Who's on Ark duty?

Gabe is back to his old tricks so I'm assuming he's feeling 100 percent once again, thank goodness! I've decided to make all of the horse's morning and evening meals much soupier than I have been and I'm adding about a tablespoon of salt to each feeding to encourage the drinking. They are all gobbling it up and the level of the water tanks seem to be continuously falling, so that's a good thing.

I knew Gabe was definitely feeling better when he kept tipping over the wheel barrow, trying to steal the pitchfork out of my hands and hanging his head over my shoulder while I was cleaning his run-in Sunday. That horse knows exactly where to put his body so he's right where I want to clean! Then, he has to be right at my back, resting his chin on my shoulder, sighing into my ear and nuzzling at my hair. A year ago, he would have been biting chunks out of me, now, he just makes a pest of himself and begs for face and ear scratching.

It rained yet again and the weather forecasters are calling for MORE rain. The mud that was drying out a tad bit (still sticky and nasty, but a little firmer and some of the puddles had diminished in size a tad) is again thick, sticky and disgusting.

My husband and I spent part of the day Saturday removing a cross fence. We had the fence up back when Chief and Calypso couldn't play nice with Gabe so they were kept separated when turned out in the pastures. They all get along very well now so we decided to go ahead and take down the cross fence. The pasture is a bog. Both of us kept punching through the grassy sod into goopy, nasty mud below and making rather obscene squishing noises wherever we walked. I could pull the T-posts out of the soupy ground with ONE HAND, and those suckers were set deep. Our fences are capped T-posts with three strands of ElectroBraid. The corner posts are round 6-inch diameter wood posts set at least three feet into concrete. The freaking corner posts are LOOSE due to the bog-like conditions, the T-posts are loose and because we keep having freezing, thawing, freezing, thawing conditions, the ground has heaved some of them up and others out of the nice, neat, straight line they were set in. GAH! We have our work cut out for us when it finally does dry out enough to re-set and straighten some of those posts.

So, I've tried to think of a few positive things about all this rain and wet. I couldn't come up with many, not this time of year.

1. Our well is most certainly full!
2. Spring flowers and grass are getting a nice, long pre-season drink.
3. The water table is sufficiently high to deal with the summer dry season.
4. The waterfowl are happy.
5. The pond and creek are full, full, full!
6. We drained our 12-foot deep swimming pool this fall and it's almost FULL again! Guess we won't have to order a water truck in to refill it this spring.

I don't think I have enough blog space to list all the negative things about the rain and wet this time of year!

I'm a whole lot worried about what spring will bring as that is typically our "wet season." The road we live off has been flooded more often than not this year and the road itself is starting to crumble and sink. It's next to a deep, deep creek with very, very high banks. The creek has been creeping closer and closer and closer to the road and I have a feeling we may lose sections of the road entirely this spring if it's as wet and rainy as I expect it will be.