M.A.R.E. - Week 14

When I got to MARE last Wednesday, my step was a bit lighter. Having decided that this would be my last session was the right decision. While I have thoroughly enjoyed volunteering - despite the one or two uncomfortable experiences, I am ready to move on to something else. All those who know me personally know that I am a hard worker and that I am never flakey, so even though I am on the leaving end of things, I still showed up last week committed to help with whatever tasks needed doing.

MARE's hay barn

When I walked through the front gate, I immediately noticed that the hay buckets had not yet been filled. Trainer 1 greeted me from the arena, so I knew she was finished with her lesson. I asked if she would like me to weigh the hay and fill buckets to which she gratefully replied PLEASE! As I mentioned last week, these behind the scenes types of jobs are the ones I enjoy most, so I think I was happier doing this job than T1 was for me to do the job.

Ready to be filled.

I've written about filling the hay buckets before, but this was the first time that I did the entire job on my own. For me, it is actually a zen-like job. This kind of repetitive work allows me to let go of the mental stress that comes with teaching and lets me exercise my body instead. To start, I arranged the buckets by type and then got to work. Each horse has two buckets, one for the a.m. feeding, and the other for the evening feeding. The evening feed bucket goes on top as it will be doled out first.

The scale.

Each horses' ration is written on the dry erase board. The number indicates the pounds to be weighed out, and the A or G stand for the hay type, alfalfa or grass. Most of the horses get a combination of the two, and the morning and evening amounts are usually different. Some get more grass in the morning and more alfalfa at night, or the weight will be different. I started by placing the empty buckets on the scaled and "zeroed" out the reading. I added the first type of hay until the scale read the correct weight, and then I added the second type of hay to reach the total. Sadie, for example, gets 5A/2G in the morning and 3A/4G in the afternoon. That's 7 pounds twice a day. 

Buckets filled and ready to go.

As I was finishing filling the last few buckets, T1 came to help, but I assured her I had it under control. Apparently, filling buckets is a job not many want to do. Once I found out that I wasn't needed as a horse handler - a student had cancelled, I told T1 that I would also load up the buckets and work in the hay barn a bit longer. With nothing but time, I set to work cleaning up behind the hay. I swept, folded tarps, gathered loose tools, and knocked down all of the cobwebs. And then I did a second round of sweeping and de-webbing the space.

Nearly clean.

As I was finishing, T1 asked if I would finish rinsing George and then put him away which I did. Once he was back in his stall, I went back out and cleaned up the wash rack station by returning all of the grooming tools and shampoos to their respective buckets and coiled up the hose. From there, I went back to the hay barn and dumped the dust and molded hay that I had swept up into the compost pile, cleaned a few stalls, and then helped with feeding. After a long work day and two hours spent sweeping and cleaning, I was tired both mentally and physically, but it was a good tired.

I'll be back this afternoon. Hopefully there are more barn chores left to do.