Gooseridge Farm

Monthly Archives: December 2016

A Mouthful of Electric

Posted on by Posted in Uncategorized .

I’m asked all the time both by people who know me and by those who meet me, what I do all day.

I’m never sure if this is a quiet air of judgement, or if they are genuinely curious what life on a farm looks like.

I can tell you that for ME, life on THIS farm is 80% crisis management. Yesterday, I walked outside to feed the animals with plans to go grocery shopping and maybe begin work on FINALLY cleaning the house.

Wrong.

I came to the horse pasture (of course), and found that not only had they ripped out half their inner electric (non-electrified) rope fencing, they had also chewed it up. Now while I didn’t know how the fencing had managed to come down in so many places, I DID know WHO had been chewing on it!

Moisie (short for Moissanite) loves to chew on things. He loves picking things up and playing with them. In this photo he is holding a “carrot stick” training wand. He likes to walk in a circle trying to train ME with it.

I knew most likely Moisie had chewed-up the line.

Now I had to get the fencing fixed before Moisie chewed it even more. Groceries would get bumped to later in the afternoon. The kids were home anyway and could watch Earen while I shopped.

I managed to get the line back up just as Erik came home for lunch. Hopefully the horses would leave it alone until I could run electric to it later.

I ran off to get groceries. As I left, I noticed the snow beginning to drift into the driveway from the heavy winds. There hadn’t been much snow on the ground, but the wind was scooping up what little bit there was and driving it back up into the air. The driveway had only drifted maybe an inch. I noted to myself that I’d probably need to plow later tonight.

I drive a Toyota Matrix, 2WD. It handles all aspects of winter poorly. By the time I came back 2 hours later, the 1 inch appeared to have grown to 3 inches. I could drive through 3 inches, right?

Nope. The 3 inches had settled to 5 near the road. The car sank right into the drift and was stuck. I called Nuriel to bring the side by side UTV out to me. She sat in the car while I tried to push it out with the side by side. Quads and side by sides work great if you are stuck in mud. Apparently, they don’t work to pull you out in snow.

As I sat there trying to figure out if we needed to go get the snow shovel, a neighbor pulled up in his truck and asked if we needed help. I only knew this man from talking to him once at Tractor Supply. He’d bought several bags of dog food and I made a comment about all the food, and we got to talking about high-energy dog food (he raises hunting dogs, and we raise boxers). I have no idea where he lived, other than “nearby”, and I’d see his truck go by often and stop to give a friendly wave.

He pulled-up behind my car, and gently pushed her out of the drift onto higher ground, then he left before I could run to the house and get him a jar of syrup.

I’ll figure out where he lives, and run a bottle of syrup to him. It’s not often other people help US. Usually we are loners, problem solving everything ourself. It’s good to know that there are people nearby willing to lend a hand!

I got all the groceries put away before diving back out into the roaring winds. It was warmer, but the winds were whipping up the snow and driving it across the fields, exposing long lengths of green grass and piling the snow into hidden drifts of unknown depths.

The horses hadn’t touched their fencing. They were at the back of the pasture in a group, eating their hay.

I silently went to work clipping a length of insulated electric line that still sat on the ground, left over from wiring the cow fence — Erik never cut the line down to size and it sat in sneaky coiled rounds on the grass waiting for someone to trip over it. I re-wired the cut line into the fence charger then I dragged the long length of wire and my tools to a junction in the horse fence from a previous fence line.

The horses were still eating their hay, ignoring me.

This would be the hard part. If a horse suddenly decided to come walking up, they’d catch the wire and rip everything out. I kept a careful eye on the group as I first attached my wire to the main fence, then ran it along the ground and up to the rope fence and cut it to size. I attached it with a metal bracket, then ran to the barn for a large board. A board across the line would keep the horses from tripping on it. Later I could pick ax a trench for it.

I ran back with my board. It was too short! I was out of time — the horses were beginning to squabble and move away from the hay. I threw the board down and packed snow over the exposed areas of wire cable. Then I ran down and plugged the fence in.

Someone’s going to find out pretty quick that chewing on the fence means a mouthful of electric!

Sitting in the Cold to Write.

Posted on by Posted in Uncategorized .

Today, like every other morning, I’m out in the dog shed to write. It’s 5 am, and only a few days until Christmas.

But this is Michigan, and it’s cold out . . . very cold in fact! While I tried to look-up the current temperature on my phone for Sand Lake, it told me quite directly that it was 15 degrees out. While 15 degrees is cold, I know that’s not correct.

You see, the dog’s water is frozen. Solid. That tells me that the inside temp in that dog stall is somewhere below 30. Now, this might not seem unusual to most. However, we’ve had several days in the near single digits and the dog’s water dish in that stall has only PARTIALLY frozen, and certainly never frozen after I added the second heater and cranked-up the propane heater Erik installed this fall.

Before you start hollering animal abuse, let me explain. We’ve invested lots of time and money to both insulate and RUN A PROPANE HEATER in the dog room. We even installed double-flapped doggy doors, and have plenty of hay for them to snuggle in.

But yet, we have one set of particularly naughty dogs that insist on ripping-off any doggy door we install. Our dogs are stalled in 3 areas by 2 dogs each. Almost like a mini horse barn with horse stalls . . . and just like the horses, the dogs hang their heads over the doors and stare at you!

I’ve tried everything to keep those two from eating their doggy door. I’ve tried chew toys, tug toys, different materials . . .heck, I’ve even painted Dave’s Insanity hot pepper sauce all over it (undiluted!). This kept them off it for a few hours, but then they decided the fun of ripping a new door off was worth the extreme pain of deadly hot sauce.

My only options now are a metal door, or a pexi glass door. Unfortunately, these types of doors are not easy to get materials for, and being Christmas time, we are slammed with shopping for gifts, not new doggy door materials.

So while the two dogs are freezing with no door cover, I’m also freezing since it’s 40 degrees in here, not 55-60. But, you don’t get anywhere without working for it (although working doesn’t always get you anything either), so I’m out here cold or not, day after day, pounding away at the laptop, trying to make my long-time dream a reality.

Drinking coffee that is now ice-cold, thanks to temps MOST LIKELY below zero outside.

A Quick Escape

Posted on by Posted in Calamities .

It never fails that when I am MOST pressed for time, that’s when calamity befalls me. Yesterday was no exception.

 

No matter how hard I try, I always seem to be running behind. Yesterday was church day, and I’ve learned that it’s best to feed the animals FIRST before taking a shower — or you’re freshly styled hair will be completely wind-blown!

 

I had exactly 40 minutes to get all the animals fed before jumping into the shower for 10 minutes, getting ready and leaving for church. But temps were down into the early teens, and water tanks would need to be busted open. Nevertheless, I made my rounds to all the animals, coming once again to the horse pasture. Since the last incident, I have been VERY careful about going into the pasture with the side by side.

I put their grain out, then made the quick decision to cut the ties on the first hay bale before entering. This would allow me to throw hay off quickly once I got into the pasture, and might save me from being mobbed again.

Unfortunately, as soon as I drove in, hay began falling off the bale, landing right near the gate. I stopped to ick it up and put it back into the side by side, but apparently more fell off. By the time I’d made my rounds tossing all the hay out at the fence corners, the horses were standing in a tight group eating the fallen hay . . . right near the gate!

I knew I didn’t have time to wait for them to move, so I tried ushering them off down the path. They refused to go anywhere.

I shrugged my shoulders and opened the gate, keeping a close eye on them. No one was paying me any attention. Good. I quickly jumped back into the side by side and went zooming out the gate . . .

. . . only to have the little mare Dezzie and Tango the gelding follow me out before I could jump out to shut the gate!

The naughty duo romped about behind the barn, playing in all the fresh snow. What many people don’t realize, is that horses are like kids — they love to play in fresh snow, and make designs with their footprints.

Since the snow was at least 12 inches deep, and I was struggling to walk through it, I ran to the barn and grabbed my snow shoes and a lead rope, and set-out.

There’s no way you can catch a large, four-legged animal in deep snow. They are too fast and nimble. As I came up on the two, they scampered further away. I was cursing up a storm. Now I wouldn’t have time for a shower. If I couldn’t get a shower then we weren’t going to church!

I tried calling the horses, but they again went running-off. So I simply stood and waited. I knew they were hungry, and their pasture was full of fresh hay. After they got tired of romping and stood still, I slowly walked-up to them and threw the lead rope around Tango’s neck, then walked them back to the pasture gate. Dezzie ran off again while Tango was sentenced back to his pasture.

I caught Dezzie while she was busy munching on a pile of hay she could just manage to reach under the fence.

Both horses were returned safely, and I managed to have just enough time to grab a quick shower before church!

Horses Should NEVER Drive a car.

Posted on by Posted in Calamities .

It was 4pm on December 13, 2016. I had been out all afternoon in the frigid 20 degree weather, and was busy prepping the animals for our first night of below 20 degree weather. I had been patting myself on the back for completing all needed tasks early AND getting all the animals fed well before dusk. Heck, I’d even taken our horse Ace out for a brief romp through the snow (he had no idea what to make of everything being covered in a white blanket).

I had two more items to tick off my list: Feeding and blanketing the horses, and feeding the cows. We’d run out of cow food, and, not wanting the cows to be too cold that night, I decided to bucket up some of the leftover deer corn to feed them. Like I always do, I put the cow food in the side by side (Honda Pioneer 4 UTV) along with the horse food and hay.

I drove up to the horse pasture and set out their dishes of grain, then drove in. I had just finished installing a perimeter track inside the pasture to keep them off the main turf, and I drove along my usual way, counter clockwise following their track. The track is approximately 12 feet wide, but widens out to roughly 20 feet at the corners. The corners are where I place the hay piles. I stopped at the first corner, threw-on the emergency brake, and jumped out to throw some hay and ready the blankets.

Horse blankets are like dog jackets . . . just horse-size.

The horses wandered over and I threw the first blanket on the young mare, Dezzie (short for Desert Rain). I managed to get her to hold still while blanketing her, and moved on to do Tango, our black and white paint. He was excited to see I’d brought blankets and eagerly stood waiting.

Unfortunately, the horses found my cow corn and were fighting for dibs on it. I smacked them in the chest to back them up, but it was like holding crack out in front of a crack addict . . . they could NOT control themselves!

After fighting them to stay out, I got clever and tossed the bucket beyond the inner fence. There was a small bit of corn left on the seat of the side by side, but I figured they’d just eat it and move off.

I was wrong. I had JUST managed to get the blanket on Tango when  . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .  the side by side zoomed away!

 

Now don’t ask me HOW, because horses cannot talk, nor would they confess how they’d done it anyhow! It caught my inner fenceline, paused, then broke-free and blasted across the pasture on its’ own, with me furiously running trying to catch it in the 10 inches of snow.

I was screaming like a banshee out front (yet none of the neighbors were kind enough to come out and help . . . I KNOW they were watching out their windows), and all I can think is “I hope it just stops and does NOT hit the fence!”.

I have to admit. Hitting the electric fence has ALWAYS been on my mind. What would happen??

I found out first hand that evening.

The rope from the inner fence had caught one of the tires and suddenly the side by side turned and headed right for the main hot cote line fence.

SMASH!

It blasted right into it and smashed a post, a round 6″ treated post.

The top cable popped off.

By now it was dark. Still no one came to my screams.

Luckily, Erik was out running errands and could not see my mess. He would be VERY upset.

But how was I going to fix all this myself? And before Erik got home? The horses could come over at any minute, see the opening and decide to take-off!

Sobbing and feeling like a complete failure, I went back to the horses and finished putting their blankets on. I couldn’t punish them — I don’t know who caused it since they ALL had been after corn, and besides, I needed them calm and in ONE spot so they didn’t see the broken fencing before I could repair it!

Frozen and fingers numb, I stumbled through the blinding winds back to the side by side, and set to work unwinding the rope fencing from the tire. The horses had pried the seat off (maybe they hit something down there that sent it flying across the pasture?) so I put it back on, then went down the inner fence line re-stringing up the inner fencing for the track. My palomino, Moisie, saw the line down and took the opportunity to run in and begin rolling in the fresh snow field. I ignored him until I got to the last post where the gate was, and left the gate open for him to get back into the track. It wasn’t a big deal if they were all loose inside the main pasture anyway.

Lastly, I set the broken post back up. Fortunately, the bottom two strands were still attached to the post. I wrapped the broken top line around a nearby post to help keep it somewhat taunt. The line had detached from the corner post way down the fence. Shouldn’t be too hard to fix . .  It looked sorta like normal . . . It might be enough to get me by until the next morning when I’d HAVE to get everything fully completed and the corner re-attached.

When Erik finally came home that night, and I managed to crawl into the house (and after feeding the cows what was left of their food), Erik knew something was wrong. I looked ill. Over and over again he asked if I was ok. I was not. I was ready to be done. I was done with calamities, and broken things, and never seeming to get ahead in life.

I was ready to walk-off into the woods and collapse in a snow bank, to be buried forever.

But I didn’t. I made dinner. I tidied-up the kitchen. I got the three year old ready for bed. And I DIDN’T breath a word of what had happened.

I finished fixing it the next day. With plenty of screaming and crying because time was running out FAST — Erik would be home for lunch and see the mangled fence! Winter kicked-up a blizzard just for me, and snow and wind pelted my face, reducing my vision down to thin slits.

With temps in the teens, I was dripping sweat under all of my clothes, walking briskly back and forth down the fence line, working the cables back into place, and struggling to re-wrap them around the corner post.

It’s now done. Mostly. When we get a thaw I’ll have to somehow fix that broken post. Erik WILL find out eventually. Hopefully by that time I’ll have a publisher for my camper memoir and that will take the sting down a bit . . . maybe.

Oh Deer.

Posted on by Posted in Triumphs .

Looks nice, right? If you are a guy who hunts, you are no doubt staring open-mouthed (according to Erik, who shows the photo to everyone he meets). You might be slightly (or extremely) jealous, thinking that you should be getting a deer like this.

 

Well, so did I. You see, this is my FIRST deer.

But I’ve been relentlessly hunting for 6 years! My first year hunting was with my new compound bow at my Dad’s. I knew little about hunting, so I simply sat outside on a log waiting for the deer to show up. As you can imagine, no one paid me a visit! By the very last day, I was desperate. I happened to see a fat little button buck walking through the backyard to go munch on fallen birdseed from our feeder. Quick as a wink, I was out in the garage, arrow peeking out the back door aimed at the unsuspecting deer. He was only 10 feet away, but I shot him. He took off running, and we searched high and low for that deer and never found him. I suspected he was curled up in someone’s back yard.

The next year, I met Erik, and he bought himself a bow and we went out hunting. However, his eldest daughter also wanted to hunt, so he put us in a platform blind together. A doe walked out underneath us, and we quickly discovered we had no room to shoot with BOTH of us using bows.

Every year I’d sit morning and evening, even afternoons. Quiet as could be, watching silently. But the deer always waited until dark to move, or they were far beyond the range of my bow.

Erik however, managed to bag deer every year. We’d hunt the same days, and switch blinds. I’d de-scent all my clothes, use bait, use calls, but somehow Erik ALWAYS managed to get the deer.

But in all fairness, the first 2 years he shot only button bucks, which I refused to shoot unless it was the end of the season with no meat in the freezer. I never got to that point though, since Erik easily filled the freezer for us.

I began to get extremely discouraged, sitting out in the rain and the cold and braving hungry coyotes HOPING for a good shot. I’d come home frozen and crying because once again I had NO SHOTS. Day after day after day I’d be out there — switching stands, going where Erik assured me I’d get a deer, only to see nothing shootable.

I seemed to have the worst luck. I’d forget my bow release, or if using crossbow I’d forget the pull rope. I dumped coffee down myself every time (finally resorting to NOT bringing it), or I’d get lost on the way to my stand.

Every year, I’d be the one gutting, skinning and processing out ALL of Erik’s deer. I was the one who got HIM into hunting, and I STILL had nothing to show for it.

The running joke was that I was simply waiting for the biggest deer ever to walk out to be my perfect first deer.

Generally speaking, we are careful which deer we shoot. We leave all the small bucks to grow larger, leave the babies to grow up into adults, and try to shoot a variable selection of mature doe and bucks. We want our deer to be healthy and prosper.

Because of this, Erik and Eian had already shot 2 mature bucks, and Erik a massive doe. Technically we didn’t need any more, but Erik wanted one last deer. But only if it was a buck larger than the one he’d just shot. We knew there were some massive mature bucks kicking around — we had them on cam.

As it happened, the spot I picked for my climber stand was rarely used — it was 10 acres of overgrown grass, bushes and scrappy trees tucked between our neighbor’s field and our 30 acres of woods. I had long thought this to be the place the bucks lived, and a cam placed out with bait only proved me right.

This guy frequented my bait pile right in front of my climber. Erik got so excited he even squeezed into my climber hoping for a shot at this guy. I would see plenty of smaller bucks go by, and smaller doe, but nothing shootable.

One afternoon in early November, Erik insisted we both needed to go out. He was going to hunt the 30 acres of woods, and I decided to sit in my climber.  The evening wasn’t too cold, so I figured I’d sit out while it was still half decent weather. I was happy to be finally seeing deer, even if they weren’t shootable. Erik had insisted I had to stay in my blind until exactly 6pm when it would be nearly dark.

I’d had a few smaller doe walk through, and wasn’t thinking I’d see any more deer. Erik sent me a text at 5:50pm reminding me to stay out until 6. I sat and waited. It was getting pretty dark, but I was using a borrowed crossbow from one of Erik’s buddies. The scope was excellent at amplifying light. I peered through the lens and marveled at how well I could see! 5:55pm I checked my phone again. Five more minutes.

I glanced back up and saw movement coming toward me. I knew it had to be a big doe, but decided to look through the scope just to be sure. Holding it left-handed, I struggled to catch it in the scope. When the scope finally caught it, I saw the flashing of massive antlers.

My heart stopped beating.

I didn’t know what to do. It was pretty much dark . . . would I even be able to make the shot? I could see him clearly in the scope, but what if it wasn’t as large as it seemed? I had never tried to fire this bow from anywhere but the ground into a target. What if the scope was off and I missed?

The buck stood 20 yards in front of me, facing me and eating the beets on the ground. Should I try to do a chest shot? Would a taxidermist yell at me? Would my meat be ruined with guts splattering the inside of the body? Would I WANT to gut such a messy shot?

Would it die with a chest shot? Or would it run a ways first? We have one rule with hunting. If you’re going to shoot, you’d better drop it! One shot, one deer. If you need more than one shot to kill a deer, you’d better take-up a different sport!

I sat holding my breath, torn as to what to do. Do I pass up the deer of a lifetime, or do I risk a messy, possibly not dead deer that might run-off and be lost to the coyotes?

I ran out of time. At that EXACT MOMENT, Erik walked out of the woods.

The buck promptly turned to look right at him, and now stood broadside to me (side facing me). I knew I’d have just a second before he decided to run. I planted my crosshairs behind his right shoulder, the “kill spot” for all hunters, and pulled the trigger on the crossbow. He jumped and took off running into the brush and then went down.

Erik had no idea a buck was standing there. He also had no idea I was sitting in my blind still and was taking a shot. He DID see the arrow wizz past him just 20 feet away!

My phone began lighting up with a barrage of text messages from Erik. Neither of us moved for 10 minutes out of fear that the deer might still be alive and decide to run again. We texted back and forth. I’d had no idea Erik was walking out. He almost came out 2 minutes sooner and would have scared the deer before I saw it, but he had stopped to check his bait pile and his game cam by his stand.

I honestly believed the deer probably had run off. I knew I’d shot him in the kill zone, but I simply could not believe that after 6 years I had FINALLY shot something. I wouldn’t believe it until I saw it dead.

Erik insisted we needed to let it sit to make sure it was dead, so we went back home to get the side by side. Half an hour later, we returned. I made the mistake of insisting to track it backwards. I was afraid that if it were still alive and we scared it, it would run to the neighbor’s property. Good luck trying to convince your neighbor that the massive deer on his property was the one you just shot!

So we started at the back end, hoping to come upon his body. For an hour we searched and didn’t even find blood. Now I was scared. No blood anywhere? I must have missed him! There’s always blood, and I’m the master of finding the trail! Finally I decided to search through all the buck grass beds back there, and follow a heavy trail that was in the same area I’d seen the buck run.

Bingo. Small bits of blood finally showed up and following them we found our buck, dead. He hadn’t run much further than 100 feet from where he’d been shot. The arrow had gone through both lungs, right at the shoulder.

So while he is quite impressive, he was definitely earned over the course of 6 years.

Here is Erik’s favorite photo: