Once a week, walk through the entire house:
⁃ Water plants in living room
⁃ Check for any damage, or leaks, or lights or fans left on, etc.
⁃ Check every room upstairs and downstairs, especially boiler room, pump room and laundry room for infrastructure. Re-lock doors after checking
⁃ Fill water softening salt to knee level about once per month.
⁃ Weekly check can be done when you come in to have a shower or use the laundry. Or when you fill water troughs.
◦ Clean ash from wood boiler and creosote from door and air intake damper every few weeks. Door needs to be able to seal properly
◦ Keep an eye on the furnace as last year Oscar let the fire go out numerous times, so we ran out of wood long before we should have, because he had to keep starting it from cold again – used a lot more wood than it should have.
◦ Keep an eye on the areas between the woodshed and the house, where the trucks are parked, down by the garage, and the sheep pen, and that whole section of driveway. Make sure to put away any tools that have been left out, or buckets, get rid of any garbage, Benson casualties, etc..
◦ Also, check the walkway up to the house and the porch to make sure the dogs haven’t done anything there that needs to be cleaned up.
◦ Keep water troughs filled for both Horses and sheep, and make sure that the water heaters are working. If they stop working, unplug, and go in the house and flip the breaker switches for the plugs.
◦ Use kibble to put the dogs in the dog run and lock them up if you need to – kibble is just inside front door.
SEE THESE VIDEOS for how everything in the house, boiler room, water filtration, irrigation, wood furnace works.
Feeding schedule for horses and sheep will depend on weather and forage stores:
⁃ Horses and sheep can usually forage until end of December: Once horses have completely run out of forage on the land, then open up the first field that was fenced off to save for winter forage. Let the horses and sheep eat that field down, until there is too much manure in there for them to eat anymore. *There must always be at least TWO gates open on any field.
⁃ Then leave that field open, and open up the next field. When they have eaten the second field, then open up the third field
⁃ Once the horses have eaten all the forage in the fields that are currently fenced off, and there is lots of snow on the ground, THEN begin feeding hay. USUALLY that means hay feeding begins in January.
◦ I usually I feed three round bales every 10 days for January and February. I try to roll the bales out on a fresh piece of land every time, so the waste/poo/pee can go towards building better soil in that area.
◦ You must always put out THREE bales at one time for the horses and sheep, and roll them out fully. Place each bale AT LEAST 25 feet apart, otherwise some of them won’t get to eat.
◦ The sheep can share hay with the horses and they can also follow behind the horses, who will paw open the grass for them to eat.
◦ Give minerals and salt to both the horses and sheep. BUT sheep must never eat the horse minerals, or the copper level can kill them.
◦ Zorra at 20 years old may need extra alfalfa pellets. Just keep an eye on her body, and if you can see or feel ribs, or if you can see her hip bones or spine jutting out, then she needs extra feed. Would be a good idea to give her 2 scoops of alfalfa pellets every day or so, along with the vitamins and seaweed.
⁃ If the weather is really cold like -20, then the horses will need extra hay to keep warm, so probably three round bales every seven days.