Ahead Or Behind

I can't figure out if I am ahead of the curve this year or so far behind that I'm getting lapped. LOL

This last week was a disaster. Apparently many of us that went to Pennsylvania got a 'bug'. On Monday, I had a tickle in my throat, but I was so irritated that I didn't realize it was a holiday and pretty much wasted my time going to town to run errands, that I didn't pay much attention to it. No banking and no postal service. Ugghhh!!! I woke up on Tuesday with a definite sore throat and a bit of a cough. But I had things to do, so I slugged my morning coffee and got to work. By noon, my throat and chest was on fire and after repeatedly getting light headed, I had to give up and retire to the couch.

And that was where I stayed for the next 2 days!! I managed to get my horses fed, but that was it.

Getting sick really interfered with my prairie dog eradication program. Yes...I'm still fighting those little suckers. They aren't back as bad as they were before, but only about one litter away from it. Grrrrr!!

My process seems a little ridiculous, but it's actually killing two birds with one stone...I bought a bunch of flags and walked around marking open holes. Then, because my irrigation head gates need to be dug out, I just take the bobcat up, get bucket loads of dirt and drive around the pasture dumping dirt on the marked open holes. There was A LOT of holes!! But by filling them all in first and dumping a pile of dirt on them, I have been able to reduce the number of holes I had to gas bomb to about a 1/3 of the original number of open holes. Now that the headgates are dug out again, I just need to take the box blade up and grade the land in front of them a little bit and the pasture will be ready to plow up and replant. I'll never completely win the war with the prairie dogs, the absentee land owners next door ensure that....Because they don't/won't do anything about the prairie dog town on their junky land, but between myself and my other two affected neighbors, we are putting a hurting on the problem. :-)

As you have probably guessed, I got absolutely nothing accomplished with the horses this week. In fact, after being sick for two days and then trying to get finished up with the dirt work before the weather was supposed to change, I totally forgot about the Western Dressage clinic I was going to go to this weekend. :-(. Darn it!!

I've had the mares up all this week, while I was working in their pasture, now that I'm pretty much done, I can turn them back out, but still need to get Frenchie and Beretta's feet trimmed. Miss and Belle are done. Those two sweeties just let me catch and trim them in the pasture. Beretta is no problem either, but Frenchie is back to being an assache about her feet. I know that foot that wants to club makes her sore in the shoulder, but every since I got this mare, I have thought she needs some chiropractic work. I didn't want to get into that while she was carrying a baby, but I guess right now is as good a time as it will get to get her worked on. I want to take her to the same guy I took The Big Bay horse to in Gunnison. It's a long drive for one horse, but what he does is so worth it. Quite honestly, if it wasn't for Dr. Komerack, I doubt I would have ever gotten Jet to the point he is now.

It's frustrating that a whole week slips by without a single horse getting worked, but I'm trying to remind myself that the dirt work in the pasture absolutely HAS to get done so the pasture is ready to be farmed as soon as possible. Getting the pasture replanted and getting grass back in there is my biggest priority this year. Not having ANY grass for the horses has almost doubled the amount of hay I have to feed and obviously that costs me big time. So I kinda figure if I can just get all of the property maintenance chores done by the 1st of March, I might be a little behind on riding horses....I'm ahead of the curve on everything else. :-D.