A Proper Raincoast Break and Enter

 The wild winter weather has continued. So, when I walked around the farm to feed dinner late one exceptionally rainy and windy night, I was surprised, but not *super* surprised to see the barn doors hanging off their tracks. Weird, because they latch and have stoppers and windy days normally barely rattle them, let alone completely rip them off the building. Did I forget to close and lock them?

And whoa. Somehow the wind blew one of my (full of grain) feed bins out of the building and halfway down the yard?

Pre break in when I was feeling a little smug about my storm prepping organization

When I walked into the feed room side of the barn, the actual cause of the chaos became a little more obvious. Muddy bear prints everywhere. In retrospect walking into the barn on a dark and windy night with fresh muddy bear prints all over it maybe wasn't my wisest decision, but my brain needed to catch up to the evidence.

The good news is that I think I might have interrupted the burglary in progress, because aside from my feed bin and a few things rummaged through or tipped over, everything inside the building was undamaged (note a few days later - the oil I top their feed with had one tooth hole in the container and slowly leaked everywhere before I noticed. RIP to that and all it touched)

No actual pictures of bears or barn mess in the moment because it was late in the evening in a 'bomb cyclone' and I was just trying to get everything patched back up to survive the night. This is from a couple of nights later. My other excuse for poor media is this is the light situation after work days. Check out how flooded everything still was though. It's dried out a bit since, but it still is so grim around here this time of year :(

The doors sustained moderate damage - the latches were broken and needed replacing, and he spent a bit of time trying to pull the bottom of the doors apart so the frames needed repairing and reinforcing and some boards reattached. Again, no photo documentation because there I was at midnight in the dark, wind and rain, fixing them so I could lock everything up again. I think my cheap sliding system on the top of the doors might have had an unexpected bonus because the bear was eventually able to simply lift the door off the tracks rather than continuing to try to break through them. He’s strong though, it was a two person job to re hang them all! 

All reattached and repaired and you can't even tell it was a thing. Surprisingly gentle bear, my cat scratched a door in our house worse than this :)

So, more good news, because it turned out to be an easy enough fix.

The bad news is that a freaking bear took the doors off my barn looking for snacks.

Sophie has this gate behind the doors (I leave them open in summer for airflow) so while she was understandably concerned, there were no pony escape worries.

He found nothing, apparently hay and horse vitamins are not to his liking because my bag of feed was taken out of the bin and dinner feed buckets tipped over, but no contents were eaten. In addition to my hay stall door he ripped Sophie's stall door off too and moved the black planters around. Although logically I know he is not looking for horses to eat...what if he is looking for horses to eat? *cue sleepless nights*

Electric wire around the back of the barn until I figure out how to make the perimeter yard gates people friendly but not bear friendly. Electric wire across our front yard gate would be the most practical, however maybe not the most inviting for visitors and deliveries:)

Sort of good news (for me, not him) is that he's young and little-ish and his MO is breaking into people's sheds looking for garbage or freezers of food. So this might have been an exploratory thing rather than targeted and now that he knows we aren't worth his time I can hope he stays away. It’s pretty late in the season though, so I’m worried. We have careless neighbours and if he’s finding enough elsewhere to hang around this winter, I am worried he might get himself in trouble.

Sophie helping with fence repairs. Between her scratching her butt, rambunctious yearlings doing their thing, and Yogi climbing over everything, our fences/fence posts took a beating this year. I'm so weird about things that it's going to annoy me to no end to have new posts and rails that don't match the rest of the fences (until I can stain them in the spring) Not to mention the mud and bear scratches all over the back of the barn lol, why is my brain like this because I REALLY want to clean and paint it now.

Harvest Gold

 Sophie's winter coat is always extraordinary, I'm reminded of those facebook posts you see ranting against crossbred dogs and the hit or miss nature of what traits the puppy will have. Normally mentioned are the sometimes unexpected grooming requirements for doodle breeds. In Sophie's case, she's the pony equivalent of that doodle. She's got a Welsh pony dad and a TB/WB mom. Take your standard extra thick and long welsh pony coat, but make the actual hair TB fine. She is very very soft, and stays very warm and dry under there, but also there isn't a curry comb in this world that will easily get to the bottom of it. 

So soft, so luxurious

Today marked the first official day of 'these brushes are no longer working' winter coat. 

In a related side story, years ago we were doing some work on one of our houses and in the closet I found a box with a 1960's shag rug rake. I don't even remember what we did with it. 

But, today while I was complaining about the inefficiency of my grooming tools, pondering whether a nice long hair dog coat brush might be the thing for her more sensitive spots, I suddenly remembered that thing.

So, I googled to find a pic to show you in the context of 'here's something that might work on Sophie's unclipped winter coat, ha ha'. And of course the requisite vintage shag carpet room pictures popped up. 

And I need to tell you that I have discovered that Sophie is currently a near perfect match for Harvest Gold shag.

Find the pony! I'm sorry but I had to do it

 

What’s Up

I've written a novel of a post on so many things lately, then left them all sitting in my drafts folder. This TL;DR version of it all feels like something I’ll actually hit publish on.

- I’ve been enjoying some annual leave time! I got a ton of work done on the new kitchen in between spending many hours of my day giving pony scratches. Time well spent! 

This still looks depressingly in progress this week but I promise the hard parts are done.

Next project is to turn this storage loft into my new office hideaway. The centre ceiling is only 5'8" but I am 5'2" so why not. Husband is 6'4" so he's denied access :D

If you were wondering why I wouldn't just utilize a normal space, it's because this is the view out the window and seeing the horses while I work overrides the negatives.

Ponies getting spa days, it felt pretty luxurious to walk out of the house at any time of the day and 'waste' an hour or two with the horses.

- The above (you might argue excessive) enjoyment of AL has confirmed a need for some change. I’ve got most of the time between now and New Years off, then in 2025 I'm going to keep my actual work hours scaled back at part time and take on some more side jobs when I’d like extra money and tire of scratching ponies. This feels like a nice compromise between being a responsible person with a reliable income and medical and dental plan and all those other adulty things, but adding some more variety and interest. Hard to make that call when on paper there is literally nothing wrong with my job to justify changing - I am just bored. But the time feels right to start opening some new doors.

- Ponies being ponies. Tradey got cuts/scrapes just under his eye (likely playfighting with Buck), one of which ripped his lower eyelid and swelled up pretty bad. That gave me a heart attack for a few days there...but it's healing well and it even looks like it might only leave a tiny scar. Both of the boys had/have (we are awaiting results after a further autumn deworming) ascarids AGAIN. Do I want to put that on the internet? Not really. But if it helps someone else, then yes. I'm not sure if I ever mentioned they arrived with some drug resistant friends (not unusual these days nor anyone's fault) and it's been a bit of a thing to keep on top of.  Advice: get your vet involved, send in manure samples on whatever schedule they recommend and treat with what they tell you to. Some horses are naturally more prone to less than ideal parasite loads than others, and there seem to be a lot of resistant worms out there so your go to protocols might not be working as well as you might hope anymore. 

- The property with the field the horses use in summer is coming up for sale. We love having it, so considered purchasing (G was actually the one really pushing for it, so for a while there I thought I'd be telling you about our new house!), but ultimately we made the call to let it go.  I get the whole 'real estate as an investment' aspect but I couldn't wrap my head around being so financially committed here. I’ll be sad to say goodbye, but maybe we’ll acquire more horsey neighbours? 

I'm very sad. But, fingers crossed, I have been offered other neighborhood options in the past, so hopefully something else will come up to borrow or lease. I think the big lesson learned was that at the end of the day we're happy with the status quo.

I got more sand for the ring a couple of weeks ago and it's starting to look really perfect. So we have to stay here, at least until the yearling cobs are old enough to ride :D

-The weather. I can't not mention it because we continue to get the brunt of storm after storm. Currently we're awaiting a 'bomb cyclone' arriving tomorrow, which (fingers crossed) should actually be less dramatic than the storm last week. The general state of things means the ponies get minimal turnout that's not on a gravel or sand surface - there is water everywhere. We also have been losing power regularly so I'm getting good at doing pony chores in the dark. I'm grateful we have the place set up in a way that suits us so well. Besides the weather being depressing it's not impacting the horses too much at all - the gravel paddocks with enough room for them to run were a really good investment. The last place I boarded it would be a different story right now. 

Running errands before things get worse and we risk falling trees and power outages - another lovely day on the west coast

Terrible picture but he looks pretty cozy

It was a dark and stormy night  4:45pm ;) Battery powered floodlights for the win

Current grass status: green but is a swamp

She's so dedicated to being a bog pony I caved and give her this little area on the worst days. Her normal grazing area has huge trees that regularly lose giant branches that make me nervous when the wind picks up. The boys are quite content to stay in their paddock, but Sophie stands at the gate looking longingly out, even in the worst of weather.

Whew, that was still almost a novel. But I think we’re all caught up? 

damp, Dark and bear infested

That's my 'zero stars - would not recommend' review of this autumn. It's normally my favorite time of the year, but the weather just didn't cooperate and we had what felt like endless rain and wind storms. Endless rain isn't breaking news around here, but this year it just feels like more than normal. I don't have any data to back that up beyond the fact that our property is so, so wet and muddy and there doesn't seem to be time for it all to drain before the next storm comes. I've been spending time mitigating the mud and improving drainage where I can, but when the entire stormwater systems are backing up into the road there's just not a lot you can do.

A rare sunny day reprieve. The horses live in the little residential/farm area in the centre of this picture, it's a beautiful spot. Except during heavy rain when all the water run off from this hill and the ones behind it flows through our neighbourhood on it's way to the ocean:)

Is part seal, and doesn't care about weather

The clocks have gone back as well this past weekend and now sunset is early and creeping towards 4:15pm towards the end of the month. How's that for a doom and gloom post intro? :)

In good news, I think the bears have mostly vacated the area and gone off to hibernate. Despite all my attempts at fencing them out and beefing up the electric perimeter, they figured out the front gate and an alternate route in/out via climbing on a neighbour's shed roof and then dropping in to my yard via overhanging trees. They are ninjas, but despite my worries they didn't break any horse relevant fencing or seem to bother them too much.

Stall mats also came on sale in a timely fashion. I expanded my grooming area. Load of sand/gravel to tackle the rest of the mud is incoming later today.

These two also got an expanded area. We were having issues with the ditch on the other side of the barn backing up and flooding the gate area. The city came and dug out the relevant things on their end, so I think that's all resolved, but adding some mats as extra mud protection and a bigger lounging area for the boys seemed like a useful thing.

Halloween came and went without issue. The weather was awful so I think that toned down the fireworks and general shenanigans. I wrote about them a couple of years ago, surprised it was such a thing here. You all made me aware fireworks and halloween aren't normal anywhere else, but here we are. I did a little research and it seems our little melting pot of cultures has created a Guy Fawkes/Diwali/Halloween holiday tradition. Fun for everyone, just maybe not the horses.   I was worried, but didn't need to be. The horses were a little on edge, but the current dynamic is a good one, with the boys normally being much more sensible than Sophie, and her happy to take a lead from them. Surprisingly, I think they were happier last year when the louder fireworks were closer and they could see them, this year the fireworks displays were just far away for it to be out of sight, but still loud.

I swear he gets more handsome by the day

Not impressed with the Tradey photobomb

get yourself a good camera lens, it makes it look like there's proper sunshine

fall colors and a Sophie butt

part of the reason for the mud situation - they play, sleep and eat. And that's it.

Yard pony

Other than that, I'm busy as always. I have a week off to install our new kitchen (yay!). Sand is getting delivered today to top off/finish the ring (also yay!) so I'll be spreading sand for the foreseeable.