Part of the reason for this blog, for me, other than just sharing pictures and the Squidgelet's growing life, is to have a place to write. Sometimes the words just flow out and I know exactly what I'm going to be writing about. Other times, not so much. I stare at the silly blogger blank page for a few moments, then get distracted by Pinterest (my new favorite distraction) or reading old blog posts, or other people's blogs in an effort to find inspiration (Becky and Aarene, I'm pointing mental fingers at you!)
But now, thanks to Tristan's homework, I have a fool proof, distraction proof way to get a quality-ish blog post up (meaning, more than just pictures of sweetness & life): Writing the story behind a picture. Not just a few words, more than a caption, the full story.
Of course this leads to more time sucking as I try to find the picture of the story I want to tell, but that's at least going in the right direction.
So, here is my first attempt. (BTW, it only took me an agonizing 5 minutes to decide which picture..should it be a Squidgelet picture? A horse picture? What what? So I chose a bit of both)
This is where procrastination gets you. Freezing your butt off while the sky spits snow and howling winds at you, all so you make sure your giant fuzzy horses have clean fresh water to drink.
The second winter we had the horses, I decided I was fed up with carrying buckets of water or fussing about with hoses to fill up the Big Blonde Butt's 100 gallon water tank. I came up with the idea of making the horses haul their own damn water, because I am both at heart lazy, and since we have the horses anyway it's a good work out for them (another plus: this team would, could and did stand, for up to 30 minutes at a time, with no one needing to hold the lines, with never a runaway thought in their minds).
We would put a few hay bales in the stone sled, throw the big white 250 gallon sap tank on top of the bales, tie it down as best we could, then drive up to the house and ask the team to stand for the 20 minutes or so it took to fill the sap tank to 100 gallons.
We learned we had to tie the tank down the first time we tried this. Gravity works, did you know that? The tank fell off the back of the sled and dumped most of it's load on the road that first time, and we had a real bitch of a time getting the tank, still more than half full, to move. 75 gallons of water is heavy, and hard to work with when it's 0* and snowing outside.
Getting the team parked in just the right spot next the house could be an adventure. If there were no cars it was easy, just pull forward to a nice flat spot, drag out the hose, fill the tank, unhook the hose, drive through the giant snow bank and back down to the pasture. If there were cars in the flat spot, such as on the day we took this picture, it was a good chance to practice our technical driving skills. Because of the snowbanks and the horrible turning radius of the stone boat, we ended up having to ask them to back the boat uphill, then stand for 20 minutes on the slope while the tank filled. Hence the happy happy joy joy look on Tucker's & Bobby's faces in this picture. Or that could be the blowing snow.
See that really fat lady sitting on her tush behind the Big Blonde Butts, directing her man to take a few pictures? That would be me-and the Squidgelet, who was still known as the (not quite so) Little Bean at the time, as this was about a month before he was born, right in that house behind us. A not so much secret of my late pregnancy was how faithfully I followed my midwives advice regarding picking up heavy things. I didn't pick up heavy things past about 36 weeks or so-I learned to drag them. Snow bales over hay, boxes inside, but I still did throw the harness over my shoulder...or watched Tristan do it. I took off and carried the bridles up to the house to keep the metal bits from freezing.
It's hard to see and feel in this picture just how powerful those two horses are, how easily they could move a stone boat full of hay, 100 gallons of water, and round pregnant lady. What it does seem to convey is their sense of patience, of waiting until it's time to go trudging back to the warm barn for some beet pulp and hay. Were these horses spoiled? Of course. But why have it any other way?
See that really fat lady sitting on her tush behind the Big Blonde Butts, directing her man to take a few pictures? That would be me-and the Squidgelet, who was still known as the (not quite so) Little Bean at the time, as this was about a month before he was born, right in that house behind us. A not so much secret of my late pregnancy was how faithfully I followed my midwives advice regarding picking up heavy things. I didn't pick up heavy things past about 36 weeks or so-I learned to drag them. Snow bales over hay, boxes inside, but I still did throw the harness over my shoulder...or watched Tristan do it. I took off and carried the bridles up to the house to keep the metal bits from freezing.
It's hard to see and feel in this picture just how powerful those two horses are, how easily they could move a stone boat full of hay, 100 gallons of water, and round pregnant lady. What it does seem to convey is their sense of patience, of waiting until it's time to go trudging back to the warm barn for some beet pulp and hay. Were these horses spoiled? Of course. But why have it any other way?
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