VERY productive day . . .

. . . thanks to Buddy and Lisa!  (Mark and I are a bit less functional at the moment than we need to be.)   The two of them cleared all the gravel out of all the stalls and put it on the ground outside the stalls to reduce the mud around there. 



All that gravel that was above the stall grids is now outside the barn - solving the mud problem AND making the stalls safer (and more comfortable) for the horses.

 

There's the grid that sits above more than a foot of crushed granite to keep the stalls drained well.  It's been invisible until now.  All you could see before was gravel.

 Then once the stalls were cleared out all the way down to the grids, we put a 4 X 6 mat under each of the food bucket racks and that's where I'll be putting their hay. If they kick around in there, they could still get shavings mixed into their hay, but thankfully it will not be possible to have gravel accidentally ingested.  Relief.

And here's how the stalls looked when Buddy and Lisa finished today!  Excellent!  Now it's no longer possible for them to accidentally get gravel in their mouth when picking up some food dropped on the floor.

Duke and Lizzie had been confined to their paddocks over most of the last week, so when Buddy and Lisa went to work on the stalls, the two of them got turned back out into the pasture.  Duke instantly RACED over to eat the acorns under the oak trees back there, but "What the heck??" . . . when he got there he came to a dead stop and just looked around, he was very confused to find that there were NO OAK TREES anymore!   Mark had cut down both the live oaks back there so we wouldn't have to worry about the horses eating too many acorns and making themselves sick.

The two oak trees are gone, but there are obviously still a LOT of other kinds of trees left.

Then Mark and Buddy hauled them all out to the road to be picked up by the parish later in the week.

So when Duke got over to where those trees used to be, there actually was nothing whatsoever there any longer.  He was definitely NOT pleased.  He spent the next few minutes chasing Lizzie around until he managed to use up some of that pent-up energy, but eventually he settled down and started grazing normally again. 

And at that point, Lizzie came back and joined him.  Apparently she has no trouble telling when she better stay out of his way, and when he's feeling calm and friendly again!  (It's a "girl thing."  ;-D )   

So it was a very productive day.  Hey - Buddy even put up blinds on the front windows in the barn for me so I don't feel quite so "visible" when I go out there at night.  NICE day!