I feel great!
My back aches, my shoulders hurt, and my hands are sore. But, I feel great!
No, really!
Really!!!
As bad as the hay situation was, the word's already circulating that the continuing drought is going to make it even harder to come by next year. As it is, "Turd" (Can you tell I dislike the man?) I've been having to buy from "down the road" has been telling me to sock it in now because his supplier has told him that after this next load, there won't be any more ‘til June.
The only horse I have left, the only one I have to worry about, is Dingbat and his 8 to 10 bales a month. Sixty bales would see us through ‘til then. He's fine with "good stuff" and in his younger years could have eaten the ... the crud Turd's selling for top dollar from this last load. But age has made Dingbat's taste a bit more ... uh, refined. His digestive tract, wonky.
I've been looking elsewhere without success. I'd even started laying in sacks of beet pulp (which Dingbat loves and handled well) so that down to 4 bales of hay, I could start swapping him over immediately when last week Herself said although she knows how much I despise "Arrogant Asshole," asked if I'd checked there.
As bad as Turd is, Arrogant Asshole's even worse. Beyond description worse. But, I drove by there, anyway, on my way to the last place I could think of — way on the other side of town — that might have decent hay and enough of it to lay in for the long haul.
There was a new sign up at Arrogant Asshole's. Same old building. Same ugly storage trailers everywhere. But, a different name. I pulled in and got out. At the back of one of the trailers, on the pavement, was loose hay that had piled up as the bales inside had been moved out.
If you've ever bought hay on a regular basis for any length of time, you know you can tell a lot about a load just from what's come loose from the bales. And what I saw on the ground looked good. Darned good.
I was able to fit two of the six remaining bales The New Folk had of "darned good" hay in the back of my car. They be getting more in, they said.
With those two bales, I could delay starting to swap Dingbat over to beet pulp. If their next load was a good as this one was and they had enough, I just might not have to swap him over at all.
Da Kid was off today. Borrowed a brother's-in-law trailer for what we both expected would be a disappointing trip, expecting to come back empty because IF they'd actually gotten in the delivery they'd told me they were expecting, it probably wouldn't be the same quality as I'd gotten a week ago.
And, it wasn't. It was even better.
In the hay shed tonight is 60 bales of high-quality Coastal, for 50 cents a bale cheaper than the crud Turd has, that not only met my approval but quite obviously Dingbat's.(I had to tie the shed door closed to keep him from nudging it open and helping himself. Again.)
posted by doyle at 6:24 PM
5 Comments:
That is SO great; I remember the beet pulp from last year! :)
That took quite a load off my mind.
Not that Dingbat may need any of it since one of these days / weeks / years I AM going to do what I've been promising for 20 some-odd years: I'm gonna kill that damned horse!
You know the way a dog braces back when it's playing tug-of war? Now erase the dog and insert a half-ton Quarter horse, old though he may be, pulling on the door knob of the feed shed.
The door knob was on the ground DO(my screaming)A.
When I worked on a ranch many years ago we baled prairie hay..kept enough for our horses and sold the rest as horse hay..hell, it brought more than our alfalfa did per ton. Good clean horse hay is hard to find I reckon..
There wasn't even any crud available for several months last year, unless you want to consider the wheat straw (That's bedding, innit?) some were selling (and buying) as a last resort substitute. Even the last big boarding stable out my way finally had to swap over to beet pulp in the spring and there was still no nothing growing to cut.
WHAM! In one swoop they pretty much cleaned out the entire supply all 'round me until more was delivered.
It's only been the last few years that I've only had to worry about hay, and not because there weren't shortages before. Mr. "G.", a WW II vet, bought and sold hay, he said, as a hobby. Even when he, because of his age and failing health, stopped supplying the big users, we were one of three or four small users he kept finding and buying good hay for. When he couldn't deliver any more, we started picking it up.
Da Kid spent many an afternoon while we were there stacking bales for Mr. G. When he died a few years back, we didn't lose just a hay supplier.
Dang. Maybe John and I need to talk Daddy into letting us regrow the hay field.
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