In Which Klipspringer 5 Eats Hay, Contemplates the Future, and a Horse Dies
Seriously. The other day, Friday, first morning all the board members were here for breakfast, Breeza, a big gray mare, was put down.
She was the first horse I rode here, just a little ride, an hour or so around nearby the ranch. I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with her at first, she wanted to run ahead for a while, but eventually I started pulling back hard enough to get her to respond. And by pull back I mean more kind of a hard lean, not yanking. It was a good time, once we adjusted to each other. It’s fun, and interesting, trying to go somewhere with a big intelligent animal. You kind of pretend you’re steering, she kind of pretends she’s paying attention, and you go more or less where you’re supposed to. Of course, it’s easy with these horses, they’re all well trained, old trail horses, so pretty mellow and patient. Except for Du-Bob (sp? have to check with Steve), who’s the lead horse and probably also the most intelligent and curious. He gets to acting up now and again.
But apparently Breeza had had a uterine infection since May. Which is something that happens to brood mares (which she had been) and so isn’t really that big a deal, but should not have gone undealt with for four months. Usually what happens is that you give the horse some antibiotics and flush it out up in there with a hose, but she was a newish horse here and the vet who usually treated her lived in Denver, I think, and thought it could wait or something, and Steve didn’t have the right antibiotics and so it just got worse and worse. (If you’re wondering from whence I gained my knowledge of equine uterine infections, it was mostly from eavesdropping on a conversation Dwayne, the ranch foreman, and one of the guests, who seemed to have some sort of background in large animal veteranarianism, were having in the dining room right before dinner while I was looking busy icing and watering the glasses, lighting candles, setting out butter, straightening place settings, etc. So I may have missed something.)
Anyway, for the past few days Breeza’d been lying down too much, so the treatment for that’s to make her stand up. So that morning before breakfast we saw her lying down by the wire fence behind the barn, and a bunch of people went down to try to get her up. But she wasn’t really responding. Then I looked out the window at one point, and she pushed herself up, and promptly keeled over, taking out the fence, and very nearly Annie and Tyler (manager and assistant angler/waitstaff/chore boy/future step-brother of Emily and friend of Justin/6’9” tall dude from NH, respectively). This of course drew further crowds as people finally got up and somewhat delayed breakfast. It was kind of funny at one point, all the people who weren’t helping were up at the dining room looking down at the activity while all the horses were on the other side of the field watching it too. The attention of all large mammals in the vicinity was riveted. Breeza was pretty bad at this point, had hurt her leg at some point, the infection was really nasty, she’d cut herself all up on the fence, so the decision was made and Breeza got whacked. I was serving breakfast at that point, I think, so I’m not really sure how it happened.
Later in the day Dwayne got Tyler and they took the backhoe and buried her somewhere. Somewhere that B.J., the dog, some sort of black lab/spaniel mix or something along those lines, found and rolled around in, cause he smelled like dead animal the next day, so we kicked him out of the staff TV room. Today we kicked him out because it’s raining and he made the place smell like wet dog.
While I managed to stay out of the thick of that part of the ranch life cycle, I was pretty well involved in another, the annual haying. Actually, I missed out on helping load up the first half or so of the hay, either because I was working, or didn’t know about it, or couldn’t see the truck and so thought they weren’t doing it then. But when I finally was forced to do it last weekend, it was a lot of fun. Or I’m a nut job. Everyone else working kind of thought so, because my technique for tossing the hay on the truck is to stand with my right leg centered on the short side of the bale, grab the two wires, pull it up vertical and onto my knee and with that knock it upwards and flip it back so it’s balanced on my head. I think this is actually easier, because it spends less time scratching up my forearms, doesn’t require continuous support from my arms and back, the weight’s centered over my spine instead of out in front of me, and I can just drop it on the truck bed instead of having to give another heave, but in any case it makes me look mad tough. That and the time I suplexed a bale backwards over my head while we were unloading the truck into the barn. Except my shoulders were a little tired at that point, so I didn’t loft it quite as high as I meant and the end of it kind of landed on my face. I thought it was funny and came up smiling, which probably just reinforced the nut job impression, especially since my mouth and teeth were all covered with hay and dirt. Got plenty of fiber last week. That’s also the downside to my head carrying technique, it means all the hay that falls out of the bale falls into my face. And I think I’m the only one who had more hay on the inside of his sunglasses than on the outside.
On Wednesday Justin and I together chucked (which is what you do with hay bales. You don’t throw or toss, you chuck) the last bale of the season (unless Dwayne made a couple more with the remaining scraps of hay out there) into the barn Wednesday morning, and I’m kind of sad. It’s hard work, but not in a bad way at all. You just go out and spend a few hours in the sun in the fresh (or diesel fume-y or horse manure-y or hay-y) air and grab the nearest bale of hay, chuck it onto to the truck where Dwayne stacks it until it’s full. Then, and this is really the best part, because it’s the freshest air and the warmest and all the endorphins are pumping and making me feel good but I don’t actually have to do anything, we get on the full truck, this big light tan ’64 Dodge with a wood flat bed and a wood fence behind the cab to keep the hay from sliding forward and big flat corners to either side of the hood, above and in front of the tires, which are perfect for sitting on, keep the wind in your face, the hood’s nice and warm to rest my arm on, the afternoon sun looks beautiful on the hills and mountains and turning aspens, and we drive back to the barn and it feels wonderful. Then we have to unload the truck, and I never liked the idea of being inside the barn, although I guess that’s easier, so I always stayed in the truck, taking down layer after layer and passing it on to the people inside, where it gets stacked. On the days I worked I think we totaled about 5 2/3 loads, which, if I’m estimating correctly, is about 1224 bales of hay. But most of those days we had five guys working, so it went pretty easy. The one thing though, we were wearing gloves, can hardly imagine doing it without them, but there’s no way to keep your forearms from getting all scratched up. Looks kind of like chicken pox or something, maybe measles, lots of little red spots and scratches. It stung so bad putting them in the hot tub, then got used to it, take them out to cool off, and then it stings again to put them back in. But that was mostly after the first day. Don’t really notice when you’re working, or after you’ve been doing it for a little bit.
And one of the guys was Tyson Phipps, the son of one of Tony Phipps, who’s the son of the Phipps who owned it before that, who’s the son of Senator Phipps who bought and started this place way back when. He’s been visiting for most of the week but left today, initiated a bonfire down at a campsite at the eastern end of the road on Thursday, I think it was. It was cool to have him around, cooler that he helped out. He also let us borrow the DVD player in Tony Phipps’s apartment yesterday afternoon and went on a beer-buying run for everyone before the bonfire. Hmm, he’s getting special attention, which isn’t really fair, since the people who helped out because they work here are all cool too. Should I do a little blurb about everyone now? No, that’s a little overwhelming. I guess Tyson gets extra attention because he’s the first guest-type person to do any serious helping out around here, and the first since I’ve been here to intentionally organize a staff gathering/party, which went very well. I think he used to work here, which would explain a lot of his initiative in helping out.
Wait, Dwayne needs special mention. Dwayne is the hay chucking MAN. Four, five guys chucking hay to him on the truck, and he can keep up with us stacking it. Can do it all day without seeming tired, stays in a good mood, just keeps stacking the hay up there. It’d be impressive for one of us young kids to be working that fast. And he’s got to be somewhere around 50.
Thinking about haying, and kind of idealizing it as pleasurable, simple, but hard work reminds me of Sam Gill’s writing about growing up on a farm in Kansas when he was a boy. Which segues nicely into what’s probably my last topic for tonight. Because, to explain to most of you reading this, he’s a religion professor at CU Boulder, I think. If it’s somewhere else, please let me know. That passage was in the introduction to a book I read last fall for Religion 390: Theories of Religion, and I ended up reading a fair number of things by him over the course of last year. But anyway, Whitney, one of the newer people, mostly on housekeeping, very cool, will probably be heading back there after we’re done, her boyfriend’s the assistant Nordic ski coach, and I’m thinking I might get a ride, maybe a floor, and see if I can say hi to Sam Gill. Coleman, Kurt, Professor Buckley (now that I’ve graduated do I still call you Professor Buckley, or should I call you Jorunn, or what, what’s the etiquette on that?), or anyone else, if you’ve got any questions you want to be sure I ask, let me know.
Professor Buckley suggested, many times while I was at Bowdoin, that if we have questions for people we’re reading, to write them, as they’d probably respond, and be interested in hearing from us and in what we have to say or ask. Not being much inclined towards more writing than absolutely necessary, especially in addition to coursework, I never did. But this close, how can I resist? And I think Stuart Guthrie, another guy I read for 390 is there too! This could be really cool, in an extremely nerdy way. Wait, it stops being nerdy once you’re in college, it’s something else, right? What’s the word for it?
Anyway, that’s one possibility for what’s next. I’ll probably stick around for the week after I stop work (I’m officially done the 25th, I think, but the season doesn’t fully close until the next weekend) and do more hiking and exploring around here first. Ooh, I worked it so that I’ve got nearly two days off this week, no dinner, day off, no breakfast, so I might do a serious hike. Head back to Wheeler and then check out those mountains that look like rock walls for giants. But slightly longer short term, I’m definitely thinking about heading down to Santa Fe for a little while, and from there maybe somewhere SoCal-ish, definitely coastwards. Maybe see the organ at Pomona. And from there figure out further west.
So things are good here. There was some serious drama early this week, a guest had her camera go missing and it turned up in a staff member’s room. He almost got fired, but is being given a second chance. Which I think is a good thing, because he is generally a hard worker, helped me out a number of times with meals when I had ended up by myself, even though he didn’t have to, covers a lot of odd jobs around here, and has had a rough past. I hope the second chance sends the right message, forgiveness is possible where there is trust and I deserve forgiveness and need to be trustworthy (or something like that, could probably be put better, but I’ve been writing for a long time now), and not the wrong one, I can get away with trying to steal. But that blew over really quickly, I’d almost forgotten about it and it just happened five days ago.
Also, Chad, one of the guys out here, is thinking he might want to work on the water, do lobstering or something, maybe up in MA. Anyone have any idea who to get in touch with about that?
Hmm, this has definitely lost flow, if it had any. I think it’s time to post.
She was the first horse I rode here, just a little ride, an hour or so around nearby the ranch. I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with her at first, she wanted to run ahead for a while, but eventually I started pulling back hard enough to get her to respond. And by pull back I mean more kind of a hard lean, not yanking. It was a good time, once we adjusted to each other. It’s fun, and interesting, trying to go somewhere with a big intelligent animal. You kind of pretend you’re steering, she kind of pretends she’s paying attention, and you go more or less where you’re supposed to. Of course, it’s easy with these horses, they’re all well trained, old trail horses, so pretty mellow and patient. Except for Du-Bob (sp? have to check with Steve), who’s the lead horse and probably also the most intelligent and curious. He gets to acting up now and again.
But apparently Breeza had had a uterine infection since May. Which is something that happens to brood mares (which she had been) and so isn’t really that big a deal, but should not have gone undealt with for four months. Usually what happens is that you give the horse some antibiotics and flush it out up in there with a hose, but she was a newish horse here and the vet who usually treated her lived in Denver, I think, and thought it could wait or something, and Steve didn’t have the right antibiotics and so it just got worse and worse. (If you’re wondering from whence I gained my knowledge of equine uterine infections, it was mostly from eavesdropping on a conversation Dwayne, the ranch foreman, and one of the guests, who seemed to have some sort of background in large animal veteranarianism, were having in the dining room right before dinner while I was looking busy icing and watering the glasses, lighting candles, setting out butter, straightening place settings, etc. So I may have missed something.)
Anyway, for the past few days Breeza’d been lying down too much, so the treatment for that’s to make her stand up. So that morning before breakfast we saw her lying down by the wire fence behind the barn, and a bunch of people went down to try to get her up. But she wasn’t really responding. Then I looked out the window at one point, and she pushed herself up, and promptly keeled over, taking out the fence, and very nearly Annie and Tyler (manager and assistant angler/waitstaff/chore boy/future step-brother of Emily and friend of Justin/6’9” tall dude from NH, respectively). This of course drew further crowds as people finally got up and somewhat delayed breakfast. It was kind of funny at one point, all the people who weren’t helping were up at the dining room looking down at the activity while all the horses were on the other side of the field watching it too. The attention of all large mammals in the vicinity was riveted. Breeza was pretty bad at this point, had hurt her leg at some point, the infection was really nasty, she’d cut herself all up on the fence, so the decision was made and Breeza got whacked. I was serving breakfast at that point, I think, so I’m not really sure how it happened.
Later in the day Dwayne got Tyler and they took the backhoe and buried her somewhere. Somewhere that B.J., the dog, some sort of black lab/spaniel mix or something along those lines, found and rolled around in, cause he smelled like dead animal the next day, so we kicked him out of the staff TV room. Today we kicked him out because it’s raining and he made the place smell like wet dog.
While I managed to stay out of the thick of that part of the ranch life cycle, I was pretty well involved in another, the annual haying. Actually, I missed out on helping load up the first half or so of the hay, either because I was working, or didn’t know about it, or couldn’t see the truck and so thought they weren’t doing it then. But when I finally was forced to do it last weekend, it was a lot of fun. Or I’m a nut job. Everyone else working kind of thought so, because my technique for tossing the hay on the truck is to stand with my right leg centered on the short side of the bale, grab the two wires, pull it up vertical and onto my knee and with that knock it upwards and flip it back so it’s balanced on my head. I think this is actually easier, because it spends less time scratching up my forearms, doesn’t require continuous support from my arms and back, the weight’s centered over my spine instead of out in front of me, and I can just drop it on the truck bed instead of having to give another heave, but in any case it makes me look mad tough. That and the time I suplexed a bale backwards over my head while we were unloading the truck into the barn. Except my shoulders were a little tired at that point, so I didn’t loft it quite as high as I meant and the end of it kind of landed on my face. I thought it was funny and came up smiling, which probably just reinforced the nut job impression, especially since my mouth and teeth were all covered with hay and dirt. Got plenty of fiber last week. That’s also the downside to my head carrying technique, it means all the hay that falls out of the bale falls into my face. And I think I’m the only one who had more hay on the inside of his sunglasses than on the outside.
On Wednesday Justin and I together chucked (which is what you do with hay bales. You don’t throw or toss, you chuck) the last bale of the season (unless Dwayne made a couple more with the remaining scraps of hay out there) into the barn Wednesday morning, and I’m kind of sad. It’s hard work, but not in a bad way at all. You just go out and spend a few hours in the sun in the fresh (or diesel fume-y or horse manure-y or hay-y) air and grab the nearest bale of hay, chuck it onto to the truck where Dwayne stacks it until it’s full. Then, and this is really the best part, because it’s the freshest air and the warmest and all the endorphins are pumping and making me feel good but I don’t actually have to do anything, we get on the full truck, this big light tan ’64 Dodge with a wood flat bed and a wood fence behind the cab to keep the hay from sliding forward and big flat corners to either side of the hood, above and in front of the tires, which are perfect for sitting on, keep the wind in your face, the hood’s nice and warm to rest my arm on, the afternoon sun looks beautiful on the hills and mountains and turning aspens, and we drive back to the barn and it feels wonderful. Then we have to unload the truck, and I never liked the idea of being inside the barn, although I guess that’s easier, so I always stayed in the truck, taking down layer after layer and passing it on to the people inside, where it gets stacked. On the days I worked I think we totaled about 5 2/3 loads, which, if I’m estimating correctly, is about 1224 bales of hay. But most of those days we had five guys working, so it went pretty easy. The one thing though, we were wearing gloves, can hardly imagine doing it without them, but there’s no way to keep your forearms from getting all scratched up. Looks kind of like chicken pox or something, maybe measles, lots of little red spots and scratches. It stung so bad putting them in the hot tub, then got used to it, take them out to cool off, and then it stings again to put them back in. But that was mostly after the first day. Don’t really notice when you’re working, or after you’ve been doing it for a little bit.
And one of the guys was Tyson Phipps, the son of one of Tony Phipps, who’s the son of the Phipps who owned it before that, who’s the son of Senator Phipps who bought and started this place way back when. He’s been visiting for most of the week but left today, initiated a bonfire down at a campsite at the eastern end of the road on Thursday, I think it was. It was cool to have him around, cooler that he helped out. He also let us borrow the DVD player in Tony Phipps’s apartment yesterday afternoon and went on a beer-buying run for everyone before the bonfire. Hmm, he’s getting special attention, which isn’t really fair, since the people who helped out because they work here are all cool too. Should I do a little blurb about everyone now? No, that’s a little overwhelming. I guess Tyson gets extra attention because he’s the first guest-type person to do any serious helping out around here, and the first since I’ve been here to intentionally organize a staff gathering/party, which went very well. I think he used to work here, which would explain a lot of his initiative in helping out.
Wait, Dwayne needs special mention. Dwayne is the hay chucking MAN. Four, five guys chucking hay to him on the truck, and he can keep up with us stacking it. Can do it all day without seeming tired, stays in a good mood, just keeps stacking the hay up there. It’d be impressive for one of us young kids to be working that fast. And he’s got to be somewhere around 50.
Thinking about haying, and kind of idealizing it as pleasurable, simple, but hard work reminds me of Sam Gill’s writing about growing up on a farm in Kansas when he was a boy. Which segues nicely into what’s probably my last topic for tonight. Because, to explain to most of you reading this, he’s a religion professor at CU Boulder, I think. If it’s somewhere else, please let me know. That passage was in the introduction to a book I read last fall for Religion 390: Theories of Religion, and I ended up reading a fair number of things by him over the course of last year. But anyway, Whitney, one of the newer people, mostly on housekeeping, very cool, will probably be heading back there after we’re done, her boyfriend’s the assistant Nordic ski coach, and I’m thinking I might get a ride, maybe a floor, and see if I can say hi to Sam Gill. Coleman, Kurt, Professor Buckley (now that I’ve graduated do I still call you Professor Buckley, or should I call you Jorunn, or what, what’s the etiquette on that?), or anyone else, if you’ve got any questions you want to be sure I ask, let me know.
Professor Buckley suggested, many times while I was at Bowdoin, that if we have questions for people we’re reading, to write them, as they’d probably respond, and be interested in hearing from us and in what we have to say or ask. Not being much inclined towards more writing than absolutely necessary, especially in addition to coursework, I never did. But this close, how can I resist? And I think Stuart Guthrie, another guy I read for 390 is there too! This could be really cool, in an extremely nerdy way. Wait, it stops being nerdy once you’re in college, it’s something else, right? What’s the word for it?
Anyway, that’s one possibility for what’s next. I’ll probably stick around for the week after I stop work (I’m officially done the 25th, I think, but the season doesn’t fully close until the next weekend) and do more hiking and exploring around here first. Ooh, I worked it so that I’ve got nearly two days off this week, no dinner, day off, no breakfast, so I might do a serious hike. Head back to Wheeler and then check out those mountains that look like rock walls for giants. But slightly longer short term, I’m definitely thinking about heading down to Santa Fe for a little while, and from there maybe somewhere SoCal-ish, definitely coastwards. Maybe see the organ at Pomona. And from there figure out further west.
So things are good here. There was some serious drama early this week, a guest had her camera go missing and it turned up in a staff member’s room. He almost got fired, but is being given a second chance. Which I think is a good thing, because he is generally a hard worker, helped me out a number of times with meals when I had ended up by myself, even though he didn’t have to, covers a lot of odd jobs around here, and has had a rough past. I hope the second chance sends the right message, forgiveness is possible where there is trust and I deserve forgiveness and need to be trustworthy (or something like that, could probably be put better, but I’ve been writing for a long time now), and not the wrong one, I can get away with trying to steal. But that blew over really quickly, I’d almost forgotten about it and it just happened five days ago.
Also, Chad, one of the guys out here, is thinking he might want to work on the water, do lobstering or something, maybe up in MA. Anyone have any idea who to get in touch with about that?
Hmm, this has definitely lost flow, if it had any. I think it’s time to post.
posted by Colin at 4:09 AM
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