Rolling Dog Farm Blog

I spent most of today spreading the final windrow of compost on one of our south pastures, making multiple trips with the tractor and manure spreader from the compost "yard" behind Lena’s Barn to the pasture.  On each trip I would drive through the pasture where two of our old guys, blind Blue and blind Shasta, have been hanging out for the past couple of months.  By late this afternoon, they had begun dozing off, catching the last of the sunshine as they napped. 

I took this photo of Blue and Shasta on my final run with the spreader about 5:30 p.m.  That’s Blue on the left and Shasta on the right.  (They look like a matched pair, don’t they?)  Now, one of the nice things about blind horses is that you can leave gates open as you come and go … and they won’t go bolting out and down the drive.  So all day I left both gates into their pasture open as I drove in and out with the tractor to reach the far pasture where I was spreading.

This was the first summer we could actually leave Blue out to graze around the clock.  When he first came to us from the U.S. Forest Service a couple of years ago, he was so obese we had to keep him confined in the corral so we could maintain him on a strict diet.  Slowly the weight came off, and late this summer — once the grass had browned out and the protein content diminished — we were able to turn Blue and his buddy Shasta out to pasture and let them spend the fall grazing all they want.

(Click on photo for larger image.)