My Nikon D200 has been a daily companion on lighter duty outings around the house and farm. This flower has been soaking up countless weeks of ninety degree days and enjoying every minute of it. I’ve been doing the same, although I do look forward to some “mild” eighty degree days 
Looking north to Cahas Mountain, we witness this evening what often happens to weaker rain clouds moving southward towards us. They run into the mountain, slow down, and slide eastward toward the Route 220 corridor. This system is strengthening though so I’m hoping that we’ll get a little rain this evening. If we do miss out, good ‘ol Ernesto will hook us up because according to the latest path projection. Ernesto will be rolling over us as a tropical depression and will be bringing several inches of rain. To which I say, bring it on!
I think Ruth Mitchell’s painting of Junior deserves a second look. Here he is at walk. Ruth says the hardest part about painting a horse in such a way is washing it off an hour or two after it’s finished
Chloe was giving mom a hand when I got back from bringing Moira to her first day of 1st grade at North Cross School.
A recent post by The MacBean Gene inspired me to give a nod to our two farm dogs. Sophie is our four year old Great Dane, and Hamlet is our one year old Corgi. Sophie and Hamlet are inseparable. Together they’ve chased countless deer and other small terrified fauna through countless miles of woodlands surrounding our property. Sophie is taller than an average female Dane but much more slender. She looks and runs like a giant Greyhound. I’ve clocked her at 26mph with the digital speedometer in our Prius. I’ve been able to increase her weight to 86 pounds by feeding her a special food with 30% protein and 20% fat. This brand of food has helped sled dogs win the Iditarod and I have a 40 pound bag shipped every three weeks.
Hamlet, thanks to Sophie, remains in superb shape for a Corgi. 99% of other Corgis I see are barrels with legs but Hamlet could win Iron Man competitions if they held them for dogs. I’ve seen hamlet chase down little mice like a heat seaking patriot missile. It’s pretty impressive.
I want another dog but then I’d be bumping against my own self imposed limit of two dogs on the farm. But I saw a Cane Corso puppy at a recent horse show and I thought he was an awesome little dog and after seeing adults (WITHOUT their ears clipped) I decided I’d love to have one. Sniff.
This is the machine shed. It has gone through several transformations since we moved in one and a half years ago. When I acquired it, it had 3” of refuse and debris covering the ground, and it was full of other peoples’ junk. Last fall, I cleared it out and my brother in-law Matthew, along with my father in-law Paul kindly helped me install two “portable” horse stalls to house some excess horses through the winter months. But since March the stalls had remained empty and neglected. So, one month ago, I disassembled the stalls and reassembled them in the storage barn – a much more sensible location for the upcoming winter months. But moving the stalls in the storage barn compelled me to transfer my supplies and materials to the machine shed. It seemed like the next logical place. Since there were no shelves in the machine shed, I simply dropped the supplies on the ground. As you can see from the photo, this was less than ideal!
As you can see in the above photo, the 80×36 storage barn is being asked to do ALOT. Unseen in the photo is – at left – the 12×20 office. Then just past that and barely visible is a 6×12 alcove where plenty of gas powered landscaping toys are hung. Then past that on the left is a 12×12 stallion stall currently being used as grain storage. Then past that is floorspace for 800 square bales. Next, to the right and on the other side of the aisle is the sawdust bin, with enough room for 18 yards of sawdust. Hidden by the bin wall at right is a pallet of Quikrete bags. Then the two 12×12 modular stalls. Then past the stalls at right are shelves and bins I built earlier to store enough materials for 1,000’ of three rail vinyl fence that I’ve so far uprooted from the farm.
Without a person standing in the photo it’s hard to get a sense of scale but the barn wall is sixteen feet tall. That’s an enormous amount of freaking vinyl. Soon, I’ll be contacting the local therapeutic riding center and the Roanoke Valley Horse Rescue. Perhaps they can use it – once pressure washed this would be a gorgeous and functional fence. At today’s prices this fence material would cost $13,000 new. I’m not kidding. As oil gets more expensive so to will vinyl fencing so I imagine you’ll start seeing alot more wood fence at Lowes.
So, now we’ve come full circle. Back to the machine shed where yesterday I zipped over to Lowes and came back with $100 worth of untreated 2×8x8 lumber. It took me just over three hours to build this 8’ tall and 7’ wide shelf. Now that the ground is freed up I’m now feeling much more optimistic now about the prospect of parking both tractors in the machine shed – at the same time 
Ruth Mitchell of Equinology, Inc., is teaching the east coast edition of the Equine Sports Massage Foundation Certification Course and it’s been fun hosting the course on our farm. Over a dozen students from the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom traveled to Franklin County to attend this course and here it’s plain they’re in good hands with Ruth!
Earlier in the year I roughed out plans for a new building to, among other things, house a classroom and conference area. I shelved this idea because it didn’t seem to gel with our short term plans and it wasn’t clear Nancy wanted to take the farm in that direction. However, with the class taking place this week I’m thinking I’ll take this idea off the cerebral backburner. We’ve got most of the essential ingredients to host such courses, but we lack a classroom with all of the proper creature comforts. We’re happy to donate the southwest “wing” of our home for the class but it’s not an ideal setup over the long term if classes are taking place once or twice monthly.
I’m thinking it would be best be to convert the 36×78 storage barn into a multi-purpose structure housing a larger tack room, a larger wash stall and an ample conference/classroom area. A breezeway would attach the stable barn and the re-purposed barn and both buildings would continue to have direct access to the indoor arena. This would necessitate the construction of a separate storage barn for hay, sawdust and shavings – something that I already plan on doing anyway. Because storing highly flammable materials in a barn that directly connects to the indoor arena and the stable is not, er, ideal.
Here is one of the students – a fellow horse farmer from just outside of Toronto, Ontario. She is working on Minnie, a very spoiled and long retired sport horse. I hope to get some good snapshots of each of the students and hope to share the photos with each of them. Just a little something to help them remember their visit to Franklin County, Virginia!
Chloe will be entering Junior Kindergarten at North Cross on Monday! Moira will be entering first grade! Both are excited to be riding the North Cross bus to school every morning. Chloe is four but has been in some form of part-time pre-school since she was two years old. First, one year at Tall Oaks Montessori in Blacksburg, then the next year at New Vista Montessori in Roanoke. So now I’ve got a four year old and a six year old who are both smarter than I was when I was ten years old. I’m not sure what to think about that
In farm related news, I finished the latest fenceline. This afternoon I torn down all partition fencing on the back side of our creek so it won’t be long until the back side of the creek is one contiguous 2,000’ long field for pleasure riding and jumping. I also opened up a few spots in the hillside forest fence for future trail clearing.
I also scored some sources for good quality hay as far away as Montgomery County. More on that later.
We’ll be paying $6 a bale come December. Baled hay for horses is plentiful now but judging by the height of the grass growing now we’re looking at a mighty sparse second cut. I think good bottomland fields are in great shape but most folks in our region don’t grow hay in bottomland. They grow cattle. Hay is usually grown in less desirable fields for cattle production which means fields without a natural water supply. Ergo, the tops of hills and dales and so on. And those hills and dale grasses are under pressure right now from the relatively dry and hot weather we’re having. Warm season grasses like Johnson Grass are going to town but timothy and bermuda grass are being cooked in this heat. I’m going to be shopping for at least six hundred small square bales until I fill my storage barn so if you know anyone willing to transport to Boones Mill then let me know.
