Ride a Good Horse: January 2017

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

The reveal

As most of you know, we moved in October. The new place needed a lot of work, from setting up horse pens for Beamer and the girls, to a complete overhaul in the house.
We had a friend come in and put new paint on the ceilings, I painted the walls, and Ted did a lot of work trimming out the doors and windows, installing shelves and cupboards (bathroom and mud room), custom fitting the existing vanity by making it shorter to fit the space better, and putting a new top, sink and taps on it. He also re-plumbed the bathroom and turned the tub around so that the plumbing was against the wall instead of in the middle of the floor. In the kitchen he installed a new overhead microwave and stainless steel sinks and taps. He custom built a storage solution under the stairs with a pullout that holds all those wonderful things that need storing inside but are unsightly (like paint cans, vacuum cleaner etc.)
Our landlord (my brother-in-law) installed laminate flooring and tile to cover the painted OSB board that served as flooring before.
I still have to paint upstairs so I'll leave that for a future reveal, but here are some before and after photos of all that we have done so far.
Kitchen: before....

After

We need to fix that kitchen window this summer so that it can open, and get new cupboard doors as those ones are getting pretty shabby.

We were fortunate to have this sink given to us, and those flowered tiles are ones that I had made up with some of my photos.
I didn't take before pics of the bathroom, but here is what it looks like now.

The tub is painted a dark blue with a bronze coloured ball in the claws.

The other side of the bathroom- its a big bathroom!

The wooden cabinet which hides the hotwater tank and plumbing was built by Ted. That's my mom's washboard on it and the little teddy-bear coveralls originally belonged to Ted's dad.

The living room, before:

and after:

The wall colour is the palest grey, because the furniture and floors are dark I wanted a lighter colour for contrast.

Looking at the living room from the mud room:

All those trim boards on the baseboards, windows and doors are Ted's handiwork.

My office which doubles as a dressing room used to have dark blue knockdown on the bottom half of the wall. Ted built me the bookshelf. 😄

The mud room houses the wood stove and all 4 dogs.

Ted built this gate to keep the critters at bay. It is repurposed deck railing, and we added the boards with our brand on them because Thea could walk right through that 6 inch opening. Come spring we will take it out and give it fresh paint. Haven't quite decided to go with white or black.
Those theater seats came out of a closed down theater in Claresholm- they are very comfy and close to the stove for a nice place to sit on a cold day.

This is the coat rack Ted made that is in the corner by the door. He made the horseshoe/railroad spike one, and the other forged piece we bought from my friend Janice. We attached them to a couple of boards we found in the barn that were milled on this property.
So there you have it- home sweet home!

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Walkabout

The snow turned to rain a couple of days ago- not a lot of rain, thank goodness. But it made the snow really heavy. I went for a walk down to the river to check on it. Tess and Thea came with.... at least, until we got even with the horse pen and then Tess hightailed it back to the house... sigh. But miss Thea was really happy to get out for a walk with me.

C'mon, lets go!

I saw a lot of deer tracks and then a set of single deer tracks that looked like it would be a big buck. There were coyote tracks right on top of the deer tracks, but they were fresher than the deer so I'm thinking it was tracking the deer but didn't catch up with it.

Those coyote tracks are twice the size of Thea's tracks.

I really enjoyed this walk, it was a beautiful day, sun poking out, and nice and mild. It felt good to get out and get some exercise after being cooped up and sick since January 6th; I'm finally almost better.

The river was gurgling and burbling through this hole in the ice. It looks pretty good, I think all the flood danger is past for now. The government sent in heavy equipment to open up a channel along the banks, and it worked pretty good, the level dropped at least a couple of feet in one day.

Looking upstream from where I was on the dyke.

I sure hope the worst of the winter is past us now. I'm sure we'll still get lots of snow storms, but I hope that it stays fairly mild.

I love walking in the woods, this is something I really missed at the last place we lived. (7 years!!!)

Here are some of the things that captured my attention.

Not too sure what these red berries are but they looked outstanding against the cedar tree....

and on their own. I'll have to check it in the spring and see what the bush looks like- it was at least 10 ft. tall. Tara, any ideas? It's not mountain ash.

I love the pop of colour on this tree, and I saw lots of Oregon Grape too- it's green leaves are always delightful against the snow.

Thea and I made our way back, sometimes I would have her wait up for me if she got too far ahead.

We walked back along the bottom of the horse pen so we could collect Reba at the barn on our way back to the house. Rosalee had to investigate why we were coming from that direction.

Had to have a horse photo of course! Well, maybe two, because Beamer was being silly...

Friday, January 20, 2017

Two good dogs.....

and one traitor.
Thea and Reba always accompany me down to the barn to do chores, twice a day. They will even mosey down their on their own if I'm not watching them.

Tess, on the other hand, is a traitor. She absolutely refuses to come do chores and will hide in her "house" when I ask her to come.

I'm pretty sure the reason is that she is super sensitive and when I have to get after Thea (not so much, anymore) for working the horses, she takes it personal as if I am scolding her. Poor thing, can't abide being scolded.
Oh well, it's a good thing that she is just perfect other than that! Love my Tess.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Snow Day

Heavy equipment has been called in to try to get the river flowing where it belongs. I sure hope it works because we now have a heavy snowfall and rain in the forecast.
The dyke can be seen in the background in these next two photos, it's that level snow line in the middle of the photo.

From the mare pen- although it looks like they are lower they are actually above the level of the dyke.

Looking downhill from the barn with Beamer's pen on the right.
Meanwhile, the snow has moved back in.... for the next week or so....
That meant photo op at feeding time this morning!

I think I needed a faster shutter speed!

Coulee

The horses look wet but they don't seem to be cold. The temperatures are right around the freezing mark, we might get some rain mixed with the snow.

I'm pretty sure the snow is deep enough thank-you-very-much!

I think Loretta is quite photogenic!

Mama Belle- I sure do love this mare!

Ok allright, I'll put your hay out now!

Monday, January 16, 2017

And so it begins.....

So- here is what is happening locally. We live in an area called Goat River Bottom, an old channel cut through the banks over the centuries, which has become farm land. Through it runs the Goat River, which is dyked on both sides to prevent flooding in heavy snow load/heavy rain years.
This winter had a weather pattern of rain and then hard freeze, topped with snow that was a recipe for river problems. As of now, the river has ice jams that are moving, and mild weather has returned which is causing the water to flow over the ice.
One place was in immediate danger as the water flowed over the banks and into her property. I had heard about it on Facebook and drove down to see if I could help. I got there in time to help evacuate 6 cows, who were quite certain that they didn't want to wade through almost belly deep (on them) icy water.

We used corral panels and a stock trailer and funnelled them along the fence line which was just barely out of the water and got them loaded.

This unfortunate lady has been evacuated. This is what her driveway looks like today:

The water, which had been flowing rapidly through her gate has slowed and frozen. There was a sandbag crew come in to divert the water once we got the cows out. The local fire department has a crew of volunteers working filling sandbags, as this isn't over yet.

The Goat River has an overflow channel that rarely has water in it, even in spring run off. Here is what she looks like today:

I have been monitoring the dyke to the south of our place.

Saturday morning- The water is a good way away from the banks of the dyke.

This morning- the channel close to the dyke now has water flowing, although that dyke where I am standing is a good 10 ft. above the water level.
So far, so good. However, now that the water is piling up here- downstream is going to be in trouble. With warm weather and possible rain/snow in the forecast, there are evacuation alerts in effect for those who live close to the river banks. We are fortunate to be on higher ground, although the bottom end of the horse pasture could get wet the girls do have high ground in their pen, as does Beamer.

Here is what it looks like downstream from us. Remember I mentioned the 10 ft. dyke? Well that this is how close to the top it is down there:

This is looking back upstream towards our place. If all that water and ice lets go, those last few feet of dyke won't hold the tremendous force of water on the move. Just downstream from this is the bridge on hiway 21 which goes down to Idaho.

The department of fisheries and oceans is monitoring the situation, as it is a waterways issue. If everything lets go, and ice builds up it could take out that bridge so they have heavy equipment on standby. The next few days could be interesting here.