Record Weather

I have already posted about the past year and all of the construction we had to deal with. Well, on top of that it was a wild year for weather. Any person that keeps their horses at home watches the weather constantly. When are the good days to ride? What days might the horses not be comfortable outside? Are there storms coming? What are the temps going to be? Blankets? No blankets? Which blankets? You are a slave to the weather when you are taking care of horses, because it can dictate a lot of what you do.

When I first brought Hwin home in December of 2016 the weather was mild and stayed that way through much of the winter. Nothing really froze. There was still grass through most of December, which prompted the purchase of a grazing muzzle, but things were pretty nice.

I got my first boarder in March, and I think it was only a week or two later when we got a record breaking snow storm. Dumping over thirty inches, it was the second largest snow storm ever for the Burlington area, and then it stayed cold. Fortunately we had already bought a plow for the truck, so we weren't scrambling to deal with the snow. That plow payed for itself over those couple of days. Besides just being a pain, nothing much changed in our routine.

The March storm was just the start of the precipitation. We had been in a drought up to then, but the rain started and didn’t let up for weeks. One of the rainiest springs and starts to summer we have ever had, and I got a couple more boarders in the midst of it in May. The mud was bad in spots, but the horses didn’t seem to mind and again not much changed in the routine except getting around was difficult.

When summer finally arrived in mid-July it was such a nice break and Fall was pretty OK too, until the wind started. For weeks the winds blew through at nearly 20-30mph, which makes it hard to clean the barn more than anything, but the horses just hung out with their backs to it.

One morning, though, we woke up to no power. All the weather reports had been predicting a wind storm, and I had the stall space to bring the outdoor horses in. Fortunately the damage was negligible. My son’s swing set blew over, and a tree came down without hitting anything. Compared to damage elsewhere I felt lucky. However, we didn’t get power back for over two days! It is amazing how much you take it for granted! We trucked buckets and coolers full of water from my in-laws, who had power, so the inside water could get changed. The outside water just didn’t get dumped. I did feedings and night check with a head lamp. How glorious it was when the power came back!

Most recently we have dealt with the longest coldest cold snap in 25 years. This past weekend wind chills were predicted to be -45 degrees. I’m not sure it actually got that cold. The worst I saw was -33, but people were scrambling to figure out what to do, especially with horses living outside. I kept all the inside horses in partly to just keep the barn itself warm. The two horses living outside got an extra layer, extra bedding and free choice hay in nets and on the ground. The shed doorways were also made smaller with some plywood. As for me, I kept chores to a minimum. I basically went out four times a day to feed, fill water buckets, and pick the big stuff out of the stalls.

All of this crazy weather has been stressful, but we have learned from all of it. One thing I have learned is that horses don’t mind weather as much as we do and would mostly rather be out than in. They aren't nearly as delicate as we like to believe. Another thing I have learned is to be prepared when extreme weather is predicted. We now have a generator hooked up that will power the house and barn, so we will have light and water if there is ever another outage. We also plan to add hinged doors to the shed for inclement weather. Secured open when it is nice and easily and quickly closed for an extra wind break when it’s not. It is always a work in progress and with every difficult situation things get a little bit easier the next time.