Hey! No Hay.

The drought has hit Central Texas pretty hard. HAving horses, this always freaks me out because I am worried about getting hay. My usual source (who is also the neighborhood source thanks to my big mouth) can't grow it because of the no rain issue. The feed stores are up to $9/bale (I remember when I was getting it in the field for $2.50/bale 5 years ago). There just does not seem to be affordable coastal horse hay anywhere. I bought 40 bales of tifton from a source who had to get rid of it because he is moving. The horses took a few days to get used to it but they are eating it now. They get alfalfa trucked in from New Mexico when I can get it. They only get that once a day. It costs $21-23/bale for a bale that is $110 pounds. I can make that last a week or so with the 3 horses.

They take longer eating the tifton so they are not eating the trees as much. That, in and of itself, is another issue. The horses strip the bark off the trees and then you lose your good shade trees. I want to shout at them, "Hey dummies! You are going to kill your shade and in the 104 degree weather you will be really sorry!" I strategically wrapped a bunch of them with chicken wire so the horses could not get to the bark. The wire is fairly invisible to the causal passerby. There are still the trees they will be killing but then I will have some firewood and a sunny area for more grass to grow in the front pasture.

They are banned from the front pasture now because the rye is starting to come up from the 2 days of damp weather we finally have had. It should last until May once it comes up if I am careful to keep them off it. When I think back to how much grass we had before the horses and how often I had to cut it, I can hardly believe that it is gone. Part of me wishes we had fenced the front yard so we would never have to mow that as well (that is about 250 yards square).

Such is residential farm life. I would not trade it for city condo life at all.