Monday I slept in while Karen and Sean did the majority of the chores. I got up and folded a load of laundry and then went out and bottle-fed the calves and went into the giant birdhouse to feed and water the birds. I also gave Felix and Betsy their mash. Jake came by after school to do some training, Charity and Betsy both did great.
Tuesday I went out and did chores, brought Betsy and Felix in for their mash. One of our trough heaters melted a whole right through one of the rubber troughs so I tried to fix it with flex seal, that was fail. I will have to bring it into the house and see what I can do with it once it’s empty again. It is nice to see the birds all settling in in the giant birdhouse. Some of them are up top in the roosts and a few of them are in the nesting boxes. At the beginning, they were all just standing awkwardly in the middle of the floor. It’s kind of a mess in there though, I’m trying to figure out how to best clean it without letting the chickens all out. I got some housework done and things are slowly starting to look better in here. It’s been a little rough after spending the majority of the summer outside trying to get projects done. I also went to town to pick up our feed order.
Wednesday was a pretty chill day at the ranch. I got up and did chores, got everyone mash and even grain to the easy keepers as a nice mid-week treat. I unloaded all the feed I picked up yesterday. It feels so darn cold today and it’s only -3, not sure what we are going to do when winter actually kicks in. I went in the house and got the 50/50 up and running and worked on some other computer work. Jake came out after school and did some training, our little Charity is coming along really nicely.
Thursday was a pretty great day! We had a company come out for a team-building event. All morning we did chores together so they could get introduced to all the animals and see what running a rescue is all about. We stopped for lunch and had hot dogs and hot chocolate and then in the afternoon we split them up into teams and put them to work with a couple of projects. Team 1 cleaned out the warm room in the garage, Team 2 rebuilt the round pen, and Team 3 rebuilt the pallet pen in the petting zoo. They all did a great job and we had a lot of fun, pretty sure that pallet pen looks better than it did before. Jake and my friend Tammy were awesome enough to come and help with the event. Now if we could only have a team-building event every week, we get a lot done around here! Thank you so much to everyone who was out today, it truly was a great day! After the event was over Jake and I put Charity through a bit of a training exercise.
Friday I got to work on the chores and was done with everything by 1:30 pm. Sean helped me get a few things done and then I headed to the city to pick up our loop, it was a little disappointing this time as there wasn’t much bread or dairy which are the favorites of the cows and pigs, the horses however will be super happy with all the apples, carrots and other produce we got. I also headed to Princess Auto to get a new jack for the horse trailer as this one won’t crank any more, I have no idea how I am going to get it on because there was only one size and it isn’t the size that’s on the trailer now. I am sure we’ll figure it out though. After that was all done it was in the house to update the financials and other paperwork. We also received a request to come get four horses out by Virden, we hope to get that done on Sunday.
Saturday we had Tracey, Jake and Karen out to help with chores, work on the garage and feed out loop. We had Edwin stop by to pick up meat for his dogs and had a hay delivery as well. Afterward, I went in the house and took care of some computer work, we are currently doing some planning and getting estimates for a barn as well as we are going to try very hard to secure grants and other funds to make it happen this year. It will truly be a game changer for us when it comes to helping the thin and sick horses that would really benefit from being in a barn.
Sunday was a super busy day, we had many volunteers out to help with hoof trimming and cleaning up the garage. Jake and I went to a place South of Virden to pick up some gorgeous horses in need of rescue. The weather was a little crazy, it was nice, it was stormy and then it was nice again. We got to our location and there were two beautiful yearlings, a beautiful Paint and a beautiful Palomino stallion. We got the paint and the pali loaded up no problem and then went to go load the yearlings. There was a dog there that ended up biting the babies a couple times and they were pretty rough with them, it was pretty hard to take but I just kept telling myself, deep breaths, just get them on the trailer and they’re out of here. We eventually got them on the trailer and then were asked if we wanted a puppy …… so we came back with 6 puppies to rehome. Hoping to work with Spirit of Hope on that one …. surprise guys!
