A Cold, Rainy Morning

The morning was cold, with stinging, numbing winds, and the sky promised rain or snow soon as I did the morning chores:

The previous day I'd feared that Jasmine was dying, but I found a horse feed, full of grain and drenched in molasses which she scarfed down like a starving cow. She began standing all day and keeping up with the herd. Things were looking up:


In the pigeon room, the baby who kept falling out of the nest was now blocked in and still alive in spite of the cold, along with its sibling:

The younger babies in the nest on the floor were also alive although I didn't want to get my hopes up. Babies at this time of year don't often live to adulthood:

The big machinery began pulling in to the corn field across the road from my house, and harvesting began even as cold rain began to fall. I knew the corn kernels would be processed through a dryer before storage, so there was no worry about the rain. Two years ago they harvested in October and I got better videos of the process. Just click here:


And then the gravel I'd ordered arrived. I put the mischievous horses in the barn and let the truck back in and dump seven yards of bank run gravel. Violet sauntered over to check it out:

The area in front of the barn door was muddy and messy, causing me to want something firmer for the animals to walk on. I didn't know if it would help their hooves, but I figured that it might:

I spent the morning on the tractor, scooping up and spreading the gravel. I would previously have worried about the bigger rocks, but now I consider them a potential blessing, thinking they might help break off hooves which grow too long. I was cold and miserable by the time I was done so I let the horses back out and went inside to warm up: