Waiting for spring

Grapevine Farm is covered with a crust of icy snow, and braced against the unaccustomed cold. This area is decidedly Southern in climate and inclination, so single digit temperatures and prolonged periods of time with freezing temperatures, not to mention ice and snow on the ground, are not phenomena we take in stride.

The horses are all weathering the cold spell in good shape. Only Princess Allie requires a blanket, and everyone has been happily tucking into the extra hay I've thrown them. The two herdlets in the front part of the farm have practically moved IN to their round bales. Nary a shiver this morning, despite wind chills below zero. Water is another matter -- I was late to work this morning because the water trough in the outdoor arena (home to Leroy, Obie, Bit, and Blue, the Don't Fence Me In escape artists who respect not the electric tape) had frozen all the way to the bottom. I thought I was almost done with chores, but ended up spending considerable time and effort pounding the ice into bits with the post driver, throwing the chunks out, and then refilling the trough. It made for an interesting problem for my abandoned class to determine just how much ice I had moved -- 100 gallon trough, 3/4 full, with water at 8 lbs to the gallon. Do the math...

The same calculus has flattened a number of barns in the area, so I am holding my breath waiting for the warmup. My buildings all have large slabs of solid ice on them, and promise to make for interesting times when the thaw does come. The ice is sliding off like captive glaciers, and at the moment there is a two-foot overhang from the barn runway. Hopefully neither the horses nor I will get poleaxed by a sheet of falling ice. One of the neighbors, whose barn disintegrated under the weight, cut a foot-square piece of ice and weighed it. It came in at 15 lbs. Multiply that by the area of the roof of my 60x100 foot indoor arena and you can see why I'm nervous. I have to admire the neighbor's attitude -- I think scientific inquiry would be the farthest thing from my mind if one of my buildings fell in.

As many fair-weather opportunities to ride as I have squandered, now that the weather is a real obstacle, I am dying to get in the saddle. Unfortunately, most of the gates are cemented to the ground, at least the gates with the BROKE horses inside, and the hill down to the arena from the barn lot is tricky to navigate. I have my Yak Trax, and my ice climber's crampons if things get really bad, but the hill is just too steep and the ground too icy to risk getting a horse hurt. Robin, the Great Dane, spins and slides on the ice like a top, and has decided that crate life is not all so bad after all, compared to the treacherous footing outside. My relationship to the horses at the moment is one of waiter and chambermaid (and even the latter function is curtailed, as a ride down the huge dump slope with a wheelbarrow full of frozen manure is not an inviting prospect). They are not particularly patient customers, especially Leah and Shahar, my barn bangers and bucket rattlers, nor do they tip particularly well, but the sound of all that contented munching is a fair reward.

So we wait. I chop ice. I carry hay. I whack buckets with a crowbar. I read Robert Frost's poem "Brown's Descent", which always comes to mind as I head down one or another of my big hills. I watch Philippe Karl on video, and Reiner Klimke's amazing one-tempi victory lap at the '84 Olympics on you-tube, and study barrel racing, cavaletti, team sorting, and the art of harness training. I draw up training plans, put blank paper in each horse's section of my training notebook, and study the clinic and show schedules for the coming year. Makes for happy winter dreams.