June On The Farm (Written By Roys)
It is mid- June here in northern Arizona but even though June 15th was the “official” start of Arizona’s monsoon season, it is still hot, dry, and windy with no rain in the foreseeable future.. And while it has rained some in the southern part of the state, all of the locals around here, know that the rain doesn’t start until the 4th of July Rodeo. The pastures still look good, especially early in the morning and late evening, when there is a softer light. I am watering every night but the wind just dries it right back out by noon the next day. Luckily the horses have been very good this year and have broken very few sprinklers. It is often amazing what keeps me happy.
Because it’s hot, wouldn’t you know the pump goes out on one of the Humboldt Water Company’s two wells which promptly caused the pump on the other one to be overloaded and so not to be left out – it blew too. So for over a week we have little or no, mostly no, water. Now Humboldt Water probably serves less than 500 people and unfortunately for most of them that is the only water they had access to. I have a well so several times a day we would haul in large buckets of water to put in the back of the toilets so they could be flushed. What a pain, but I pity those that couldn’t even do that. Then late last Thursday everything came back on line and I didn’t know until I made my morning complaint call on Friday to find out the status, and they told me that it had been resolved on Thursday. I threw a fit and they called the head man and he had me back with water within a half hour. I am on a separate line from the rest of town because I am the only one on my road that doesn’t use their own well for water. They had just forgotten to turn my line back on. Oh the joy of small town living! Best of all I could start using my evaporative cooler again. Most coolers just re-circulate the water but I have a fancy one that flushes the water out periodically and I didn’t dare turn it on when there was no water to replace that that had drained. Of course last week was the hottest week of the summer so far.
The race horses finished off the 2013 spring season at Turf Paradise in a big way – well one of them did, anyway. Cash Receipt ran one more time since my last epistle and finished on the board. He didn’t have a bad 2013 with one win and three seconds from six starts. Considering all his problems, I was happy. He is up here in the pasture, enjoying his time off.
FD Icy was claimed away from me but I claimed him back and he rewarded me with a big win in The Dwight Patterson Stakes for Arizona-breds at the end of April. It was a $35,000 stake and all of his connections were very happy, especially me! He too, is turned out for the summer with a win and a third from seven starts this year. It’s an odd thing to say but I don’t know what I will do with him next year. He couldn’t beat $6500 open claimers but ended up winning the stake in pretty spectacular fashion. If I run him where he can win – I am sure he will be claimed and I really do want to keep him.
Barilla ended up the Turf Paradise season with a win and a third from three starts. She finished fourth at Arapahoe in Denver her first out and is entered back on Friday. They tell me she is training well so maybe we will get lucky.
I gave my borrowed horse Mr. Gary back when my group arrived for the summer. I also had some boarders for a while but they weren’t here very long. One had really bad feet and promptly got an abscess. These are very painful for a horse and he was standing like he had a broken leg one morning. We soaked and bandaged and kept him by himself and it took two weeks for the darn thing to break. I called the owner and said if the horse was going to get abscesses when it was dry – I didn’t think it was a good idea to leave him up here when the rainy season rolled around. Actually, I didn’t want to be the one doing the soaking and all that goes with that and since the horse couldn’t go out on the pasture there was just no point in having him here. She agreed and they took him home.
I also took in two horses for a lady that wanted them to have a month of “summer camp”. One hadn’t been here a week when she got the colic and had to be hauled in to the vet. Luckily the lady had just brought in a third horse that was to spend a week while the owner went to California on vacation the next day. Since she had the trailer, she loaded the sick one up and took her in to the vet. It was sand colic, which we get a lot of here in Arizona since there are few places with grass. Thank goodness I have pasture. She brought the horse back the next day and I assume had a good vacation even if it didn’t begin well.
The vacation must have cost more than she planned as she not only took the one that just spent a week home, she hauled one of her others home also. She left me the one that had been sick and I put it in with Nae Doot so they could swish flies together. That worked out well but then summer camp was over and the horse left. Boarders can be a pain in the neck. It had been so long since I had any, I had forgotten how much trouble they can be.
So now I just have my horses with me. I put Nae Doot in with Cash and Icy and they are all getting along pretty well. Nae Doot is kind of the odd man out even though I gave him the home pasture advantage. Cash and Icy are best buds and have been together since they were born. Nae Doot stands behind Icy and gets his face swished by Icy’s tail so he is happy. Cash is the boss man though so Nae Doot stays out of his way.
After the irrigation men put in some new valves on the irrigation lines last month, they came back and propped up some of the fence posts. Like the lines, after 30 years, the fence posts had become the victims of erosion and some of the posts were not even in the ground anymore. Since the fence is pipe it would have been very hard and expensive to move the whole line so we just propped them up with some fancy rock and cement bases. It should hold until well after I am dead and gone.
Last on my list of news is I got a new–to–me, car. It is a Mini Cooper and what fun it is to drive. It’s the first car, since my Dad’s ’64 GTO, that makes you want to go out and just take a drive. It’s a 2008 with low mileage and so many bells and whistles that I will never figure them all out and is an “S” model so it is really peppy and goes way to fast. Thank you Icy for winning that stake race!
Well, that’s it for now. Prescott has its first and hopefully only wildfire this year. Started about noon on Tuesday and by Wed morning was up to over 5000 acres. Lots of homes in the way and I hope everyone and their animals are safe. Winds are expected to be bad today (Wed) so we have to hope for the best. I was going to offer to take in some refugee horses but they opened up the fairgrounds so there should be plenty of room.