Sometime today Brooke and Todd will return from their furlough. It's been about ten days since the grandpuppies have spent their days here at the Lovestead on a regular basis. Willie brought them one afternoon this week when he wasn't feeling well.
Apparently, active Border Collies in a condo don't mix well with a sick person trying to sleep. They're either in your face or in to something. So, he brought them over for the afternoon in hopes of getting some rest.
Today the pups will come and stay until Monday or Tuesday. Today is also the day that Willie, Debbie and Debbie's friend Leslie from Boise drive over to Seattle for the Seattle to Portland (STP) bike ride. It starts Saturday, and it ends sometime Sunday (depending on individual pedal power) 204 miles down I-5.
Debbie will pedal her road bike along with 9,999 other bikers while Willie and a few of Debbie's friends will serve as her support team. Debbie and her friend Paige (Paige is from Boise and an in-law of Ross Hall's granddaughter Johna) started a blog about 18 months ago when they decided to put the STP on their bucket list.
They're planning to feature streaming coverage of their ride on the blog. So, if you're interested, you can check in periodically at http://www.thestpexperiment.blogspot.com.
In the meantime, we'll be in full-dog mode here at the Lovestead.
The next few days will also involve a lot of preparing. One of these days a hay swather will turn into the driveway and head down the lane to cut this year's hay crop. So, we've made sure the gates are ready for the equipment. Today I'll be taking down the panels to my round pen so Lori can cut a little segment of hay along the lane with no difficulty.
Last year she managed to do the plot but said it sure would have been a lot easier without having to maneuver that big piece of equipment around that round pen.
Lori is a Jasman, and she does a lot of field work for Harvey Lippert. She's also a weed expert for the county. We've been impressed with her ability and her perfection-oriented strategies at hay cutting.
I bought a new tarp for the bay in the big shed where we store most of the bales for the winter. Seems some bales got wet over this last year, and I found the culprit this spring on one of those many rainy days. Water drips down the ceiling from the east eaves and then drops in certain areas on top of the hay stack. The old tarp had a few small holes in it, causing the bales below to get wet.
Over the course of several months, the moisture built up and mold set in. Not fun, with the price of hay, to find spots like that in your winter supply. So, I'm hoping the new tarp will do the trick this year.
I also have a problem area in the barn where I stored some premium first-cutting grass/alfalfa hay over last winter. Seems the water was coming in a crack where the northwest door doesn't sit straight on its roller. So, I'm cleaning up the barn, figuring out a different way to store my gold-plated bales.
The hayfields are going down fast around here with this nice weather, and it's looking good for us with ten days of no rain ahead. There's always a supreme feeling of relief when the hay is finally in its winter storage for another year. It's almost as if we can finally settle down and enjoy the summer rather than living in a semi-panic mode.
And, with my fruit supply yielding all of about 5 strawberries, two plums, six pears, a few free cherries for the robins and substantially fewer apples than usual, I'll hope that Mother Nature rewards us with one good hay crop this year.
The horses will concur.
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