Well first and foremost, I would like to welcome Midnight Sleightly Cool to Pony Tail Acres. ”Coolio” is a Section B Welsh pony stallion that will be standing at stud come spring. He’s still a youngster at 2 years old. He is owned by a trainer at Green Acres who “imported” him from Idaho. Poor little guy was really tired after such a long journey, so he spent a few days being lazy.

Coolio has been nothing but a dear so far but I’m sure he has some sort of trouble up his sleeve (err…hoof?). It is interesting to me how I have two 2 year olds on the property now when before I really wasn’t interested in having any so young. For the most part they are a joy to work with and just teach them all the things a show horse will need to know.

Goose did really try my patience yesterday though. Too many hours in the stall while it was raining with no turn-out and his grain rich diet lead to an overly excited Goose. Since he is normally so docile and easy to work with he “asked” to be worked hard. At the end of the session yesterday he came to the understanding that he must still listen to me while excited and concentrate on his work. Today he was an absolute gentleman. I was proud of him and very happy that he showed me his good brain.

The other gray boy Zoomer is such a darling. Over the past week he has sought to figure out how far he can push me before I will correct him. For example, while putting on his blanket, can he please nibble on my fingers? Of course not. But every intelligent horse will test a new person until he/she figures out the parameters. So Zoomer and I have an understanding and he has been working so well for me now. He’s the first one at the gate when I walk out to the barn looking for pets. He is also doing very well under saddle, giving to the bit and bending well. I’m impressed that he tries so hard even though he’s out of shape, he always gives 100%.

All is well at the barn. Hopefully David’s water heater will be complete soon and we will give them warm baths.

The barrels are in place. The manure, sawdust, straw, leaves and food waste is piled up. The barrels are full of water with 200 feet of water hose submerged in them. The basic system is set up and in place! So here’s a few numbers for where we’re at:

Water coming out of the hose was 60 degrees on the dot. By the time I finished filling the two barrels, the water at the top of each barrel was 60.7 degrees. We left to go to lunch with Ashley’s sister, Brandy, and their dad. After we got back home and settled in, I finally went back out to check on their status – about 3 hours after the initial temperature readings. The barrel on the right had risen to 60.9 degrees and the barrel on the left had risen to 61.2 degrees. And that’s with compost only about half way up the barrels. So I piled up some compost around some empty spots by the barrels and made sure to cover as much as I could without working too hard. (After all, I just had a root canal re-done on an infected tooth yesterday morning… I’m not really able to do too much at the moment.)

While I was piling up the compost around the barrels, I got out the thermometer and measured some of the internal spots in the compost pile. I was pleasantly surprised to see that some spots in the pile are already up to 117 degrees, even with outdoor temps at only 52 degrees. I’m anxious to get some insulation around the pile to keep the heat from escaping so easily and make the water heating time that much quicker. But even 117 degrees is plenty hot enough to mix with some cold water to wash horses in the winter.

Did you know that the sun is hot? Indeed it is! But what about those cold winter days when the temps drop to below 30? Is the sun still hot? Yes! So if there was a way to capture the heat from the sun and not have to use fossil fuels or electricity from the grid (coal mostly in this area), wouldn’t it be a fantastic idea to do that? Well, I’ve found some designs online that do just that. We’re currently working on building a version of one of them to install on the basement of the house. Hopefully within the next few weeks we’ll be able to post here some preliminary results!

For those of you who follow me (David) on Facebook, you might also know that I’m working on a compost based water heater. You see, as a small horse facility, our horses produce manure. That manure has to get cleaned out of their stalls from the small amount of time that they spend in there. However, what many people see as waste, we see as opportunity. Did you know that in just a 500 pound mound of compost – manure, leaves, grass clippings, table scraps, etc. – there are over 4,000,000 BTUs of energy?

So how do we get that energy into a usable form? Well, with the right carbon to nitrogen mixture (different materials are high in carbon while others are high in nitrogen) and some water, compost piles can heat up to 170 degrees in the middle. The average home water heater is set somewhere between 115 and 140 degrees and the average hot shower is 107 degrees.

So what if we took this heat and extracted it somehow? Well, that’s exactly what we’re working on doing. After quite a bit of research, I’m working on building a prototype of the system to heat up around 110 gallons of water to act as a heat exchanger. At first we’ll primarily be providing hot water for the wash racks for the barn. Since it appears that we’ll have plenty of excess heat available to us, we might run a couple of hoses in a loop to the house and back with a radiator to let that heat migrate into the house for when the sun isn’t heating up our solar heater.

So stay tuned. I’ll get some pictures up here in the next week or so as our eco friendly projects progress.

First and foremost, the Staples Family welcomes Jackazoom to the family. He is an Appendix Quarter horse ( TB/QH cross for those who don’t know), around 16 hands and 7 years old. And he’s dappled grey. I guess I should rename my farm Grey Acres since Goose and Zoomer are both grey and the boarder who is coming also has a grey pony!

We spent the day Monday getting Zoomer from a north GA mountain home and then headed to Green Acres to pick up Goose. Zoomer loads on the trailer like a pro but Goose had other ideas. It finally took some grain (Goose’s favorite) to get him on the trailer and heading over to PTA.

Both horses unloaded at the house and were greeted with apples and carrots from the parents. After a few minutes of settling in their stalls, they started hamming it up for the camera begging for us to give them their dinner.

Both horses settled in nicely and got along with each other when being turned out today. Everyone that lives here on the property agreed today that it was very nice having horses here again. It was worth all the sweat and work to get to this point.

A couple of items to note: Party to celebrate the grand opening of Pony Tail Acres is this Saturday, November 7th from 10 am to 5 pm. Come out and celebrate with us.

We are getting the new roof on the barn on Thursday (so they say). Cross your fingers we get the roof before the big hay delivery comes! The house got its new roof this past week and it looks great.