Work Wednesday « Robin Writes

Yep, still putting those pines in the ground—but we’ve turned a corner. Ha. Literally. Working now on the north end, which should go more quickly since A) it’s shorter in length and B) my husband put a new whatchamacallit on the end of the auger.

Hoping to be all finished by the end of the month, or shortly thereafter. Depends on how often I can get out there to help him, now that things are heating up in the book world, among other things.

Definitely want this finished! Besides our short-term visitor, Chestnut, I kind of found a little black filly for sale, AQHA. Her name is Midnight . . .

Basically, I have to stop looking at horses for the time being—after all, I still don’t have a trailer to get her here. Um, I mean, ANY horse. Eventually. Hmmm.

And trailers seem to be hard to find. Seriously. The kind we want, anyway, which is a good used 2-horse. As much as I drool over those rigs with dressing rooms—who am I kidding? They come with fancy living quarters and slide-outs and all manner of upgrades these days. With the accompanying price tag . . .

Bringing you up to speed, we’re back it on the outdoor projects: farming and fencing. We installed the new wood furnace last week, and while we tested for draw, we haven’t actually used it yet:

We picked up an old Ford field tiller at an auction, and that’s certainly making the groundbreaking easier in the garden extension. It took a day to pull down the fence, work up the ground in the current garden, and put the fence back up to keep the deer out of the orchard. Come spring, we’ll add on to the fence.

Also borrowed a rock rake. Have to take care of this year’s crop, after all!

The pasture fence posts are here! And some are in the ground—the pasture will be about 300 feet by 100 feet, or just over three-quarters of an acre. If we ever manage to get additional land, we’ll revisit this, maybe add another pasture for cows.

In the meantime, we’re putting in an open pole barn for shelter and hay storage, because it looks like we might have a visitor from the neighbors: Chestnut, a seven-year-old sorrel mare who needs to be saddle-broke. No, I’m not planning on riding a bronc. She’s broke to harness, and needs some refresher courses.

Of course, I’m also the one who tripped over a landscape timber and had very sore knees for a couple days, so we’ll see how this goes. I’ll keep you updated!

Also found another Midnight-lookalike horse, from the Amish, who’s harness-broke. Very, very tempting . . . I messaged but haven’t heard back. Maybe I’ll call . . .