In which the metaphor about "bad apples" applies to other stuff

 I don't care what that Osmonds' song says.

One bad apple does spoil the whole bunch.  

Ask pretty much anybody who has ever spent more than a few minutes with apples:  if there's a rotten one that doesn't get pulled out and discarded pronto, the rest of the bucket will be chicken food in a few days.

The same goes for people in politics.  And, more to the immediate point: hay.

This is a bad bale

Sadly , there was an undiagnosed pinhole leak in the barn roof, which I only discovered two days ago.  

And, because Murphy's Law was clearly in play, the pinhole leak dripped onto a small portion of hay where the tarp had gotten yanked away.

We tarp the hay (in general) because our maritime air is often very moist--
and the tarps (usually) act as "belt and suspenders" to keep the hay dry under the roof.

One bad bale? I wish.  The moisture travelled downward (as water does) and contaminated eight bales.  Eight bales might not sound like a lot...it's about 600 pounds of hay, total.

Gahhhhh.

We ended up pulling the wrecked bales apart, salvaging what we could (sometimes half a bale, sometimes none), and using the rest for garden mulch.

The chickens will pull it apart and throw it everywhere.

I told Monica, "I don't mind using hay for garden mulch...I just usually like to feed it to the horse, first!"

Meanwhile, back in the barn,

We've double-tarped all the adjacent hay, and put a bucket under the leak.
We won't be able to mend the roof until summer.

The weekend wasn't a complete catastrophe.  I rode my horse at Fish Creek, and hung out with Patty and the baby horses...except "Baby Steady" is almost 3 years old now!

This picture shows him standing on a hill to make him look less butt-high.  He's growing again.

Here's a photo of Steady from May 2020 for comparison:

He's standing on level ground in this photo. 

Steady, age 2 days

Steady is growing into a lovely young horse, but he won't be doing much work this year.  He is not a hasty horse!

Have a great week, y'all.