Solar Coaster Launched

 Last night Mike sent the pictures below that Andrew sent him taken at Middle Grove off his deer cam. 

That horse is in the WRONG pasture. The first picture looks like the mare has a star so must be one of Mike's Thoroughbred mares. The second picture looks like Sally.  That bright spot on her face is her eye. 

As it is hunting season I knew I would not be going out early in the morning so sent a text to the entire family that I would be going to Middle Grove at 1:00 pm and would wear orange and to please let any hunters in the family know I would be out there. We thought maybe there was a fence down. This morning was a cold 34 degrees but it warmed all the way up to 37 before dark.  Ruth stayed with mom so I went to Sam's club early to buy the food for Sunday dinner, picking up chicken breasts, peppers, parmesan cheese, olive oil, a box of 7.5 dozen eggs, creamer for the barn, napkins, peanut butter and strawberry jam for here. As soon as I got home the oven was preheated to 350 and pumpkin dump cake was mixed up and put in the oven to bake for Sunday's dessert. While that was baking I cut up 9 peppers and 8 pounds of chicken. 

Those were loaded into a laundry basket to take to the barn fridge.

Mark needed my help to take one of the glass round tables up to the foaling apartment. That was put under the porch. I left then for Middle Grove. When I drove up the first thing I saw even before I got out of the truck was the gate between the two pastures was wide open. 

I thought I was searching for 2 mares but there were NO horses in the winter pasture so I started searching for the herd. I saw Missy first in the trees. She saw my truck and started toward me.

It was obvious that during their journey into the summer pasture they went through a patch of cockleburrs. Every horse had them in their forelocks or tails and some had them in both. When I reached the top of the hill the rest of the herd was all spread out grazing. All but Mika who was standing by himself in the round pen.

The gate is open, he could walk out at any time but he must like the security of that pen. Below are a few pictures of the rest of the herd.

I needed to drive to the far end of this pasture to make sure the gate was closed by the lake and the gate to the 76 acre pasture. At the top of the hill a herd of deer took off for the woods. I grabbed my phone and got one picture of the last one as it hit the woods.

Both gates were shut.

We have 60 bales of very good hay stored in the summer pasture so I wanted to try to move the herd back over but wasn't doing too well. They surrounded the truck and I had to honk to get them out of the way. Then they only followed for a bit. I had to keep stopping the truck and calling for them. The video below shows some of this and ends when Mike calls from Gulf Shores. 

He told me to just leave the herd but leave the gates open. The salt blocks are in the winter pasture so hopefully they will soon go back. There is so much grass in the summer pasture they aren't interested in eating on the round bales so the hay should be fine.

Mike and Diane had been working on that 1969 Macgregor sail boat they hauled down to Gulf Shores. 

Well today they launched it into the bay to try it out.  This sail boat has no sails.

It is named Solar Coaster. 

I heard from Dan that not only did they take it out on the bay, Mike opened the fridge, pulled out a breakfast sandwich and heated it up in the microwave. Powered only by the sun, this amazing boat can sail half speed all day long in the sunshine without drawing on the battery. Check back here on the blog as later Dan will explain how this boat was retrofitted for solar instead of sails.

Rachel and David will have meat in their freezer this winter. They got a nice fat grain fed doe this hunting season. 

Our guests in the foaling apartment are all hunters and they told me today they too will have meat in the freezer. I'm pretty sure all 3 of the men got at least one today.