November Hill farm journal, 119

 Well, another week, several more days of rainfall. I am grateful we’re not in drought but now we’re in tropical rainforest territory, though cold. The horses have to have their sheets on as I do not want Keil Bay getting chilled, and they are all weary of mushy ground. Thankfully the sun came out this afternoon and it looks like sun tomorrow, then I see rain on the forecast several more days this week.

I’m seriously thinking we need to cover our arena - not enclose it, but have a nice cover that lets us see through it from the house to the back. The idea of huge equipment back there totally freaks me out though.

Meanwhile, we’re making some progress getting stone put in to the stormwater creek bed in the front field. We’ll leave large gap areas in the flat spaces for the horses go to through, but the sections that are deep/steep are getting stone, and then in the fenced off bird habitat area we’ll do more extensive stonework, as that’s an area where water tends to pool out. If I can get some research done I’d love to put in a small water feature for birds and frogs. 

The barn roof repair was completed nicely and now we’re awaiting shingles that are on order so the house can get its new roof. The deck in back is next, though I keep shifting my plans for what we’ll do with it.

I’m worried about the two bee hives, Hegemone and Artemis. I peeked at them on admittedly a colder than they like day and the upper boxes were super empty looking from above. I hope they were in cluster below. One hopeful sign - Hegemone girls have propolised their bottom entrance hole (about the size of a half dollar) so that it’s now a bee-sized hole only. As I noticed this and leaned down to check it out, amazed, one of the girls came to the hole and peeked back at me! 

Keeping my fingers crossed they make it through the winter. They have sugar patties available to them and have been taking that thus far.

I’m about halfway through my Taxonomy and Winter Flora native plant studies classes and am enjoying being active in that program again. Mostly on Zoom, though we have met for winter garden walks with everyone masked and distanced. 

This weekend past was both a friend’s book launch party via Crowdcast and my monthly writing retreat via Zoom, so it’s been busy here!

This week we have an arborist coming to assess the large oaks around the barn and house, as well as the two hickory trees in our back yard. All of them are beginning to grow toward house or barn and need to be pruned, and I’d like someone to do it with an eye toward the health of the trees at the same time. I’m very interested to see this work done once we get it scheduled.

Keil has had a number of slightly off days but looked really good today, so I hope we’re back to some normal weeks again. He had chiro here last week and had a minor pelvic adjustment but was mostly clear, which is terrific. And although he is done with his 5 p.m. medication buckets, he now gets 5 p.m. extra pellet buckets because I knew he’d be upset if we just stopped. He’s 31. He can use the calories. He can use the pampering. And he loves it. 

That’s about it! Hope all are hanging in there through this wintry month (for some of us much more so than others, and I’m not complaining about anything but the rain here!).