A Day Late but...

Happy Spring Equinox!

Tulips, Watercolor, by Amy (c)2018

The snow is gone from all but the shadiest spots. The temperature isn't quite warm but looks to be inching back up. Shedding season for Gwyn is on a roll and Saffron is stubbornly holding onto her coat still, which seems normal for her.

The seeds we ordered for our garden this year have arrived and we'll be planting those soon to get the starts nice and healthy before moving them outside. Once the nights stop being so cold we'll move the fish and aquaponics back outside. The goldfish have done well in the basement, the mojito mint just LOVES the aquaponics and the lemongrass did well too. Everything else got bug infested. We kept the spiders around though. Spiders are great garden friends.

I plan on making tea bags out of the mint. We have a dehydrator and I've got fill your own tea bags in my Amazon cart as we speak.

We will be rototilling the garden beds soon to prepare the soil for planting and adding more compost to them to beef up the soil level again, as things have settled through the winter.

Bring on the longer days and shorter nights!

Trailer Reorganization

One thing I really want to do to prep for show season this year is get my trailer organized and using the space efficiently for storage of necessary items. I take a lot with me, especially camping, and being able to store most of it in the tack room rather than the bed of my truck in totes would be very handy, especially since I put the tent up in the bed of the truck and thus have to unload everything first. This gets hampered when there is inclement weather. 

The current state of the dressing room in my trailer. AKA A Mess

Note the saddle pads and wool cooler thrown in haphazardly, the single saddle rack (I have the second in the barn), not nearly enough hooks, a whip holder installed by the previous owners, lots of buckets, my cross country vest and a huge water container for rides where there isn't water available (like when I trail ride)

There's the water container and bonus spare tire.

Oh! And my tent, which I want to rewaterproof, but just threw in after camping in October.  I'm so on top of things

NEED MOAR HOOKS.  There is also a handy dandy mirror on the left there as well as a packing list for a not my kind of horse show, haha. 

In trying to get the door open I basically removed weather stripping. It had frozen to the door. So that's another thing that needs to be fixed, probably on a day when it isn't freezing so that the adhesive will work better.

I made this spiffy paint drawing for my husband when I was talking to him about what I wanted to do. See the amazing 3D rendering!?

THE PLAN

But seriously, the water tank creates a lot of dead space all above it. I think I'm going to need to pinterest for more ideas (because alas, pinterest can be useful for aggregating ideas for stuff like this) but someone suggested using wire shelving instead of peg board as it may be lighter.

Something like this:

The Floor plan, not to scale, but pretty darn proportionate if I do say so myself

Anyway, peg board or metal racks? Definitely build the shelves? I'd like to have a place to keep saddle pads, coolers and a first aid kit and that seems like a good way to do it. I do have a hanging saddle pad holder that could be attached to the shelves.

And how the heck do you attach things to the inside of the trailer? Do I need to learn to weld? Can I just screw stuff in? I am so lost here.

Ready for Hunting Season!

This is a project that I've had in the pipeline for about a year now. The main gist is that I wanted to have something for cold weather that could function both as a quarter sheet and as a big orange flag to hunters that we were not a deer. As rifle season starts in two days, I finished this just in time!

Kaylee made this herself! It's a purse made with my scrap pieces and is held together with rare earth magnets. It's pretty ingenious engineering, and modular to boot!

So materials list are:

2 yards of your fav fleece material. Every so often JoAnns (if you're US) has a sale on fleece. Go then.

3-4 packages of double fold bias tape quilt binding (A total of 9-12 yards)  NOTE:  9 yards was about 8 inches shy of what I needed. You may get more out of your binding if you don't make as big a hole.

1 foot of 3 inch wide velcro

sewing machine

thread

Here's my diagram. It's minimal cutting. Woo!

I folded my fabric in half such that it appeared when draped over a horse's backside it would be of a decent length to either side. Then I cut in along the fold but not all the way through. I made crescent cuts until I had opened up the middle of it so it would go around my body, while leaving the flat entrance.

Then, I put the quilt binding bias tape along the edge, pinned it in place and sewed it on. I didn't take many pictures of the sewing step. Sorry.

Sewing on the bias tape.

Once all the bias tape was sewn on, I separated my velcro pieces and pinned them in place on each of the fleece such that the flat sides where I cut could overlap and the velcro would attach to itself.  That's represented by the black and gray strip. Imagine the gray being on the underhalf of the fleece.

Ta-da! You're done! Unless you want to add a tail rope, which I might do at some point.

Looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

The attachment with the velcro

See? Velcro!

Draped over Gwyn's butt, nice and orange! No mistaking us for deer!

I still need to test it during a ride but I'm pretty sure it will fit me better than the one I bought. The goal is for it to go over my legs to keep me warm too. It could also fit under a saddle flap if I wanted.

I'm pretty proud of this! I winged it hardcore and there was some anxiety as I cut into the fleece. No going back!

All for less than $30!


My next project is a riding skirt that can also function as a quarter sheet. And once I perfect that I'm going to splurge on some nice waterproof outwear fabric and make it from that for rainy rides.

Prepping for Mud

In a first for me, I decided to try doing a mud knot for Gwyn's tail to keep it up and out of the muck and mud as winter trudges ever toward us. We've had enough rain at this point that the creek has water in it. Saffron is making the most of the water and drier areas of the runs.

Tonight after the girls were in bed I headed out to do barn chores and decided that tonight was the night. Gwyn was getting her mud knot.

So after making up the grain and filling hay bags, I pulled Gwyn out and started grooming.

 First step was to get all the knots out of her tail. It's been a while since I did a thorough brushing so it took me a while to work through all the hair. Her friesian side is really strong with her mane and tail and she's got a LOT of tail. It grows well too and usually is near to or dragging on the ground. I used a human hair product that's basically just silicone dioxide for getting rid of tangles.



Look at that beautifully brushed tail that nearly touches the ground. LOOK AT IT.

So after brushing it you braid it. Start the braid below the tail bone. You want to leave a decent amount of room. I elasticed it off. Then you wrap it in vetwrap or similar self adhesive wrap. If it's fly season, apparently you add baling twine to act as the horse's tail to swat flies.

Final product. The vetwrapped part can swing freely and it keeps her tail up and out of the mud! We'll see how it goes. It didn't take me long to do, so I'll redo if necessary and/or reevaluate.

Yellow Jackets

If you're friends with me on facebook you've likely seen these pictures, if not, a warning: If you don't like wasps/stinging insects, this might not be the post for you.

Our Newest Addition

Eric hasn't been worn down enough to let me get a pony for the girls to ride, so I satisfied myself with a Halloween addition. We introduced Bony Pony to the herd on Saturday, much to our amusement.  Saffron is NOT a fan and has Powered Up into Protect the Herd mode like a good donkey. Gwyn has decided it's just another thing that Mom throws at her and she should ignore it.

We also hung skeleton person, who has seen better days. It seems more halloween decoration acquiring is in my future :D 

Saffron on high alert

We also took a trip over to our neighbor's house. She has brand new baby chicks!

Both girls were thrilled!

And on Sunday a friend came over and Gwyn got lots of loving.

Making Sweet Relish!

So, our garden has been abundant this season! We had collected around 9 lbs of cucumbers (which is a lot of cucumbers by the way) and I knew that I had to SOMETHING with it so that they wouldn't go to waste.  That's really my main goal with our garden; not wasting the food we're growing.

To that end, I grabbed some canning supplies, a premade mix of spices for making sweet relish, and pulled my big pots out from the back of the cabinets. I spent all yesterday morning working hard at the stove to make sure things would be good. The mix estimated that I'd get 5 quarts. I got 7.

So... merry christmas family! You're getting homemade relish for christmas!

First step after washing all the veggies was to chop the ends off and then cut the cucumber up into 1 inch pieces. You then food process those smaller pieces. My processor could only do 3-4 cucumbers at a time.

You then add pickling salt (special salt just for pickling, table salt and kosher salt will leave sediment, apparently), mix well, and let it chill in the fridge for 2 hours. After two hours, strain it to get rid of the liquid.

Then, you use white vinegar, sugar and the pickling spices and cook it for about 10 minutes at a simmer. Then you add the strained cucumber bits and boil for a bit.

Meanwhile, get the canning jars and lids nice and hot and fill them up with 1/2 headroom. Finger tighten the lids. Then set them back in the water bath and process for 15 minutes (we're pretty much at sea level, increase according to your altitude)

Pull them out to cool for 24 hours. Test the seal with the popper on the lid. If any can pop, refridgerate and use within a week. Otherwise, they have a shelf life of 1 year. I labeled the lids with the date and year so we know.

My next project is to make spaghetti sauce with all of our tomatoes and now that I've gone through one canning session with the equipment I have, I know what I need.  For one, a bigger pot. The other jars I have are all full pint size (the relish in in half pints) and my biggest pot will not get an adequate 1 inch of water above the pint jars. Also, the pot I ordered comes with a rack so I can drop the jars in all at once and it keeps them off the bottom of the pot to reduce clanking from the bubbles while boiling. I also snagged a bigger scoop for easier filling (I already have a funnel) and some dissolveable labels.

I'm excited!