Hot and Humid

I knew moving back to the east was going to be an adjustment to hot and humid summers.  It surely has been rough.  We go outside and barely walk around and we are already covered in sweat dripping off us.  Humidity has been in the 80% range lately with lots of temperatures in the 90s, dewpoint has been in the high 70 degrees as well so it is quite sticky.  The horses have been sweating a lot.

They choose to stay in the barn during the day since it's shaded and cooler.  They go for short trips to the pasture to graze but then wander back to cool off.  They are both great drinkers so I'm happy with that!  Since the barn has a fairly solid stall divider we decided to remove a few boards to allow for more airflow.  A barn fan we purchased was just the ticket for making their haven even more cooling.  Unfortunatly there wasn't a great place to hang it to hit both of them equally but taking down some wood allows wind to blow to Chances stall.  Sometimes though it seems the horses switch it up and Dani is in his stall and vice versa.  

I stood in his stall and made sure there was good wind coming that way.  For now, that is the best location.  We will maybe get another fan at some point to point in the other stall but this seems to work nicely.  Needless to say not much riding has happened this summer.  It's been too hot and humid and then with our pathetic mower it seems all we do is yard work.

We have ideas for reducing our mowing....one of those plans includes buying a good tractor with a front loader.  Only question is what size?  Under deck mower or is a bush hog better for pasture mowing?  Too many choices but these are expensive choices!

The other plan is related to our future want for bees and other pollinators.

In other plans I do have a contact for a riding instructor and think that when it starts to get less miserable I can get back into regular lessons for a bit on both the ponies.  They don't seem to mind just chilling on the pasture and getting groomed now and again but I do miss riding!  I ride the mower more than Dani!

In other news...flies suck.  We haven't had a ton which is great but we do have the handful of large horseflies.  They are mean little assholes and no fly repellent seems to work.  My poor babies.

Run-in with Termites

We knew the run-in shed already had some termite damage in some of the wood.  When I noticed a new little termite tunnel though, it moved our rebuilding of the shed to the forefront.  Termites build little mud tubes so they don't dry out, that's always something to look for.

The main supports were most likely treated wood and had no termite damage at all so we just have to remove the surround and then the boards that contact the ground.  Most likely it was no treated wood.

If I scraped the mud off the boards you could see some of the tunnels.

Some of the boards had years of extensive damage.  You need to catch it right away!  Many boards we took out weighed nothing and sounded like rain sticks!  At least they weren't the support beams.

As we began to set up for the demolition the ponies of course wanted to help.

What's dad doing?  I certainly didn't want them stepping on the nails or being in the way of falling wood so I herded them in to on the of the fields and filled some buckets of water since they didn't have access to the trough being locked the pasture.

Leading Dani through the gate and clopped in a mud puddle and it went all up my leg!  LOL.  I never stay clean around here.  It's just not possible.

It wasn't too bad to tear it apart, building it back up will take more time.

We pilled all the wood up and then were able to haul it away in the truck.  Steve later dug a trench and sprayed for termites around all the supports.  We had professionals come do the prevention spray around the barn, storage shed and house.  They found some indications of termites in our garage....guess the darn inspector missed that when we bought the house.  I don't think there is extensive damage like the shed since there were also indications that the house had received termite treatment by drilling into the floor of the garage.    At least we know we have prevention in place and will keep up with that.  

We also will paint the shed and barn with a insect repellent mixed into the paint and use pressure treated wood. 

Now we just have the skeleton of the shed, eventually we'll get to rebuilding it but there are always continual projects going on and mowing....oh the mowing!!!

Life has been very busy...

Here's a pony pic!