degree incline. When it froze in the past, I’d have to shut my horse up near the barn so he couldn’t make the trip to the pasture. Too dangerous.

As soon as the hippie showed me exactly where the path can go in, and we used hay twine as surveyor tape, I called up our general contractor (and fish pond caretaker) and said, “You’ve waited for this – and it’s happening. Finally you don’t have to share that dangerous path with my horse – bring chain saws and build our new path!” He was excited too – he came over dressed in his “church” clothes, with his new wife (the bikini chick), both of them on their tractor. (I don’t know why they were in the tractor, that didn’t seem to fit with their outfits.)

He was disappointed that the path doesn’t cut *straight* across the lot, and so was I, but I reminded him, “It’s up to the land owner to tell us where we can do this. After all, we aren’t even paying.”

So our new path will wind around some trees, all of which are precious friends of the hippies so we must treat them delicately as the blackberries are cut away from them.

Saturday he begins. I’ve already ordered more fencing supplies for the path, but after the path is built, I’ll be able to rip out all the fencing by the pond area, it won’t be necessary anymore. We will have to finally order a T-post puller!

This is so significant. The trip to our pasture is so arduous, you have to walk it to believe it. Sometimes I wonder where my horse is, but I don’t feel like taking that trip, so I don’t go down. With this new path, I will be able to just cut across to the pasture, shake a bucket and get my animals in for dinner without the steep challenge.

We’re also going to block off the current path altogether, which means we’ll have to weed whack it, but we’ll keep the steps in there for the times when we want to visit the fish ponds – which isn’t often lately because we’ve rented them out and don’t have to worry about them anymore. (Huge relief!)

I’ve drawn some maps so you can see the old path and the new, not showing the grazing strips for haying time.

Speaking of haying, yesterday 3 tractors came and baled up everything that was sunning all week, and it’s gone, woo hoo! This morning was the first day for the animals to go out on the big pasture for months, and oh they were joyous about it! I wish I had a photo.

The sun was streaming over the evergreens, leaving an array of sunbeams that were lighting up the morning mist. The horse and donkey slowly realized – “It’s all ours!” and Baasha trotted around, the donkey threw her head up and trotted around, and then Baasha cantered, passing through some of those sunbeams and then stopping to roll in a dirty spot, and after coating both sides he jumped up quickly as if he wasn’t 28 years old, and then joined the donkey in eating hazelnut leaves from a tree leaning over a fence. “Trim around the edges!” I yelled before getting in my car and driving to work – a little late, but that 10 minutes was so worth it.

Tomorrow everything becomes easier.

I can’t wait!