One a day, plus iron

I probably should clean my tack more. It gets done a couple of times a year, which is not as often as the ponyclub world would have me do it, but it's also more often than a lot of folks I see out there playing horse. Anyway, one of the huge benefits of signing up for New Clinican Experiences is that it guilts me into extra tack cleaning.

( Do I have to clean the tack if the horse is cruddy? )

Road's 2wd passable -- the sun came out yesterday and melted during and after the plowing. It's pretty darned decent now and given two or three more warm days, it should be down to dirt everywhere by the end of the weekend. Maybe the groundhog wasn't wrong after all.

I took a half day yesterday off work (spent the morning playing plow-the-road and was then tired afterwards). Re-watched Mrs. Maisel (such beautiful costumes. And she's SO TINY.) and produced a two-loaf batch of Danish Rye. One of the loaves is for Lala's birthday on Saturday. (She's also getting a cheesecake with home-made sour cherry topping. And a Starbucks gift card.) The rye bread is kind of like this one, at least in spirit.

At my house: 650 g warm water. 20g salt. 400g whole rye flour. 200 g whole wheat flour. 300 g white flour. 200 g rye starter. Mix well. Meanwhile take 3/4 cup (dry) whole rye grains, 3/4 cup (dry) whole wheat grains, 1 cup whole pepitas <-- all whole grains covered in water, boiled until soft enough to chew. Drain (if needed), mix seeds into dough by kind of kneading them in.

When everything is mixed, pat completed dough into two greased bread pans, allow to rise above surface of bread pans (couple of hours in a warm location), there should be a few visible broken bubbles on top of the loaves when ready. Bake at 350 until loaves have an internal temperature of 210F, about an hour. Remove loaves from oven & from bread pans, cool completely before cutting.

Slice thin, toast. So delicious. (I also make a much fluffier, no-actual-grains-inside rye sourdough but this is not that.)

Took the dozer (1972 IH 500C crawler tractor, it looks like this from the driver's seat) up the road to scrape off the 3" of frozen sleet shit we got on Monday Night. I'd been hoping it would melt but... no. And it has an inch-thick crust that supports my weight. So... road needed to be scraped off. Dozer went up fine and back fine to almost-home and then boiled over the radiator. So it's not happy. I drove it the last hundred yards to the shed and parked it. But, it was dark so I couldn't do much in the way of investigating. It was running when I shut it off, but I dunno. Not Good to overheat the machinery. And we still have winter left.

Ugh. I'm gonna peer at it this morning to see what I can see. (I am NOT A MECHANIC.) But the roads in the valley aren't done and it's a three day weekend coming up and the summer people are gonna all be up in my ass about why aren't the roads done and I'm going to be "LOOK MY MACHINERY IT IS OLD AND CREAKY" and also "WHO AMONG YOU CAN REPAIR A FORTY-SIX YEAR OLD ENGINE?" and when they go "Lo, verily we understand this truth and you are wise, but is there not a perfectly cromulent plow truck?" I will have to reply "S'trewth, there is a plow truck but alas I cannot get it to engage in the driving of four wheels, only the driving of two wheels. Also it was born in 1983 and thus has the years of thirty six." They will be displeased with these responses, I am sure.

I'm hoping it's a fan belt.

Snowmageddon report. We currently have about 5" of heavy, wet, packable snow. Forecast for the overnight through to the AM says "Rain, snow, freezing rain, and sleet before 1am, then rain between 1am and 4am, then rain and sleet likely after 4am."

It's shifting to sleet right now because snow is quieter than this. Rain from 1 AM to 4 AM (the nat'l weather service does not have capitals b/c of partial shutdown, I guess) will make this into a heavier, wetter slopfest of a thing. Depending on rain amount between now and dawn, the snow may be too wet to throw off a decent snowplow, in which case I will break out the fifty-damn-year-old dozer (It's actually only 47, being a 1972 vintage) and scrape the slush off the road before heading in to do sidewalks for work which will probably also be too wet to snowthrow. There's always shoveling by hand

Joy joy.

Slush needs to be scraped off b/c it's going to be like 5 overnight Sunday night which will freeze everything including non-removed slush into a solid. I can't just wait for it to melt. It needs to be dealt with, and promptly.