Treacherous -or- What a difference a week makes.

Treacherous - that is the word Garrison Keillor used this evening on
A Prairie Home Companion to describe how the "over-50-something" crowd might describe our area weather this evening. A treacherous night, not to be outdoors or going anywhere. It was a cute story Garrison told about life this past week in Lake Wobegon, hope you might find the opportunity to listen to it.

Anyway, this week Kittee and I had plans to head out to Pendleton this evening to attend our annual Back Country Horsemen banquet, and visit with some horsey friends. We were also looking forward to a dinner of prime rib and a plate of prawns with scallops tonight. It is our custom to usually swap plates half way through the meal, so we both enjoy the combo of entreés.

This day began with our usual holiday weekend eggnog lattés while soaking in bed, waiting for the house to warm up, watching the snowfall and the outside thermometer. With snow accumulating on the ground Kittee and I both headed out to feed horses, do some work around the barn, and setup two more water trough heaters for this weekends weather forecast. At daybreak the thermometer was reading about 36º and most of the falling snow was melting, but it was snowing hard enough that everything was still turning white. Temperature did get up to 40º here today, but the snow did not stop falling all day long.

It appears that winter '08-'09 might be here. Last Sunday night there was a snowfall on The Blues to our east, and the mountains stayed snow capped all week.

This week it was quite comfortable around the ranch, as I continued to work in the garden between my school bus outings. The garden is now set for winter, as I just have some berry transplanting to do, and we do plan to put in some fruit trees before spring. Between now and next spring I intend to take half of our 1 acre garden area and put it into pasture for Rusty, next to his keep. Even though his keep is a large round-pen area, I hate to see him locked up in there for very long.

Today it was much too warm to blanket the horses, as they have developed very nice winter coats. With snow on the ground and on the horses' rumps, we gave them three good rations of alfalfa/grass hay and everyone seemed to be happy spending most of the day eating, and no one in the herd had the shivers. There was awhile that the herd was playing in the snow... very slick... funny to watch horses play on the skids and slides.

It is our philosophy that horses are best living life in the great outdoors naturally. This philosophy was once again confirmed to be correct by an article this month in Equus magazine which stated that horses with natural winter coats are most comfortable at 15º to 20º F, and being well fed. We do blanket horses at 25º if the wind blows and snow flies. Many folks don't realize that it is more hazardous to a horse's health to be kept in a barn box stall environment, than to be in an outdoor environment with temperatures as low as -20º F.

Tomorrow, we have weekly riding times at the Walla Walla indoor arena, but the weather forecast is for snow to continue throughout the night with temperatures dropping to 15º - 20º overnight. Highs tomorrow are to be 15º - 20º with more snow, a perfect play day for horses. The weather is to be treacherous for humans, appears that it will be a day to stay home, crank up a fire, listen to NPR, read, visit/feed horses throughout the day.

So it appears that winter '08-'09 might be here; oh what a difference a week makes.
Tonight's dinner was a couple of bowls of brown rice smothered with homemade chili beans, dashed with Tabasco Sauce. Mmmmm good stuff for a near winter's night.

a day in the life at McKuster Ranch --- Dale