Friday, September 14, 2012

Glass Pastures

I have been cleaning up my pastures (mostly Luna's) for months. As horses "erode" pastures down, lots of treasures are found. In My Boy's pasture when I first put him in there, I found that he scuffed up plenty of old wire pieces buried in the dirt.

I feed each of my horses their hay in two piles spread across the pasture. This provides me a chance to walk around, looking for wire and other junk that "shows up."


In Luna's it is mostly bits and pieces of glass. Blue, green, clear, brown bottles....some really old thick glass bottles....some bits of china plates with patterns on them. I imagine a past where a homestead sat and an old couple got in a lot of fights and threw plates at each other all the time. I have no other explanation for why I find so much glass in that part of our yard!!


I can see it shining in the morning sun as I feed and I fill my pockets. I have started a Mason jar on the front porch where I place my collection.

I just hope I can keep all the junk and pieces picked up and that my pony doesn't find a way to hurt herself on the glass. There is really no way to get it all....it won't pick up with a metal catcher.

What is the craziest thing you have found in your horse's pastures?

Ranch Girl

14 comments:

Nuzzling Muzzles said...

Oh oh. You just reminded me that I found a huge chunk of glass in the paddock the other day. I'll bet it went through the wash in my pants pocket.

The craziest thing I found in my horse paddock was a half-eaten ham sandwich. It didn't come up out of the ground, though. My neighbor threw it over the fence.

Kara said...

I find glass all the time in my pasture too. Also random pieces of metal, like old door hinges and such. The family that owned our farm before my Grandparents bought it WAY back when had a dump area where part of my horse pasture is now. It was of course cleaned up many many years ago, but random things still surface. The strangest thing? I think would have to be a helium balloon (you know, the foil ones) that finally deflated after someone let it go and it ended up in my pasture of all places. I saw the horses all check it out suspiciously, but then completely ignore from then on until I picked it up.

Paint Girl said...

I find a lot of pieces of plastic bags that I know did not come from us! So I am assuming they've been there for years and years and have just come up to the surface.
I did find your boys shoe today that he lost years ago! It probably got buried pretty deep in the mud back then and all of a sudden.... there it is! And it could have been bad if one of my horses stepped on it... all the nails were face up! (I now have Brandy and Fritzy in your boys old pasture!) But I can't think of anything else strange that I have found. I always keep my eyes open for dangerous objects out there!

Sherry Sikstrom said...

I have found glass and bits of metal , nothing too exciting as far as treasure, but I often pick a pocket full

Anonymous said...

One end of the mares' pasture at the new barn apparently was a garbage dump before the current owners bought the property a number of years ago, and then was covered over with dirt when things were regraded. It's on a big slope, and every time it rains, it erodes and more stuff shows up - all rusty - nails, pieces of rebar, and lots of what looks like auto or tractor parts, some pretty big - once I found something like a small muffler with tubes attached. I go out there every day and pick up more stuff. There's also a lot of glass, but most of it's in very small fragments - there's so much I only bother to pick up the big pieces.

50+ Horses said...

Our cabin is located up on the east side of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. It's located next to the trail the settlers used reach and settle on the west side of our State. In our corral I find broken glass and dishes but the most interesting thing I ever found was a wooden children's (stick) doll.

cdncowgirl said...

I find shotgun shells and old cattle tags in our pastures & pens.
Back when I used to board at my friend's dad place we kept finding these glass "things" in the pasture, we showed him and he told us what they were... old glass insulators from phone poles (or power poles, I can't remember which)
The most interesting thing I've found on our land? A single spur strap with a spur. It was pretty weather beaten but you could tell that spur strap had originally been blinged out.

Another way the glass could be showing up there is that spot could have been the "garbage" location.

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

Well, that's nice way to save your collection. Looks rather pretty in that mason jar.

Our barn is at the top of a hill, and after our high winds or heavy rain or snow melt we can count on finding all sorts of bits of broken glass, huge rusted nails, old rusted hinges, rusted tiny horseshoes)must have been minis here at one time), and farm implements.
I often find odd rusted pieces of metal that I can't figure out what they are.
Strangest thing might be the old one piece rusted metal hatchet...or the old chewed bones that seem to have belonged to cattle.

~Lisa

Camryn said...

Most unusual has to be a hot water heater found buried on the edge of the pasture. Hubs and son tried & tried to remove it. Finally resorted to covering it with rocks. I find glass, nails, hinges, along with plastic flower pots. On occasion mason jars still whole and filled with dirt.

Rocky Mountain Yankee said...

As a kid growing up in Maine, I learned to look for stuff that had been heaved out of the ground by the frost every spring in our horse pastures. One year I found an old motorcycle that had been buried and had resurfaced. My Dad had to get the tractor to pull it out. There was lots of other stuff as well but the motorcycle was probably the strangest.

The Equestrian Vagabond said...

it's historic art... better in a jar then hanging out with your horse! someone found an Indian metate close to our place up the creek.
- The Equestrian Vagabond

Unknown said...

I can totally relate to this post. How can it possibly so many strange things end up on the pastures?? Once when I had a horse at a boarding stable I found pieces of an old gun from world war two on the ground!This was in Sweden.

baystatebrumby said...

That glass sure is beautiful. The glass jar is a much better place for it than a pasture I should think! The craziest thing I have found in Lilly's pasture aren't really so crazy at all. Mostly little toads and cast off shoes that I thought I;d never see again. But my friend Karen P found a very old needle (use for sewing up sheep) in her pasture...but only after it impaled her horse's sole and ended up stuck in her hoof! Thanks to Tufts, the horse is all better. But what a weird scare!
As usual, your blog is very pretty. A real feast for the eye.

Ranch Girl Diaries said...

Camryn~ You reminded me, last spring I found a whole mason jar filled with dirt and moss, too! It was a white jar. On the bank of the small ditch that runs in the pasture. Too funny!