Apple Picking Season!!

Yeah, not that kind of apple.....  :-(

The horses are now going to be kept in the Wormhole and The Shire for the winter while we work on the rejuvenating other two pastures (post to follow).  Since we cannot rotate pastures because of that nor let manure dry out for a couple weeks after being harrowed (dragged) we have to resort to picking the field again to prevent parasite issues in our ponies.

This means we get to pick the field every week!  We've gone a couple weeks without doing such and it took us a while to get The Shire cleaned up today.  It was a gorgeous breezy fall day so I can't complain.  We need to do a final mow too so it will be easier to rake the piles and spot treat any weeds until we can let this pasture rest and reseed next spring.  

Unfortunately our apple trees are still too little to get edible apples so we must be satisfied with pony apples. We are going in two weeks to get four more apple trees and a couple pear trees!  Can't wait to have our little orchard fully mature!!  I'm sure the ponies will benefit from it as well!

It's been a few nice weeks of fall-ish weather here in NC, some hotter than others and many trees are starting to change. We luckily avoided the flooding and other issues further south and east of us. The grass is becoming dormant despite the rains and I'm switching to hay...which means I am now able to get back into the feed room.  Two weeks ago the hay was right up to the door so the ponies had the task of eating our way back into the feed room.

It seems our house and property are unending with projects.  We have discovered mushrooms in our house windowsills so we need to replace our wooden windows, NOW.  The same company is going to put gutters on the barn so we will finally get working on our drainage project.  The shed still needs to be finished too.  We are in it for the long haul so it's good to get all this work done now and we can enjoy it sooner.  Being this is the second house we've owned with wooden and difficult windows to open I'm really excited about vinyl energy saving windows!!!  The ponies are happy and healthy and don't seem to care about any changes we make to our house or property. Fall is a busy time (like summer wasn't?)

I am happy with the weather being much more tolerable for outdoor work, fall has always been my favorite season.  Next summer I will have to just bite the bullet and arise early to avoid riding or working in the heat of midday. Even though I wish I had more time for the ponies I love having a property where they can be in my backyard and I can love on them whenever I desire.  Nickers in the morning is the best way to start my day!

The Oasis at Geek Acres

Right on the edge of our property is a little grove of trees.  It's nice and shady most of the time and a perfect relaxing hammock location.  At our house in CO I hung a hammock between our little apple trees and would love just chilling out listening to the wind and birds.  Here it's even more serene being in the country with less traffic noise.

It was over grown with underbrush so Steve got his handy chain saw out and went to work while I helped and hauled some mulch.

It was a lot to trim up and haul away but it's wonderful being all open now!

It's funny our little snake friend came out from the woods to inspect it and curl up on the edge of the shade when we were done.  I didn't want to disturb him so I didn't get a picture, plus we were ready to leave and go shower inside our cool house.

The next weekend after our mulch was layed down we hung up our hammocks.  Steve has a camping one that hugs you and I have a classic woven lounger with wooden ends.  It was very peaceful and well deserved to take a break on afternoon.  Seems all we've done with summer so far is mow and do another project....soon to be posted.

Steve even made hammocks for our beers!  We brought a cooler full of drinks and spent a couple hours napping in "The Oasis".  I'll have to bring a book sometime too.  The horses were in Westeros, the pasture closest to the grove, and were very interested in watching us hammocking.  Chance was also a little curious and worried about Spencer who happened to have a cone on his head because of stitches.

You know what the coolest thing is?  If you build something awesome in your yard...gnomes always seem to find a way to enjoy it with you!

Little changes around Geek Acres

The Wormhole is composed of three smaller areas separated by gates.  With how we manage the horses it only makes sense to open it up a little bit.  We plan to keep the fencing around the barnyard in tact so we can close it up if needed for riding one horse outside of that area.  You can refer to the diagrams here

We still have the drainage issue but it's something that will take some time and money to fix, gutters and a french drain will not be cheap or quick to accomplish.  For now at least the rains we've had haven't been too bad and standing water has receded quickly.  Steve and I removed the fencing between the riding area and the other part of the "Wormhole".  Where the temporary white wire fence is located will be where we put in more wooden fencing to complete that area.  In a way it will give me a little larger enclosed area to ride in and will make a less compartmentalized sacrifice area for the horses.

We attached the gate post to the barn for more support since we removed the fencing, plus before it was never attached and that just didn't make sense to me.  Hopefully you can see in the picture below that the boards just extend from the fence a little bit but don't meet up with the barn.  Darn, I really thought I took a good "before" picture.  Will have to be better about that!

Anyways it feels so open now and the horses are already making different paths as they walk to the other areas of the wormhole.  The next plan is to move the fence behind the run-in shed out a bit so that we don't have an area where a horse can get cornered...this is the area that most likely led to Chance getting kicked in the chest.

Also in Westeros we've begun working on the gravel pit that surrounded a rose bush.  We'll remove the gravel and larger rocks and then fill in holes and spread grass seed in this area.  The gravel was used to fill the holes from the wooden fence posts we removed so it served a good purpose....aka no injured ponies!  The rest of it we'll utilize for the perimeter of a small dog run we'll need to erect before I begin my job...10 hour days gone won't be good for my older boys.

Throughout all the fields there are some large rocks that jut out and interfere with the lawn mower.  We are slowly working on getting those removed and the holes filled.  It's gonna be a process.

Lastly with spring has come the blooming of plants and weeds.  I spent a good part of a day cleaning out the beds at the front of the house.  There were many weeds but also offshoots of whatever shrubs are planted there too.  It was a crazy mess.  It looks much better now.  Still have to pull out old mulch and rock and replace with fresh mulch.  Then I plan to use some pretty edge stones for the perimeter.  I may pull additional landscape plants out that seems a bit hap-hazardously planted and get some pretty border flowers going.  

All in time!  It feels good to get little things accomplished!

Our Farmlett Name?

I was recently asked in the comments what I've named my little farmlett.  I had Blue Crescent Stables for my Breyer barn when I was a kid.  What a grand name filled with show horses.

Now I have a small 4 acre plot with two horses, a hopeful orchard and future bees....plus we plan to start a garden.  We've named our pastures The Shire, Gallifrey and Westeros after some sci-fi and fantasy loves.  We have the "Wormhole" that is the sacrifice paddock that goes between them.  

It just makes sense to name it....Geek Acres.  Yes.  I'm sure I'm not the first, nor will I be the last but it's my little piece of this world and that name just works for us.  LOL.

And with that said, I'll leave you with this......

Curly Dock is the Bane of My Pastures!

The pastures need some love.  One in particular needs some weed control big time.  Curly dock is a broad leaf plant that is hard to control by simply pulling.  It has a large tap root.  I did some research and came across several recommended herbicides that are intended for use in grazing pastures, plus Chances mom gave me some recommendations since she's dealt with that weed many times.  The herbicides state that you can even let a horse graze right after you spray!  I've decided to give it at least a week or two just in case but the two pastures with the most curly dock are out of the grazing rotation at this time so it's really not been an issue.

Our property is laid out really nicely with a sacrifice area, named the Wormhole since it goes between the three main pastures.  This encompasses the paddock near the run-in,  the stable yard and an part of one pasture I enclosed with temporary fencing to make a "riding area" about the size of a large round pen.  The three areas interconnect with gates to make a larger sacrifice area when it's too wet to be on the pastures.  Below is our diagram, not quite to scale of course, of the property.  Steve and I named the 3 pastures: Westeros, Galafray and The Shire.  The stable yard and a pathway through the riding area is the muddy muck area we'll be working on soon.  The riding area I envision, far down the road mind you, grading it and getting proper substrate brought in to make a relatively flat riding area.

Anyhow, the Shire had the largest concentration of Curly Dock followed by Galafray.  The weed spreads by dropped seed hence the clustering of plants observed.  I spot sprayed both Galafray and the Shire (on Thanksgiving day actually!) with PasturePro using a 4 gallon backpack sprayer.  It just made sense to spot spray this weed for now.  

In the future to control onion or other more spread out weeds I may need to get a sprayer I can use with my mower. Onion seems like a problem in Galafray but there are also bald spots that need over seeding.  I've also read that sometimes balancing the soil pH and nutrients can fix an pasture onion problem.

You can see how the Curly dock grows in clumps and followed a small berm in The Shire.  There was basically a path of Curly dock leading from one end of the pasture the the other in dense patches.  Of course there were some micro-patches in other areas of the pasture too.

Westeros has a few bits of Curly dock here so I'll spray in the spring since the horses are grazing that pasture right now.  The forage is dense and Westeros has fewer weeds than the others so I'm going to focus my efforts on the Shire and Galafray.

Within a couple of days the weeds were starting to melt away.  Many more days later most of the weeds are brown and dead looking.  I'm sure I'll have to spray again in the spring since  I know missed areas or didn't fully saturate certain plants but I feel that at least we are doing something to get this under control.

We'll need to over seed with warm and cool grass species (so the pastures have more year round grazing availability), test the soil and apply lime as needed, aerate, and of course spread some compost when the growing season is back in full swing.  I want to get the pastures nice and lush with few if any bare spots.  Some areas look like they have been over grazed or perhaps had too much pony traffic during wet periods.  It will be a management task for sure to keep the horses off the pastures when they are grazed down to about 3 inches or when it's wet. If there are spots I need to have intensive restoration done I can always utilize temporary fencing to protect baby grasses for a season.  

It will take a few years to get the pastures less weedy and more forage-y.  Pasture maintenance is an ongoing task and on a smaller acreage even more necessary!  I will certainly document as spring comes and I can really assess what is going on with the pastures.  I'll also post information about pasture management as I learn more!