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I know it’s a boring subject for a post…..

It’s a boring chore…..

It’s a forever chore…..

But it’s gotta be done…..

And somebody’s gotta do it………….and I’m that somebody…..

We need to have the pasture’s electric fencing up to snuff before the mares come home…..

They will immediately test it…..

…..we need it to “get their attention”…(and unwittingly…ours too)…..

We also have to clear out all…or at least most…(or maybe we’ll just settle for a lot) of the weeds…..

It’s never been a great pasture…but it’s struggling at the present time to even be a mediocre one…..

As a child in Northeastern Ohio…we took good pastures for granted…in fact we criticized them for growing too fast…..

The Timothy grass was always beautiful and lush and tall…..

Florida pastures turn into weedy sandlots…if you don’t stay on top of them constantly…..

…..and coastal hay(?)………….a bale of straw would put it to shame…..

And yet…that’s what we’ve got to work with here…in Sunny Sub-Tropical Florida…..

…..crappy local grass and hay…..

But here’s making some lemonade out of a bunch of lemons…..

…..(oooh…I would like some lemonade right about now)…..

With all of my hot outdoor pasture work that I’ve been doing recently…at least the dew point has been in the 50’s…..

…..and not the 80’s or 90’s…like it will be later on in a few months time…in the the heat of the Summer…..

So the sweat actually is still evaporating off your body…..

…..rather than pooling in your eye sockets…and ears…and in the squishy soles of your shoes…..

My main chore right now…is clearing off all of the leftover dried dog fennel stalks from the fence line…so they don’t ground out the electric charge…..

It’s not a super complicated chore…but you have to keep appling the K.I.S.S. theory (Keep It Simple Stupid)…..

Because if you try thinking too far ahead…in terms of multiply charged fence lines…and sweeps…and insulated connectors…you can easily get muddled…..

And electric fencing will readily ground itself out in a heartbeat if you give it half a chance…..

That being said…the electric charge and the gargantuan dog fennel weren’t the only things currently unacceptable in our pasture…..

…………………The Thistles…………………

…..(or specifically Argemone Mexicana)…it’s got a pretty bloom doesn’t it?…..

One day after fencing…I pulled out sixty-eight of them…..

Then the next day I pulled one hundred and twenty-six…..

They aren’t hard to pull…there’s a fairly willing tap root that wants to come out…..

…..but it’s the screaming thorns that go right through your gloves that slow you down….

*****(Yellow Flowered Thistles–or Argemone Mexicana)*****

And…apparently they’re poisonous too…if your livestock chooses to eat them…..

The following day…I pulled out another two hundred and thirty-six of those painful plants…..

…..I didn’t think there were THAT many out there(!)…..

I even found a partial deer skeleton in the midst of my thorn-filled weeding…..

…..it’s rough out there…..

My older daughter took pity on me and sprayed the remainding weeds with Grazon Herbicide…..

*****(A Graze-Able Herbicide?–so they say)*****

I hate using chemicals of any type…but there are some plants here in Florida…who will out run you & eat you while you sleep…if you’re not constantly vigilant…..

So…theoretically…the pastsure is close to being weeded…and fenced…and nurtured…and electrified…..

I guess we are almost ready for horses again…..

On to the Next Project…..

The Cow Fencing…..

…..otherwise known as the cursed barbed wire extravaganza…..