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.
4 comments:
Looks like you have the same horseflies we do. That one is huge! I only saw one this year that big, and honestly I laughed at it cuz it was obviously too well fed to hunt me. I've really enjoyed watching the spiders wrap them up in their webs and carry them to a corner to enjoy later. Especially enjoyable is when the spider is way smaller than the horsefly. Yah!
The heat and humidity is slowly killing my will to live. Everyday I am just a mop of sweat. UGH!
"Killing my will to live""... I heard that loud & clear as we had a few weeks this summer where the humidity was as high as 90%+. Not the kind of weather that makes you want to put on your britches or jeans & go ride, especially since everything that flies also seems to bite. Long sleeves in July? Nope. Not unless you enjoy the light-headed-ness of heat stroke. The only thing that works even a little bit here is to light hot, smoky smudges; the horses smell like campfires but you know the smoke is effective when they'll stand in it for hours at a time.
I concur. I'm not seeing many of the neighbors in the arena up the way riding either. It's just too darn hot and humid. At least the end is near! Winters are nice here at least.
Post a Comment