On thick ice

We've looked upon this first year at the Lovestead as our "Year of Discovery." We knew that a good winter and spring would aid us in seeing the true colors beyond the magic. We figured that once we discovered the kinks, we could work them out in the summer and hope for no new discoveries.

One discovery has dealt with those handy side doors leading out of each horse stall. For months, a simple opening of each stall gate and the horses could easily step outside to begin their day or return to spend a cozy night in their respective apartments. Those equine apartments included a corner for eating the hay, a bucket for nibbling their grain and some automatic heated waterers for quenching their thirst. There's also plenty of room for stretching out for nightly repose on a bed of cedar shavings.

What horse, besides Barbaro, could ask for anything better?

Some of that convenience has come to a sliding halt this week, thanks to the thick ice which seems to regenerate faster than grass. Thick ice forming in the morning and thick ice forming later each afternoon has necessitated several sessions of beating on the ground with a shovel below each stall door for five minutes a whack.

Morevoer, thick ice lurking in the tracks below those stall doors has led to unsavory language dribbling from my mouth on several instances after aroused neck and back muscles I never knew existed have screamed out in pain during my ice pounding routine, only for me to discover that the damn door still won't open.

Huge dumps of snow falling off red barn roofs just above those doors and covering that thick ice have done a number on my initial awe at my new convenient set-up for horse egress and ingress. I don't give up easily, but after weeks of losing the battle of snow and ice, my horse egress and ingress has taken a new route. These days, I lead each horse individually out the pasture gate, to the big barn door and into its stall and vice versa.

That pathway goes past the frost-free hydrant with that crack down the front. Last summer when I first turned it on and watched the water spray out the pipe like a fountain, I made a mental note that we'd have to get that fixed. With another frost-free hydrant just 20 feet away serving the outside water trough, that item got bumped down the list of "things to do."

I later used the hydrant because of its convenience to the barn to fill buckets for Lily whose automatic waterer has not worked because it needs to be turned on and I don't know where or how one turns on automatic waterers.

Apparently, there's an automatic waterer god hiding around this place somewhere who does that, because the manuals left for us in the drawer dealing with everything from the oven to the garage door don't include an automatic waterer guide. Besides, most of the time when I used the frost-free hydrant with the fountain front, we had no ice.

When Barbara and Laurie came to care for my horses a couple of weeks ago during our trip to Seattle, it turned cold, and the frost-free hydrant with the fountain out front formed a nice patch of ice right in the pathway where the horses now walk because they can't go in their individual stall doors which are iced shut for the winter. Barbara and Laurie brought some shavings outside to cover the ice so the horses wouldn't fall on their behinders while egressing and ingressing.

That was all well and good until three days ago when I was leading Casey out of the barn, and a freak accident happened behind me. I still don't know how it happened, probably never will, but suddenly Casey was walking on my heels. Of course, I turned around, and when I did, I saw one of his blanket straps dangling with the metal fastener gone and the frost-free hydrant with the front fountain leaning at a 45-degree angle.

Once Casey was in the pasture, I thought about pushing the hydrant back into an upright position. For once, my brain engaged, reminding me that to do such a thing might inspire a fountain beyond all imagination, so I left it alone. Nothing seemed too out of the ordinary that day, but the next morning I noticed standing water around the leaning hydrant.

So, I called a plumber who wasted no time coming to the Lovestead. I gave him the key for turning off water that had been left by the former residents. He lifted the lid at the turn-off site, aimed the three-foot key downward, and quickly said he'd get his own turn-off key cuz this one was not long enough. When he did find the water turn-off, it was five feet into the ground. That meant, he said, that the leaning hydrant would be a five-foot dig and that a small excavator would be needed.

We both theorized that do dig a hole that deep in the horses' egress and ingress pathway right now probably isn't a good idea. So, we decided it was best to leave the leaning hydrant turned off for the winter. Then, my brain engaged again.

"I wonder if my indoor heated automatic waterers are on that line," I said. We went inside to look. He bailed out some water from one fountain, and no water returned. Sure enough, they're on the same line. We again thought about options.

All options pointed toward leaving the leaning hydrant, which is connected to the heated automatic waterers, turned off for the winter. After all, I do not want to become a major stockholder in the Oden Water Assoc. while the leaning frost free hydrant continues to leak underground. I'm sure Bill doesn't either.

And so, these January days we're skating to the barn on thick ice. I'm lugging buckets of water to the barn stalls on thick ice. Yesterday, I tried to thaw out an extra water trough in another pasture which could go in the barn to alleviate some of the thick-ice trips, but my new water heater bestowed to me by my brother Kevin does not thaw out a two foot by five foot chunk of ice very quickly.

Our year of Discovery has not gone in vain. We have found that the almost mythical Lovestead does have flaws. There will be more work than expected in this new venture throughout the winter. Nonetheless, as frustrated as I've been over the past few days, the thick ice has not been all bad, at least in my dog Kiwi's eyes. She can push those Folgers coffee cans across that ice for hours on end. One nice thing about that, I don't have to kick them quite as often.