A little bit about our infrastructure, in case you're curious.
We are situated on what I believe to be an end glacial moraine ridge which
slopes down and away from us to the east, south, and west, giving us
a million dollar view of the surrounding Douglas County farm country.
We've been told we are on the highest point in Douglas County.
I think our neighbors to the east are actually a foot higher.
Ah well...
We have nearly 11 acres which is divided into 8 pastures of varying
sizes, 6 of which are horse-ready, with a 7th having been seeded this past
spring (2009) and has grown up like gangbusters. For the REALLY curious,
the details of the mix are as follows (this is also the same mix we have
frost seeded on some of the other pastures):
29.7% Timothy
19.9% Hardy Alfalfa
19.9% Intermediate Perennial Ryegrass
18.9% Orchard Grass
9.8% Kentucky Bluegrass
"Frost seeding", in case you're not familiar with the term, is seeding in
the spring some weeks before the normal last frost date so that the frost
heaving of the earth will help incorporate the seeds into the ground.
We intend to do another frost seeding of the new pasture in early spring 2010
to help fill in some bare spots. It will eventually be fenced - hopefully
sometime in 2011.
We have 3 outbuildings consisting of the south barn which has 4 horse stalls,
the north barn which has 8 stalls, and the machine shed which houses the
tractors and other tools and implements, and for now, sawdust storage.
Attached to the machine shed is an office, currently being used for storage,
which we call Wanger Cafe. (don't ask...) It's mostly used by our cats,
Archangelo and Duckmenico (AKA Ducky) who are totally spoiled. They have
their food in there and a nice warm comfy futon for overnite sleepins when
the weather is particularly nasty.
There are also two horse shelters in one of the pastures, two grain bins
of 8000 and 4000 bushel capacity, which we rent out to neighboring farmers,
our house, and a detached 3-car garage.
Our horse facilities aren't fancy (or schmanzy), and we are continually trying
to make them safer, nicer, and more comfortable for both horse and human.
Some stalls have sliding doors and some have hinged steel mesh doors.
Four of the stalls in the south barn are horse ready. (As an aside, these 4
stalls aren't actually in the south barn - they are part of a newer addition
to the structure.)
In the north barn, of the 8 stalls, 4 are horse ready, with another
2 in various stages of being prepared for horse habitation.
There are also 2 other stalls in this barn which are currently being used
as hay, grain, and tack storage. We are hoping at some point to expand
this barn to the west in order to add more stalls as well as a hay and grain
room and a tack room/lounge kind of thing for the humanoids.
We are also trying to go "green" little by little (It costs money to save
money, doncha know...) by switching to CFLs (those expensive compact fluorescent
light bulbs that take forever to get bright when it's cool or cold) and
by capturing rainwater from the barn roofs into a couple of plastic tanks of
325 gallon and 425 gallon capacities. We then run hoses from the tanks to
where the water is needed in each barn. They sit on very sturdy 4 foot high
wood platforms so we can take advantage of gravity feed. The tanks and new
gutters to feed them and the platforms should pay for themselves within a year.
This winter we may try using imersion heaters to keep them ice free. We'll see...
And what we saw was...
Picked up some imersion water tank heaters from the local farm supply store - the
kind that are thermostatically controlled (kick on at 35 degrees) and by default,
are floaters, but a cap and the inside styrofoam can be removed to convert them
into sinkers, which is what I did for the two water tanks. However, there is a
small plastic lip just inside the water tanks' 5" top opening that is about 3/4" wide,
which prevented the round heaters from going into the tanks. Hmmmm..... now what?
I thought about sawing the lip off with a little hacksaw but as soon as I started
to do that, I noticed it was making lots of little pieces of plastic sawdust.
Not good, I thought, to have that in the horse's drinking water.
Plan B consisted of taking an old butcher knife I had in my toolbox and using a
propane torch to heat the blade and cut thru the plastic like a hot knife thru butter.
Worked like a charm. Turns out I only needed to cut about 5 inches of the lip out
instead of cutting out the entire circumference. With that 5 inches out of the way,
the heaters (now without their thick plastic top that holds the styrofoam) just barely
snugged their way in and I lowered them to the bottom of the tank. We're doing them
as sinkers for the water tanks because the bottom is where the valve is and that's
where it needs to be ice free.
For the big blue horse water trough (also filled by roof runoff), I left its heater
as a floater so the surface can remain ice free, allowing the horses to drink from it.
2nd discovery....
Now we were actually looking forward to it getting below freezing so I could see if
these heaters were going to work! Well, the first time it did fall a few degrees
below freezing (all hoses were removed and emptied in anticipation), I went out in the
morning to see how the water was doing and proceeded to try and turn on the tank's
faucet. Dohp! Froze up! Now why hadn't I thought about that?! Ha! Fortunately,
I had previously bought a cheapo hairdryer and kept it in the barn just for such
contingencies. A few minutes on hi around the valve and valve stem opened it right up!
That afternoon I scurried off to the farm supply store and picked up two electric heat
tapes for pipes and then proceeded to wrap the valves and stems, securing with electrical
tape, and then using the enclosed insulation wrap, did another wrap-around, again, securing
with electrical tape. One other trick I was told about by Mike Cross of Crosswind Equine
Rescue (he has a similar water tank setup) was to duct tape one of those emergency (mylar,
I think they are) blankets over the top of the tank. I had previously purchased a couple
of them, and as it was predicted that we were going to get some well below freezing temps
with hi winds that evening, I proceeded to attempt to get them on the tanks.
Well, if you've ever tried to wrangle a 6' x 8' piece of flapping mylar in a 20 mph wind
and get it duct taped to a cold hemisphere-shaped piece of plastic - by yourself, I don't
advise it! Anyway, to make a frustrating saga short, I did actually manage to get the
damn things securely duct taped all 'round on both tanks and took my frostbitten fingers
back to the house where I could look out and see my handiwork - two weird looking silver
topped domes. Turned out to be short lived....
3rd and 4th discoveries....
The bad news is that the wind got stonger (30 mph sustained with higher gusts) and it got
colder. A few hours later, I looked out and saw silver mylar flapping in the wind.
Venturing out to assess the damage, I realized that this stuph just can't stand up to the
wind and the cold - it was shredding and bits were flying off far and wide into the
pastures and adjoining fields. Ah well, so much for that experiment. The good news is
that the duct tape is still there and hasn't budged! Good stuph that! And the emergency
blankets were only a couple bucks each, so no big loss there.
Now then, how will the water and valves fare now that we're in for sub-20 temps and wind
chill factors of -10? The next morning (wind chills were still sub-zero), I went out and
gave a tentative counterclockwise tug on the water valve and viola!, it turned without
any effort at all and water roared out of the garden hose size opening! We just might
get thru the winter without resorting to the gallon-a-minute-leak-somewhere-in-the-system
barn water hydrant.
Details, works in progress, and future plans:
- get the electrical wiring up to snuff in the south barn (No.1 priority!)
[Oct. 2009 update]: Well, at least that one's done - the electrical upgrade for
the south barn! Thanks to a fair chunk o' change and the dedicated mastery of
an electrician we know who is hard to get (took almost a year to get him),
we now have new wiring and new lights (mostly CFLs) and outside floods!
Brent, who lives just up the road about 11 miles or so on a farm, and who,
with his wife, also has horses and barns, knows full well how a horse barn
should (and should not) be wired and what works and what doesn't.
Thank you Brent!
- constuct a 12' wide x 18' deep x 11' high structure attached to the north
side of the south barn with a sloped roof and 6' x 11' doors for sawdust storage.
This is so we can move the sawdust (it's a LOT of sawdust) from its current
covered storage area in the machine shed so that we can use that recovered
space as an (albeit smallish) indoor arena. Hopefully, at some point, we can
expand the machine shed to the north another 16', and then the space would be
a really nice indoor arena.
[Spring 2010 update]: This project may be scrapped in favor of less expensive large
tarp weighted down with old tires drilled so rainwater drains out to keep the
mosquito population down. The sawdust bin was a nice, elegant idea anyway, I
thought. Maybe when we win the lottery or Pam wins the Pulitzer...
[January 2011 update]: Yeah, well, a big tarp and lots of tires to cover the big
sawdust pile works great for 3 out of 4 seasons... When snow and/or ice cover
the thing beyond all recognition, it becomes instantly useless. Sawdust storage
is returning to the machine shed - for now.
- fence in the new pasture (pasture zero, as we call it, since we had already
numbered the other pastures in a logical way - or least in a way that made
sense to us...)
- structurally, add another 16 feet, to the north, onto the machine shed so that
the north half can be turned into a small indoor riding arena. This would
require moving a big pile of C-14 gravel (not hard) as well as relocating the
500 gallon propane tank used for the machine shed heater (not hard, but we'd
have to contract the propane guy to do the work).
[January 2011 update]: We're now thinking a "clearspan" structure of, say, 60' x 100'
or so, would be more cost effective and give a larger indoor riding arena.
- construct another 3 or 4 horse shelters for the other pastures.
- add on to the north barn to the west in order to make some slightly
larger stalls and to give us a "feed room" and a tack room/lounge.
That would also free up two stalls currently being used as the barn's
hay, feed, and tack room, plus they could then be opened up to the
covered dry lot to the east.
- try to get the leak in the water lines running out to the barns fixed,
or run new lines, depending on which might be cheaper, since we have
not been able to determine just where the leak is. This is probably
another lottery or Pulitzer winnings project.
[January 2011 update]: This has risen (for a number of reasons) to the
top of the priority list and some sort of fix for this will be actively
persued this spring!
- possibly get the well water pump working (currently all our water usage,
except for the collected rainwater, is expensive city water) and get the
outside water lines switched over to it. Of course the well water would
need to be tested before we use it for horses.
[more here when I get time....]