Mini-Mud Season

Yesterday's rain has washed away the snow and left us in mud season. The horses have been rolling in the paddock and look like rescue candidates. When they are wet and muddy, all you can do is wait for them to dry out enough to brush and vaccuum (yes we vaccuum the horses.) That quick blast of wet warm air caused everything in the barn to sweat and if it stays warm long enough the tools will rust and the leather tack will mold. Adventure always has a few bumps, that's what makes it adventure.
We went to Alex's birthday party last night and had to walk out to the truck in the dark. We park it out during mud season episodes so we don't rut the road up and ruin the drainage. Once the water follows the ruts, it hangs around on the road long enough to make serious mud. We have become mud management experts.
Up until we moved here, I hadn't given mud much thought. Now, mud is a big part of our lives. We spend a lot of the winter and spring draining puddles. This is the most gratifying of the twin pillars of mud management. You look for the shortest distance to lower ground and scrape or dig a canal to the low spot. You can watch the puddle disappear and depending on the size and pitch of your new drain this can be a woosh and a swirl. Great fun. The other "pillar of mud management" is flow diversion. This is more important but less dramatic. This consist of redirecting flows out of the road to keep them from eroding it and causing more mud. Kris is particularly good at flow diversion. Small grades that a surveyor might miss she uses to great advantage and diverts water through angled canals to ditches that are actually higher than the road way. She particularly delights in draining areas I have deemed undrainable which is kind of irritating.
Managing mud is time sensitve. It is best if you get right out in the worst weather and keep after it, making repeated forays into the teeth of a storm. Wind screaming overhead, whipping the trees and rain falling in sheets will find us out on the road armed with a hoe and a shovel. Armored in rain gear and boots the battle to save the road rages through the storm.
After the storm, sitting near the fire and reliving the high points of the day is one of the best parts.
Someday we will probably have put enough gravel on the road so it isn't the drainage ditch for the surrounding ground, but we have mixed emotions about it.