regular horse-ly chore
in journal
i came across these pics on my mom’s computer last night, they must have been from five years ago or so.. i came home from l.a. for a visit and during that time i helped my dad fill the horse barn with feed and we took a bunch of pics, my mom was there too. anyhow, filling up the barn is something that needs doing every couple of months or so – depending on how many bags of feed we get of course. the two horses eat a 50 lb. bag of feed in two days at least, so it’s always the more bags the better. with the new little truck we have, with the small bed, i can only fit about twenty bags of feed, but with the old one, shown here, my dad would pack in 40, 50 bags. anyhow, here’s how it’s done, courtesy of my dad.
first, you back the truck up to the barn. oh, and see? bianca never missed an opportunity to jump in the truck. happy happy dog! in the third pic, that’s the ladder going up to the loft where we store the food. this is a later pic – my dad kept the tack room much cleaner.
here he’s opened the barn window and it setting out the lift. if he were doing it by himself – which he did for many years and which i’m doing, for the most part, now by myself too – then there’s no riding the lift down. in fact, i totally forgot he did this – i’ve wondered before if a person could ride it down, but i thought maybe that was dangerous. i’ll have to try it next time i have some help. 
anyhow, if alone, you just have to run back and forth, filling up the lift from bags in the truck, and then running up to the loft and hitting the lift buttons, unloading the lift, lower the lift, and then run downstairs to fill it up again. it’s a lot more fun with two people.
finally, all bags are up and now it’s time to empty 8 or so bags into this chute that drops right onto the horses’ troughs. the rest get stored up here until they’re needed. also, come september, the loft also gets filled with about 50 bales of hay to last the horses until mid-march or so when the grass starts growing again. poppy was very happy to have help that day – instead of taking an hour by himself, we did it in probably 20 minutes. and yeah we see all kinds of animals and insects up there – we definitely have mouse families, a black snake said hello to me there a month ago when it was raining so hard, and lots of spiders all over the places too. !
and lastly, some horse hugs and sweetness. i whistle to them, when i walk down to feed them, as closely as i can remember his whistle being, but his was a lot louder. he could whistle through his fingers, you know what i mean? anyhow, they call back, and i love that, but i see these pic and it just makes me want to cry. we all miss him.
ok, so that’s one of my various animal chores around the year, and i love it. it’s so very satisfying to sit back and see a snug barn filled with feed and two happy chomping-away horses.
happy tuesday ~ ~
