Saturday, May 7, 2016

All Tore Up

Finally got my pickup back. A whole week late. They looked very nervous in the office when I walked in to get it. I guess word got around that I was extremely pissed off at them. Thank god they were smart enough to keep their mouths shut though because I'm not sure I wouldn't have blown a gasket if any of them had said anything to me. They just handed me the bill and my keys. I gave them their checks and turned around and walked out. You can bet I will be leaving a scathing comment about their lack of communication and failed time table on Yelp.

As it turns out, I was right on target about when my mares would all start coming into heat. Sometimes I hate being right. The gray mare came into heat on the 1st. Frenchie came into heat a couple days later and Scamper is just coming in now. Beretta was the week before, which wasn't a huge deal because that would have put her foaling date a tish early next year.

It will all work out in the end though. As long as everyone settles on the first try, which hopefully shouldn't be a problem. I'm not worried about whether any of the mares will settle, just whether the gray mare can carry. The gray mare is cycling every 2 weeks again this year. She was the first one I noticed in heat, followed by Belle, followed by Beretta, then the Miss came in again, then Frenchie, now Scamper. Sassy should have gone through her 7-10 day heat after foaling, but I didn't/haven't seen her show any signs of it. It doesn't really matter though, since she foaled earlier than anticipated, I didn't feel the need to move her foaling date up. Both Sassy and Miss are going to be delivered to the stallion before I take off to deliver Frosty. Both mares should be coming into heat during that time frame.

As soon as I get home from my trip, I will deliver Scamper to Utah and may run Beretta to Arizona rather than have semen shipped up. The timing on that is actually just perfect. I have to go to Arizona for a wedding the first weekend in June, so Beretta should be bred by then and I can just bring her home afterward and then go get Scamper from Utah.

That only leaves Frenchie for me to deal with on my own, but come to find out, Moon is pretty handy as a teasing horse. I thought LJ would be a good teaser, but the only mare that responds to him is the gray mare and she just did a drive-by, realized he wasn't the real deal and left. Everyone responds to Moon though. Of course he makes a good show of it for them. He arches his neck, flags his tail and struts his stuff up and down the fence. You would think he was a real stallion. Hahahahaha.

In the middle of this whole fiasco though, I realized that I simply was not going to get water to run on my pasture very well unless I went ahead and dug up the heads and lifted them up at least a foot. We worked so hard to cut all of the silt build-up down and remove the hump that made it difficult for water to run and it just wasn't enough. I fought water all of last year and I just don't want to spend my whole summer dealing with that again. If I had known last year that a person actually could dig those heads out and lift them up, I would have done it then. But I had no prior experience with irrigation and no body told me that was doable, soooo...

Well, raising 2 of the heads was easy enough. The 3rd one was poorly put together, so that one is being difficult (still working on that) and the 4th...Well, lets just say...That one will not be getting lifted up. All of the up stems are plastic, except the end one, which is metal. It would cost a fortune to have an extension made for it. On the other hand, digging it out and replacing it with plastic and then redoing the cement plug at the end is not really any cheaper. If it wasn't for the fact that the air bubble stem was rotted through and fell off when I dug out around the head, I would just fill it back in. I KNEW something was leaking around that head, but I thought it was just because the seal on the head was bad. Nope!! Well, now I am waiting for a welder to come and repair that piece so that I can fill in around the head and can turn my water on again. This turned into a much bigger pain in the ass than I anticipated, but that just seems to be how my luck goes. Mostly, it's having to all of the work alone that makes it so difficult. The hubs has absolutely no interest in any of it and trying to find help that knows what the hell they are doing, this time of year is next to impossible. I know so little about all of this that it makes for slow going for me. Every time I don't know what to do, I snap a bunch of pictures and head to the irrigation supply store. Thank goodness those guys are extremely knowledgable and really helpful. I think they find me a bit of a novelty. Of course, I have spent a butt-load in their store over the last couple of years, so that helps a little bit too, I suppose. LOL.

Well, at least I have my pickup back. I never realized how helpless not having a pickup made me. It's been a long, long time since I have ever been 'afoot' like that. I did not like it.

4 comments:

cdncowgirl said...

You know, there have been times I wished at least my hayfield was irrigated. But after your stories I think I'm glad it's not. Yikes!

Shirley said...

The guys in the truck shop could learn a lesson in customer service from the irrigation guys.

BrownEyed Cowgirl said...

Cdn-It's 80% due to how neglected the irrigation system was. It was neglected and trashed before we bought the place. After we bought it, I just sort of limped along with it for the first few years because I wasn't really sure how I wanted everything to lay out. This year will be the last big PITA. But, like I said, if I had known last year that I could have just dug those heads out and lifted them up when we already had the land tore up, it would have been a lot easier to do then.

Crystal said...

Im so glad there is no irrigation here, I question it every once in a while but then just talk to someone who has it and they say they get feed out of it, not cheaper and sure not less work so we will stick with what we had.

So many mares going different places wow that will keep you busy for a while, be nice when everyone is home and settled