The Lords of the Winter Hay Stomp

On blustery winter days, turn out involves leading horses to the pastures while trudging our heavy insulated boots through deep tundra like snow, defrosting frozen lead rope snaps by exhaling warm air onto them and frequently fixing wind blown blankets (not unlike folding multiple flags in a wind tunnel). As the last remnants of the sleeping autumn grass hides under layers of frozen water (aka snow), we have to lug hay to the pastures via the kids old red plastic sleds.

There is a wild dance of sorts involved with the turn out this time of year. We scatter flakes of hay around the pastures and then walk each horse out one by one. Shane stomps out first and has his only temporary choice of the vast universe of hay piles. Evelyn dances out next and despite a variety of unoccupied piles will, with little variation, go for the dried timothy pile that Shane is munching on ... who quickly is forced to move to one of the other hay piles on a safer side of the pasture.

Bobbie is then turned out next which disrupts the temporary equine equilibrium. With ears pinned way back, he immediately goes for the pile occupied by Evelyn, forcing her to the flakes being munched on by Shane, forcing Shane to yet another still unoccupied flake pile.

Periodically, Bobbie, with a strand of timothy dangling from the side of his muzzle, like a tango dancer with a rose, will inexplicably and suddenly change his hay preference and begin the tango once again forcing Evelyn then Shane to rotate around the pasture like an uneasy violent tango.

Dion and Monte have their own pasture and there own variation of the dance. Monte heads into the pasture first and will gallop quickly around the hay, bucking with all four feet off the ground. Monte then find the deepest snow drift he can find and drops and spin like a break dancer (see photo of break dancing Dion and Monte-- which doesn't do it justice) until he's properly floured into prehistoric sized powdered donut. Seemingly shaken by the sudden coldness on his body, he jumps up, bucks and dances around until he too settles on a pile of hay.

When it's Dion's turn, he will tow whoever dares lead him out to the pasture, with the strength of a Budweiser Clydesdale (it's similar to snow skiing tied to a pack of elephants). When he quickly is let loose in the pasture, Dion will breeze around like the former race horse he was, whipping Monte and the hay piles into a frosty tornado until the storm dance abruptly stops and heads drop to the hay carnage strewn about the pasture.

If anyone of the equine Arthur Millers misses a step or stumbles, not to worry, they'll get another chance to perfect their craft tomorrow.

The Equine Snow Angel

Winters in Central New York are tough ... it's like jumping into any icy river just walking out the back door some days. With a monstrous lake effect snow machine (off Lake Ontario), on average, Syracuse NY gets dumped on with over 115 inches of snow every year, more than any other larger city in the United States. The towns up here have the tools, plows and salt to keep the roads clear, although not always with laser guided precision.

The plows sadistically knocked our fragile mail box off it's helpless post four times last month. Funny how nobody at Home Depot questions when I buy three mail boxes at a time, knowing that the average life of a rural mail box is shorter than that of a dung beetle in sub zero weather.

If you think driving and living in the snow is bad, try taking care of five horses in the winter. With layers of thick blankets, the horses still do like to stretch their stiff legs all winter long out side, which makes for brutal days of blanket changing, fighting sub zero wind chills and shoveling snow paths to the barn and pastures.

So, while I'm at work enduring the harshness of fluorescent lighting, ringing phones and the heat that just always to seems to be a degree or two off. My sainted snow angel wife is bundling with layers of long underwear, ski pants and fleece like Sir Edmund Hilary on Mt. Everest, to go out into cold. With frequent six foot snow drift blocking the way to pasture, she shovels paths to fields to get our pampered equine snow mobiles out for a few hours of snow play. Of course, there's no grass in the winter, so, she lugs hay on the kids plastic red sleds to our tundra-like pastures.

The cold actually changes the dynamic of stall cleaning. On day's like today when it's 10 degrees out (yes Fahrenheit), the horse poop freezes in the barn within minutes of it dropping from it's heated maker. So, at least, the horses can't grind it into the shavings. The snow's too freaking deep to dump the manure too far from the barn, so it gets dumped in a big pile not too far from the huge front doors. Of course, in the spring, it gets moved to another pile, closer to our unsuspecting neighbors who can't quite figure out why the damn flies are so bad in the hot summer.

Yet, even with the cold and snow, it looks absolutely amazing outside with the happy horses eating hay on the white snow covered field. As steam exhales from their muzzles,icicles dangle from their whiskers like these are mystical polar horses from arctic circle. They roll and dance in the snow like school children ecstatic with yet another snow day off from school.

My wife is a saint! A cold saint ... but a saint none-the-less -- a virtual equine snow angel.