Clearly, I dropped my blog for a while actually in favor of establishing a (small) presence on YouTube. Check it out if you prefer listening to reading. My channel has everything in verbal format that I ordinarily include here in written form.
Junkyard Gardening
What is junkyard gardening? It is starting and growing plants in every imaginable container that will support plant growth. I use plastic berry containers to start seeds, broken feed tubs, plastic bins as mini-greenhouses. In other words, it is growing vegetables on the cheap.
Besides being pre-gardening season, it is also pre-horse-riding season and pre-bicycling season. In other words, it’s still too cold and wet to enjoy any of those activities in comfort. Knitting, however, is a year-round activity; hence the YouTube channel. Also, it’s much easier to show knitting than to write about it. Furthermore, horse care is a year-round activity even when there isn’t much riding going on. I’ll get to that later in this post.
My gardening mojo kicked into high gear shortly after Christmas, when daylight began to reappear about mid-January. What to do to satisfy the gardening itch when there’s snow on the ground and frequent below freezing temperatures? Well, watch a lot of YouTube videos and knit and plan. I learned about indoor gardening from CaliKim and started an indoor garden set up.
I also watch Ben from Great Britian who lives in a similar climate. I don’t have a spacious greenhouse but he gives me plenty of other ideas and my favorites are his money-saving gardening tips.
And finally I started watching this gardener from Michigan. After all, if he has year-round content there are things I can do in my garden year-round. Again, he is a professional gardener with access to a glorious greenhouse but also provides a tremendous amount of useful information for the home gardener.
I may have to get a (small) greenhouse eventually.
I have harvested a few greens from my mini indoor garden and I am most proud of the little tomato starts. They have real tomato leaves and are about 2″ tall. Growth is slow under grow lights but I am learning and that this the main point of this exercise: to learn, adjust, and amuse myself.
Odin & Bragi the Mustangs
And what about the horses? They are hairy and happy, living their best lives. I made a huge mistake with Odin a couple weeks ago. In my effort to teach Bragi, the younger mustang, to trailer load, I have asked Odin to get in the trailer and hang out to give Bragi confidence. It’s worth it to Odin because Bragi ceases to be a pest and I give him lots of cookies and scratches to stand there patiently while I work with Bragi.
In general I work with the horses at liberty, with no halters or lead ropes because it gives them an element of choice to engage and gives me clear signals as to when I’m asking too much.
One day a couple weeks ago, I asked Odin to get in the trailer, at liberty as usual. He started to get in then backed out suddenly as if his nose was on fire. That’s weird, I thought, and looked out the windows to see if there was a monster or mountain lion out there, checked the floor for hoof-eating holes.
Nothing.
I asked again and Odin started to get in then backed out like his nose was on fire. This is too weird, I thought, and went to the front of the trailer to check the hitch and see if there were any obvious scary things. Nope.
One more time, same result. By then he’s kind of mad at me and trust between us has been eroded.
So I ask Bragi to get in because Bragi has not been traumatized and wants to figure out how he can earn some cookies.
At this point, Bragi only gets two front feet in the trailer and I give him lots of pets and cookies to build his confidence. Except this time he also backed out like his nose was on fire. Very weird and whatever is wrong is bothering them both.
Side note, this is why I teach them to back out and we practice so they know what to do. If either of them was to whirl around in panic and I’m inside the trailer there’s a greater chance of me getting hurt. Not good for any of us. Backing out is safer, although it can be worth tying their tails in a knot so they don’t step on it. Note to self for future.
I do the round-the-trailer check again and this time notice that the electric fence is touching the trailer. I keep the trailer on the horses’ side of the fence and the truck on the non-horse side of the fence so that they aren’t inclined to chew on mirrors or cause other expensive destruction. The fence is strung over the hitch and when it’s windy can blow over plastic hitch protector and evidently touch the trailer.
Anyway, this is how sensitive horses are. The trailer has rubber mats and four rubber tires. No one is getting hurt but they know. I couldn’t hear or sense the fence touching the trailer. This doesn’t seem terrible to us but it is to them. Recognizing their point of view is critical for communicating with them.
I fixed the fence so that it is not touching the truck or trailer. By then Odin is quite a distance away and glaring at me. Bragi has his ears forward and appears interested. I invited him to put two front feet on the trailer. He did and stayed there. Problem solved, lots of cookies!
Odin is not willing to get close to me even though Bragi demonstrated that the problem is fixed. I halter him to provide clarity (no pulling, pressuring, or whacking) on what I want but I’m not going to ask him to get all the way in the trailer. I need to regain his confidence and trust.
Getting near the trailer was a bit of an exercise and finally he was willing to put his head in. He thought hard for a very long time about that. When horses are thinking or absorbing information their gaze can be dull, eye lids and muzzle a little twitchy, and their ears may position a bit lopsided. It’s a great time to wait until they finish processing. I either stand quietly by and rest a hand on their neck or stroke their withers very gently until they lick and chew and return to the present.
When Odin returned to the present I asked him to back up away from the trailer just to get a short mental break from it, then come forward and put his front feet in. He still didn’t quite trust me but after a couple times backing up and moving forward, he put his front feet in and stayed. No more nose on fire. I gave him a few cookies and asked him to back out. We were done at that point. Halter off and let him process while I stood next to him.
We repeated this exercise another time a few days later. My plan was to give him one more opportunity to build trust before asking him to get all the way in the trailer (now I turn off the fence before the exercise). Unfortunately I got sick for a few days so he had a nice vacation from trailer loading. The next time I asked, though, he got all the way in. Maybe the short vacation wasn’t unfortunate after all.
I’m finding that there’s no such thing as going too slowly with horses even though I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself to “do more”. They don’t care, they don’t have competition aspirations or even exploration aspirations. What they like to do is hang out, learn a few things, and be handsomely rewarded in cookies and snuggles.
It is worth the time to build trust and take as much time as it takes because this relationship translates to riding when we get to do that. There was a time when I just wanted to ride and didn’t care as much about the relationship with my horses. Now I care more about our relationship than I do about riding. I think the horses like that order of priority too and when it’s time to ride or do something difficult, the relationship we built makes accomplishing the task so much easier.
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