With the siding and exterior trim complete, we turned our attention
to cleaning up the yard. We have been experiencing some wonderful fall
weather with sunshine and temps in the mid to high teens (Celsius).
While I have been finishing the siding, Carol has been burning all the
scrap in our burn barrel and re-stacking and organizing all the "good"
lumber. We cut up several damaged and/or rotting skids so they would fit
into the barrel and moved all the left over siding to a neat stack
behind the house. That in itself is no easy feat, requiring three
tractor loads of siding piled on a skid suspended beneath the front end
loader bucket. Man, that stuff is heavy! At least we know that our house
will never blow away in a windstorm with all that weight on the outside
walls!
After
2 full days of hard work this last weekend, we have the yard completely
garbage and scrap free. With all the trim and siding getting final
coats of paint after installation, the place is looking great - just
like the image we've had in our mind's eye! We've even managed to
disassemble and store all the saws and tools in the basement before the
snow comes. That puts us way ahead of last year!
As the weather was so nice on Sunday, we decided to let the horses out of their paddocks so they could eat some of the lovely grass that is still growing in the open areas on our property. Wow! You'd think they won the lottery by their reaction! In fact we let them stay out on the pasture all night. That may not sound like a big deal, but this is the first time we have ever let any of them out of their fenced-off fields. It would be difficult for them to escape right off the property as the gates are closed but the perimeter fence that may be down in any number of hard-to-reach places that we haven't seen. Needless to say, Carol was more than a little concerned about them being out...alone...in the dark! So, this morning, still in the dark, when we couldn't see the horses in front of the house, we loaded up the ATV as usual and went down to the paddocks to feed them. No reaction at all, until Carol unchained the gate. The quiet morning was interrupted by lots of calling and cantering hooves as our 5 boys tried to prevent us from giving away their hay and mash to someone else who may somehow have sneaked into their paddocks during the night! They came romping down the driveway, through the gate and galloped past me on the ATV to where Carol was dispensing breakfast. I closed the gate behind them and Carol quickly sorted them out into their home fields and they quickly set about enjoying their meals. Once again, all was right in the Gull Lake Ranch horse world.
