Fencing Comparisons

A couple of recent conversations with friends and my own personal fencing issues sent me on a quest to research different fencing products.  Growing up, we had a combination of smooth metal electric wire and barbed wire.  (go ahead, gasp, I can hear it already)  Aside from ONE injury in which Buck for some unknown reason tried to jump INTO the trees (no joke, he jumped into a thick wood line) and landed on top of the barbed wire, 3 strands no less) and cut both front pasterns, injuries that looked horrid but he recovered fully from with no issues whatsoever, he was fine.  The wire of course, did not break – but anyway, aside from that one injury we never had any issues.  With that said, we had a relatively HUGE pasture, well 2 large pastures, only had 2 horses and a couple cows.

After a couple conversations with Zephyrs Mom and Rocky Mountain Yankee I started looking at different fencing options for my field now.  Due to neighbor issues and family crap, my pasture space has changed and that leaves me with some issues fence wise.  Add to that a neighbor/relative who insists on screwing with my fence and I’m at the end of my rope.  In years past, I’ve used electric rope, electric tape and regular metal wire.  All have had pluses and all have had minuses.  Right now, my fencing is a concoction of all of the above!! 

ZM and I were talking about the risks of Z getting hurt in the field that is to be his summer pasture this year with metal wire.  Now we are talking about regular tensile electric fence wire, not high tensile wire or barbed wire.  My argument was that it breaks easily, almost too easily in my opinion and she was afraid that it being metal wire it would slice him.  RMY and I were talking about childhood fencing and she pointed out that she never had an issue with it with her horses when we were kids.

Which brings me to this – I am not picking any one brand, just a sampling of different ropes, wires and tapes.

2” Mega Poly Tape – this particular one has a breaking point of 790lbs. 

 2” Mega Reinforced Tape – this is the same as above but has more wires in it – it’s breaking strength is 1045lbs.

                           

Standard 1/4” Rope – breaking strength is 850lbs.

Electric Fence Wire – breaking strength…..125-145lbs!!!  This actually shocked me. (haha right?)

Now what does all of this mean?  Nothing really!  BUT!  Personally, I will still continue to use the standard, metal electric fence wire.  It’s break strength is so much lower that I personally feel that the risk of injury (from running thru the fence at least) is lower simply because it is going to break a LOT faster than those poly ropes/tapes/wires. 

Now please – this is all just MY PERSONAL OPINION on what I personally want to use – what each person uses is their own business but I found this to be interesting information and wanted to share it. 

FIRE!!

Fire has always been one of my biggest fears.  On Monday that fear came to life for me.  I was sitting here in the middle of the afternoon, had just started a load of laundry to wash and smelled something hot.  I had just used the tea kettle on the stove so I thought that it was just something on the burner.  I dismissed the smell until it didn’t go away – and as I was getting more concerned, the power started flashing thru-out the house and I heard a funny noise.

I got up and went to towards the washing machine and heard the sound of electrical arching – I hate that sound.  I was stupidly wondering why the hell a breaker hadn’t popped when whatever it was shorted, and then realized I should probably do something other than stand in a panic!!  I grabbed the main breaker switch and flipped it off but the noise continued and I freaked the rest of the way out!  I grabbed the dog and ran for my mom’s house.

I called 911 from moms and then ran home again to move my truck and my brothers car.  Waiting for the fire department was horrible.  Because we live in a trailer, 2 towns responded – as most people know, when trailers catch fire, they GO!  Thankfully in our case there were a couple of things in our favor. 

#1 I thru the main breaker almost immediately

#2 the source of the fire was electrical and those electrical wires were not against the floor of the trailer, they were laying on the cement pad under the trailer.

Here are a couple of pictures - 

Apparently what happened was, before we moved in, my grandmother had an addition built on the back side of the trailer.  The people who did it were morons anyway due to various other things that they screwed up when they did other work.  Anyway – for one reason or another, the house did not have a proper (or “up to code”) vent for the dryer.  The vent was a plastic hose that was blowing directly onto our water holding tank.  The dryer has also for all of these years been blowing on the electrical wires which dried them out to the point that the main electrical wire melted thru and caught fire. 

Thankfully the damage isn’t that bad and we have a great electrician who happened to have just spent the weekend camping with Vince, Dad, Uncle Doug and Grampy Al!!  He was here yesterday afternoon and we got it all put back together! 

HOWEVER!  Because of a couple of code violations (the dryer vent for one) we have to have an inspection by the code enforcement officer before we can officially move back in.  We have to have hard wired smoke detectors, which were originally in here, but they were so SUPER sensitive that at some point not long after we moved in I took them down and now I can not locate them.  We DO have battery powered ones but apparently that’s not good enough so we have to fix that, the dryer has to be vented properly and we had to have an “illegal” wiring job fixed – that part has already been fixed and we’ve bought the proper vent for the dryer and will get new smoke detectors tomorrow. 

We are taking this opportunity to completely clean out the house and try to have a “fresh start” – I’ve been attacking each room with bleach and spic n span!  Nothing like a very thorough spring cleaning right?  Hopefully we can have everything together by Friday so we can get the C.E.O. out here and we can move back in.  For now, we’re living in a camper trailer in the driveway!  :)

Farrier today

I’ve had a difficult time finding a reliable farrier who shows up as planned, doesn’t have some crazy “contract” – I spoke with one gentleman who’s prices were steep in my opinion, but he’d been highly recommended so I was willing to pay double most others rates and then he informs me of his 4 week trim requirement and if you want your horse done further apart, you have to pay $10/week until he gets here!  Um yeah, even in summer on great grass my horses have NEVER had to be done more than 6 weeks apart – but he assures me when he comes for our first appointment that he’ll explain why it’s necessary to do it on a 4 week schedule.  I’m sorry – I just got an “off” vibe from the whole conversation. 

Oops off on a tangent there!  So between reliability issues, “contract” issues, distance issues and just in general getting a farrier to RESPOND to my contact tries has left me feeling VERY frustrated.

I was put in contact with a nice lady who I’m told does great work and her rates are very reasonable and we were able to make an appointment for today!  Tosh is having Skip vetted this am and then will be over so Skippy can be done too!! 

On another note, in discussing different fencing types with a friend I did some research and was a little surprised but what I found – I really want to do a blog about the info I found in case it could help anyone else!!  Not that that many people read this thing LOL!  I also need to do some comparison pics of Rowdy and Buddy – I’ve switched their feed and I just opened up the back pasture on Wednesday – want to do some “now” “later” photos.  Rowdy is also doing the Purina Feed Challenge – if he blooms the way Buddy did we’ll be in great shape!!! 

Happy Dance!!

This may be a stupid thing to be so excited about but I can’t help myself!!  I have been debating going to a horse show next Sunday…..do Halter and showmanship and the western walk/trot classes.  Problem…..I haven’t actually INTENTIONALLY trotted on Buddy!!!  The ground is so sloppy in my little “ring” that I just haven’t wanted to push it…..course, I haven’t even RIDDEN in a week or more so was thinking that I wouldn’t bother with the show…

Until today.  I got my show bridle in the mail from Meg today which just added to my “show fever” and I decided to suck it up and get on him and see what happens.  He is by no means the rambunctious sort, he’s pretty laid back and lazy mostly but he hasn’t been ridden and I was having a case of the “nerves” (surprise surprise right?) so I lunged him first – it would almost be more comforting sometimes if he’d explode and act like a fool on the line but NOOOOOO not Buddy.  Buddy walks and trots like he’s told.  He’ll lope too if I ask him enough but he’s perfectly happy to walk.  *sigh*  Today we had NO fight over the bucket.  I walked over, set it down, climbed up on it and climbed into the saddle.  No ifs ands or buts about it he couldn’t have cared any less.  That’s one hurdle we’re getting pretty good with thankfully.  So we walked off and did a few serpentines and circles in both directions, I asked for a trot and got NOTHING. 

My stirrups were uneven and it was throwing me off balance so I stopped him and fixed my stirrups FROM HIS BACK with the reins just laid across his neck!!!  This boy is fantastic for a 3 year old!!  So level headed.  I walked him a few more minutes with my stirrups in the better position and asked for a trot again….still nothing so I stopped him and asked him to back up.  NOTHING.  I don’t know if it was the different bit or if he was just having a ……moment LOL.  (I realized when trying to set up my new headstall that the bit attachment wouldn’t work with my Myler full cheek snaffle so switched him to a copper rollered D ring)

So I realized just how much work we had ahead of us.  *sigh*  We did a few more walk/whoa transitions with me asking for him to back and by the 3rd transition he was backing very easily and relaxedly (is that a word?? LOL)  I asked him to walk off again and in the driest, least mud sucky part of the pen asked for a trot – he did it and once he got going, he relaxed and did VERY well.  We’re going to keep working on it but I’m happy!!

After a few more times around the pen, we headed out across the field to the short woods trail that goes up around back of my parents property.  There’s a board and bucket at the opening of the trail and he was convinced it was going to eat him.  He was so worried about that that he didn’t notice the downed tree branch he was about to step on so when the “fingers” of it touched him he kind of jumped and snorted but he did well and kept on going.  I hit a branch with my head and it broke off and hit his butt – he jumped a little but kept on going.  There are a lot of low hanging trees from all the heavy snow/ice this winter – I meant to ask dad about that because I figured that they would have straightened back up again but maybe not.  When we got to the top field at dads I was a bit nervous because there are some tires, an ice shack and a boat that are on the edge of the one field and for some reason EVERY horse is spooky in that area – even BUCK was!!  He was ok until a bird flew up and he kind of spun out from under me but I didn’t fall.  My right foot came out of the stirrup and I slid left a little but when I said Whoa he did and then we continued on. 

We went and visited with my dad for a minute and even dad said he was a nice horse – anyone who knows him knows that although he bought Buck for me and never complained about hauling my ass to a horse show all thru school, he has a low opinion of horses and given my recent LONG list of injuries that are horse related, he keeps harping on me to find just ONE good one that can be trusted and that won’t kill me……he never hesitates to tell me that the horse I’m on is a nutbag but he said that Buddy’s a “good one”.  Now don’t anyone ask him if he said that, we all know that he’ll DENY DENY DENY!!  LOL

Spoiled Kitty & My Hoodlums

Here are pictures of Preston finally.  He is still the coolest cat – he LOVES to be groomed and as you will see in the pictures – he is in heaven when you brush his belly!!!!  Weird ass cat!!

 

 

 

 

 

Check out the tongue

 

 

 

Spring Planting

Four years ago I planted my first garden.  I LOVED every minute of it that summer.  I love playing in the dirt anyway so it was good to have a “reason” to be doing it!  :)  I had so much corn, cucumber, zucchini, summer squash and beans that I was giving TONS away.  I’m also the first one to buy the “odd” vegetables….that first year, it was yellow tomatoes.  I did it more to be different but now those are the only ones I want!!  They are sweeter than the standard red tomato and although when you use them to make spaghetti sauce, it turns a greenish/tan color it is YUMMY.

The second year, my garden was just kind of blah.  I wasn’t as into it, I honestly don’t think we got anything edible out of the garden except cherry tomatoes and maybe a couple carrots.  I am HORRIBLE with seeds – a packet that will plant a 100’ row, I tend to accidently dump the whole thing in a 3’ section.  OOOPS! 

Last year I didn’t garden at all.  For a couple reasons, I was discouraged by the utter failure the year before.  I also had two foals and mares and the stallion and the kids and was still really struggling with the losses of Buck and Star.  And the biggest factor was that I didn’t have a rototiller of my own.  Dad has always ‘tilled for me and with his working 40+ hours a week plus having his own garden and yard to tend to, he doesn’t need to be doing my garden too….and before you ask, no I can’t use his tiller.  A: I was afraid of it (I failed shop class in 8th grade because I was afraid of the saws/machines) and B: I’d surely break his tiller and then I’d NEVER hear the end of it!! 

About a week ago, I was debating a garden at all.  My brothers junk RamCharger was STILL sitting in the midst of my garden spot, I didn’t want to ask Dad to till up the ground, did I want to spend the time/money etc to do it even…..Well, Dad made the decision for me.  He was at work and saw a rototiller on the side of the road for FREE!  YAY!  Cause we know people always give away their BEST stuff right?  But when I got the call to “go get it RIGHT NOW” who was I to argue?  So I drove over and picked it up.  The lady told me “it doesn’t run maybe it can be fixed I just want it out of my yard”.  So when Dad got home, he came down and looked it over – he fiddled with a couple things, pulled the cord 3 times and TA DA it started right up!  Now, I honestly thought he wanted it for himself and was going to take it up to his house to unload it but he unloaded it in my yard.  Put it in gear and played with it a little in the driveway and then asked where I wanted to put it……um?  Huh?  Ken asked him if it was his new tiller or moms and Dad said, “well, by all rights it should be mine but I’m gonna let your mom have it”….I told him that was unnecessary but he just said “well maybe I can borrow it sometimes” LOL  He left me with stern instructions not to run it until I got oil – no problem there….I’m still scared of it remember? 

So Friday my plan was to get started on the garden – shifting the garden down some to get around the Ramcharger that was supposed to be moved Thursday night but Dan was too busy breaking my truck window *sigh* Well the best laid plans right?  I can’t remember why, but I didn’t get around to starting it….probably more because I was afraid to try it without someone to dial 911!!  Dad came down and asked why I hadn’t started yet and I just shrugged…..so he put in oil, we put gas in and he started it up.  His first swipe and he decided that he’d go get his mower and mow the area first because the longer grass was more hassle than necessary.  I had intended to use the push mower on that section before we started but the mower hates me and won’t stay running.  Anyway!

Dad ended up doing the initial ground breaking for me and when he got up towards the top, he said “here you go” YIKES!!  I only had one small mishap – my first turn with it, I almost ran into the ram charger…….I got a firm talking to – was told to STOP fighting with it, and when I whined “but it’s HEAVY” I was told that if I thought it was heavy, then I wasn’t a farm girl…..GRRRR, ok so it wasn’t heavy when I stopped PULLING on it trying to stop it from going forward while I was trying to lift it up…..*sigh*  So I did the last pass over the garden and towards the end, was pretty comfortable with the beastly machine.

Dad left me with instructions to till it up again in the morning, let it dry, do it again, let it dry, do it again and so on.  We also discussed how much lime to add to the ground.  The first year I added lime and the garden was awesome, the second year I didn’t and I’m sure it was just coincidence that the garden was a flop and then last year the ground just sat so I figured it’d be best to do the lime again.  We also discussed what I should plant, I’m planting no carrots, radishes, spinach etc this year – I’m going to stick mainly with plants ready to go in the ground this year. 

Saturday morning, mom, the boys and I set off for the greenhouse.  I bought buttercup squash, pumpkin, yellow and cherry tomatoes, onions, watermelon, cucumber and cabbage plants.  I also bought corn, bean, pea, zucchini and summer squash seeds……now here’s the problem, do I have enough room??  I worked the ground twice yesterday (Saturday) and the plan for this morning was to get up, hit it with the tiller and then go get lime, get the lime on it and till it again and then plant either tonight or tomorrow morning.  It rained last night though so I wanted/needed to let the ground dry up some before I tilled so I went and bought lime, came home and got the ground tilled and just as I was finishing up, it started raining again.  Once the shower passed, I spread the lime but then went DUH!  I forgot to get gas for the tiller so was planning to run and get some when Dan and Dad brought my couch down and things got out of hand from there.  Mom ended up picking up my gas but by the time she got home, it was dark so I’ll get it tilled again in the morning and then plant it. 

Dan did come get the ram charger yesterday afternoon, so I do have an extra 10 feet or so that I can add on to the garden if I decide to – might see if Dad will help me with that in the morning – I’m more comfortable with the tiller now, but still nervous about the jumping and twisting it does with new ground.  I had intended to have pictures to share of the garden in stages but kept forgetting the camera and then when I did finally remember it today, it started raining!!  So I promise a picture blog for tomorrow including pictures of my wonderful new best friend Preston.  :) He’s still the worlds coolest cat even if he does have a “hair problem” LOL

PS – I have overcome my fear of most power tools/saws by the way…..I do realize how silly it was of me to be terrified of them when I was younger.

Brothers

I’ve touched on this before…..I love my brother, I do but sometimes he is enough to make me CRAZY!!!  The transmission in his truck kicked the bucket a while ago and he has yet to fix it but he’s been driving his girlfriends car so “no big deal” right?  Until they broke up anyway!  Tonight he had to return the car so he asked me to borrow my truck so he can get to work tomorrow.  Ok, fine – he didn’t break it last weekend when he used it…..it’ll be fine right?

I got one of “those” phone calls about an hour after he left with my truck.  “I promise I’ll fix it and really it’s not that bad”……no friggin joke!  THAT is how the conversation started.  I seriously thought he was just screwing with me.  He apparently went to throw something out the window of the truck, hit the window with it (I’m very unclear what it was that he was trying to throw out) and the window “!#$%^&* EXPLODED” !!  Nice huh?  I really still thought he was screwing with me so I made him take a picture…..

 

That is my leather seat, pieces of glass and his leg.  Yup I threatened to kill him.  He promises he’ll buy a new window and put it in tomorrow.  *sigh* I love my brother but sometimes I just want to smack him.

OH!  And in that other blog I linked to/referred to up there, I forgot the other “he’s ok but…” phone call.  Just before Thanksgiving 2007 I got a phone call from his now “ex wife”….”he says he’s ok but he just rolled his truck over just down the road”  Big, HUGE *sigh* When is he going to realize that he is NOT invincible??