Are you ready for winter?

[rabbitsfizz]

I have spent the last three days moving fences and horses and weaning foals (on a permanent basis, they have been off their dams for two weeks now, but they are now down in their own field)

This means I now have all the boys in together (which also means Carlos, as senior stallion, is going BANANAS!) then the weaned foals are in the in between field and then the broodmares going - down- to -drink field, then swinging round up through the footpath and onto the top fields we have the extension to the broodmare and filly field, and then the winter grazing above that. Next to the winter grazing are two smaller fields that at present have two mares with two smaller, unweaned foals and, occasionally and not intentionally, Rabbit, on them!

Rabbit is supposed to be in the three yards that front my stables (shed row type set up, that is traditional over here) so he spends a lot of time patrolling up and down. Every single day, when I get there, I forget to tie the gate I come in through and Houdini slips out through it and gallops off to impress the ladies! He cannot stay out with them as God alone knows what he would get up to and they are both his grand daughters and h/Z for Red so they would have Red based foals and since they are both black based I really do want Black based foals from them! They are supposed to be in foal, but we all know how that one goes, don't we??

So, I now have all my horses where I want them to be for winter, I would say all my ducks in a row but what with the river and all the Mallards it is very difficult to keep them in rows, (and out of the foal feeds) .

Who else is ready for winter??

 

[MindyLee]

NOT ME!!!

Only 1/2 ready at this point and not looking forward to it.

Will be in the barn today cleaning it before it gets super cold out.

And finishing planting my iris's and daylillys as I have about 200 more to go then Im all done with that for this year as well.

 

[Marty]

There is no way I am ready for any of this yet!

I don't even all my fall decorations up on the barn yet and you are talking about winter! OMG Rabbit stop it!

I have to wash down my white vinal fence.

Paint all my white picket gates.

Paint all the hardware black on my gates.

Paint the outside bottom of the barn white.

Wash down the white vinal siding on the top part of the barn.

Paint the inside stalls green.

Replace the leaking roof on the hay barn. This is the only thing I can't do all by myself.

Find a small hot water heater for the tack room so I can have hot water so I don't have to run back and forth to the house.

Clean all my lights and fixtures and replace the ones that don't work.

Fix all the hot wire.

Clean out my tack room.

Need to order some new nylon halters. Can't stand it when they get old and worn out and loose their color.

Clean and wash all my grooming tools.

Stock up the tack room with first aid meds.

Order artheritis supplements for Sonny.

Put away all my supplies that are on the wash rack.

Move the big horse trailer somewhere else.

Stock up on bedding.

Stock up on winter hay.

Buy holiday scrunchies.

Add more gravel to in front of pasture gates where the horses stand and make mush if its not there. We cannot have muddy legged horsies!

Wash all the winter blankets and stable sheets to freshen them up.

Test the Christmas barn lights and be sure all the barn decorations are cleaned and ready to go.

Add some gravel in places I know I'm going to slip and fall on my big fluffy butt.

Find a bulldozer in case I do.

 

[LAminiatures]

I am ready for winter. I took a week off stained my barn and fence. Replaced any post that needed fixing. Broke down one of my round pens in case I need to fence off and icy area. Put 200 bales of hay in the barn, 45 bags of bedding and bought myself a new winter barn coat. All that left is to dig up my water hydrant and replace it with a new one.

The best part is looking at everyone winter pics of horses and farms with that fresh blanket of snow.

 

[bevann]

I am ready for winter. I took a week off stained my barn and fence. Replaced any post that needed fixing. Broke down one of my round pens in case I need to fence off and icy area. Put 200 bales of hay in the barn, 45 bags of bedding and bought myself a new winter barn coat. All that left is to dig up my water hydrant and replace it with a new one.

The best part is looking at everyone winter pics of horses and farms with that fresh blanket of snow.

almost ready.I bought some more smaller heated buckets for the barn in case we get bad snow storms like last year(60 inches of snow in 5 days in very FLAT Delaware).Got my S Other and my son to build a big stall for my Arab boarder and wire all stalls for heated buckets so no more extension cords.Have lots of hay in the barn loft.Just need to put heated large tubs in pastures when it gets colder.After all the snow last winter and no electricity for 25 hours I am not looking forward to winter.Just hope it won't be like last year.We couldn't even the the doors open to get out of the house.Had to wait for my son to come over to shovel open the doors and I had to call a neighbor on the corner to bust open the road so my son could get here.I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[chandab]

Getting there, but since summer just finally showed up a couple days, I'm going to revel in the warmth before really preparing for winter.

I have built another shelter, its almost done, just need the tin for the roof. I"m hoping to get another water hydrant installed before the snow flies. I have a little more fencing to work on. I've ordered more hay, but it'll be a couple weeks before I can go get it. And there are a few other things I have to do, the list seems to keep growing.

 

[love_casper]

No way, not me! I have to mow the perimeter of our property once more, so that I can still drive around it without dragging through snow covered dead weeds. Fix the remaining 6 pastures that we have to fence so that I'm not still doing this business of daily rotating in below 0 tempuratures. Find a way to run water to the back pastures without letting it freeze.

And then find a way to cope with the fact that we don't have an indoor arena this winter and I may have to teach my drivers how to pull a sled!!

What ever will we do.

 

[hobbyhorse23]

We never get the summer chores done until Dad suddenly realizes fall is here so we've just finished that round of things! Finally all outside fence lines are actually FENCED so Turbo can stop escaping to visit the neighbors when let out to graze, we've flattened all the muddy places that Spyder always chopped up each winter but didn't improve the footing as I wanted so I only hope the minis don't do as much damage.

The one wall of the barn is still falling off its foundation (grr) and it's now too late to do anything about that until next spring. I replanted some of the bare patches (again, from Spyder) with grass seed and am crossing my fingers that they will grow. I've winterized the arena a bit and cleaned up the first wind-fallen branches of the year as well as cutting back what few brambles the boys haven't eaten down. Thanks to Dad I've got a decent carriage shed this year so my carts and obstacle equipment are all up out of the weather. I need to do another cobweb-clearing operation with the shopvac and get some more hay but I have enough heated buckets for all and outlets for them already installed from last year. We've removed the one extra water trough so there'll be one less ice block to melt out come spring.

With Spyder gone winter just became a lot less work as instead of hauling about six buckets of hot water per meal three times a day now all I have to do is toss hay, make one small container of beet pulp which can be kept in the house so it doesn't freeze and wash out two small heated buckets whenever they get dirty. I might actually have time to enjoy the snow if we get any!

I do still need to clear out the trailer for the winter and fix a couple of remaining leaks in there, and now that I think about it I should take advantage of this unseasonable heat we're having and do some spray painting in the back with anti-rust stuff BEFORE it spends all winter corroding. Forgot to do that over the summer.

For us winter is more a time of letting down, getting fuzzy and preparing for mud and wet. There's much more to do in the spring as we get everything out of storage and gear up for the new year!

Leia

 

[Kim~Crayonboxminiatures]

Nope, not ready here either, have fences & gates that need fixing, have to put 2 new stalls in the barn since I got rid of the 4 stall dividers, plus the sheds & pens to get ready (I'd like to put gravel or stone dust down in at least part of the dry lot...I know the cold weather will be here before I know it!

 

[LindaL]

Winter???

Heck, I just moved to Florida where I went from fall-like weather (we never really had a true summer in Oregon this year) to weather in the 80's and the horses are sweaty from growing hair thinking it was almost winter...lol

I won't need to worry about heated buckets or snow...or clay mud...YAY!!

Yes, I still have to get some things done around here, since it is being "Miniature-ized" (HA!), but not anything that needs to be done to get ready for "winter".

Doing happy dance!!!

 

[~Lisa~]

More then ready! Much prefer winter over summer. Hay barn full of hay. Horses will all get their last batch of the season this weekend-new heated water buckets..I am good to go

 

[susanne]

.

He11 no!

I'm still in fall denial...which is easy considering the glorious Indian summer we're having, with temps in the upper 70s (one day over 80) and bright blue skies.

Sorry, Linda, but MY Oregon summer was gorgeous, with no rain from July 5th until September, and perfect temperatures -- no extreme heat! I loved it. June sucked, but when does it not?

We are prepared for extreme cold, but now that we've purchased new waterproof turnouts for everyone, we'll no doubt have a true Oregon winter -- wet, but no extreme cold. Oh well, I don't blanket unless it's truly nasty, as in blowing, freezing rain.

I'm not looking forward to the mud season (November through June), and I wish we had purchased gravel screenings for the fronts of the corrals and the paths around them. Our hillside drains down onto -- you guessed it -- the corrals. The horses have plenty of relatively dry ground, but the humans have to mud wrestle to get to them.

And please don't even say the word snow. We're still traumatized by two winters ago, when we were snowbound for days -- so NOT a typical Oregon winter. I can deal with thawing frozen troughs and trekking through the rain, but PLEASE no snow.

 

[hobbyhorse23]

We are prepared for extreme cold, but now that we've purchased new waterproof turnouts for everyone, we'll no doubt have a true Oregon winter --

I guarantee you that will work to prevent bad weather.

Massive snow two winters ago, finally got the hose insulation set up, heated buckets purchased, etc. just in time for it to melt away and we had not so much as one flake last winter. And I so wanted to try out that new sled I finally got!

And please don't even say the word snow. We're still traumatized by two winters ago, when we were snowbound for days -- so NOT a typical Oregon winter. I can deal with thawing frozen troughs and trekking through the rain, but PLEASE no snow.

Ugh, at least the snow hides the mud for awhile! A winter like last year SUCKS!! Constant precipitation when it's above freezing so it's always muddy, and then perfectly dry when temps drop below freezing so you've got endless ice but no snow to have fun in. No thank you! I'll take the snow every time.

Leia

 

[disneyhorse]

Sometimes I'm glad to live in southern California where "winter" means a couple weeks of rain.

My guy lives in a giant, cushy box stall and gets turned out to play in the mud for a little while when the weather is bad. I think the footing in the sand arena is actually better after it rains.

Hay prices go up a couple bucks a bale, so that does suck.

Andrea

 

[HGFarm]

Heated buckets? Moving fences? I have no idea what you all are talking about.

 

[Minimor]

Ready for winter??? Seriously??? You are a sick person, to ask that question of me. We didn't even have summer this year, finally this week we are getting a taste of what summer is like, but no, definitely not ready for winter here. I still have a few (too many) loads of rotten hay to haul out of the yard, some sheds to repair, a few gates to repair (or build in some cases) and hang, some fencing to do, some ponies to work with, some driving to do, a couple of repairs to the house and then after that....I figure it will be time for spring by the time all that gets done!

I DON'T WANT WINTER. I want to fast forward through winter.

 

[CharlesFamily]

No! La la la - I can't hear you! I really don't like winter - I want fall all year round!

I still need to finish replacing the old fence in the pasture with new board fence - that got halfway done during spring break and somehow didn't manage to get the rest done this summer.

I also have 80 bales of hay waiting on a wagon for me at the farmers' house - I just need to find time to go get it and get it put up.

We resided the barn last summer and Todd was supposed to paint it - that hasn't happened yet, either. Not looking good now. Maybe next summer???

Barbara

 

[Reble]

Oh No, we still have one more horse show this weekend, have to bath all 4 just one more time, no clipping just touching up, hope the rain stays away.

Than we will think of getting things ready for winter.

 

[Matt73]

Very very ready for it to arrive. I can't wait. Summer 2010 was a crappy one for my horses. Royal died. And Willow was sick twice and almost died (and is healthy and happy now). Both are suspected cases of Potomac Horse Fever. So, yeah, I'm sick of the great warm weather

I'll be glad to see the insects die/hibernate. I love Autumn

I just have to pick up two heated water buckets (I'm soooo not into chipping ice and filling buckets with hot water this year). I'm debating whether to get Willow a blanket; Lexus absolutely needs one, as she's a princess and shivers when the temp. dips below 5 degrees celsius. But Willow has already got a soft, thick coat, so I'm thinking of leaving her be, but I want to have one that fits her just in case.

 

[ruffian]

Hay is in. The stall improvements for this year are done. The runs are built. HOWEVER --- the doors TO the runs aren't in. Wanted to put in a new hose system, but that hasn't happened. So got lots done this summer, but still have a few things to do.

I've decided to not have winter this year.

OK OK for those who love it - we can have snow on December 23 to Decemeber 26th. OK?