Okay - back to blog . . .

I've been sick as a dog since Saturday night, but I'm finally beginning to get better at last!  Glad it didn't happen until late Saturday night because half a dozen guys were here all day Friday and Saturday cutting down all those horrendous trees back in the pasture.  I took pictures while they were working on it but I also got them to help with some other things. (They're charging mega-bucks so I'm sure some additional help wasn't an issue.)

Here those guys are cutting back those super tall trees to half their heights - except those that are not healthy.  Those four unhealthy trees were getting removed completely, including the roots.  (Two there by that truck, and two on the right of the building.)

It was amazing that they were able to get those REALLY tall trees
down without them falling on the storage building -- or on them!

So here's how the trees were cut back.  And after this photo was taken, they also removed all those pieces of wood and placed them over in the property next door so they can be burned -- unless anyone wants to come pick up that stuff for their fireplace.  (We use only a gas fire, so we don't need any of those at all.)

Here are those two additional huge trees on the right side of that storage
building that were taken down completely as well - roots and all.

So here's how it looks back there now.  Nice, huh?   The horses are going to be much happier because with all those trees taken down, lots more grass will be coming up now.  (Mark is planting seeds this week in all those dark brown dirt spaces in this photo.)

So in addition to taking down all those trees, they also removed all the lower branches up to about 10 or 15 feet high on the remaining trees so those horses can't reach the branches to eat all those leaves!  Excellent!

And while they were moving things - all those trees trunks etc. -- I got them to help move a bunch of those horrendously heavy fences that we hadn't been able to move ourselves. (Each 15-foot wide one weighs well over 200 lbs!) I wanted to put those things along the side of the barn porch on the side opposite from the house so that when it's necessary to close the horses in, they will be able to go into ALL of their paddocks, not just in Duke's as it has been.  So three of those guys at a time were able to haul those up from the pasture and lean them up against the porch posts for me. 

There will be a smaller gate there on the left and we have added two other gates between that porch and the round pen so the horses will have access to Duke's paddock, the round pen and half of Arthur's paddock, but each of their stalls as well.  Excellent.

As you can see, they're fastened to the posts now with chains, but once Jerry gets them painted to match the posts, Mark will fasten them to the posts with the same metal that he used on the round pen -- much nicer looking.

Arthur is outside the barn area since the other gates aren't currently closed, but they'll be able to hang out in a large area even if they're closed in away from the pasture itself, so I'm really grateful that those guys were able to lift those red fences.

Actually, any regular purchased gate is a nice normal weight.

But the guy we bought those red fences from made them himself -- he's a welder -- and they are incredibly strong.  On the plus side, if any of those trees there on the neighbor's property falls over onto the barn, it might break the roof, but it sure wouldn't fall all the way to the ground with those tall fences over there, so the horses should remain alive no matter what!  

Okay.  Time to head back downstairs and go back to bed. Tomorrow is another day.