My day began with my picking up horse manure. And it ended with my picking up horse manure. I also picked up horse manure mid-morning and mid-afternoon. The question is, why so often? The answer is that otherwise, it piles up in the enclosure, and becomes a sloppy mess in the front area if I refrain from cleaning up. I have been diligent about the task at hand since we got Raudi, 17 years ago.

Bill came by late this afternoon and he filled the back of his truck with full five-gallon buckets of poop. There is just so much of it—I can’t imagine what we’d do with it all if no one took it.

Stock photo of Alys picking up poop

That which doesn’t get taken gets turned into compost. And we use the compost in the garden beds.

This is the time of year preceding the harvest. We’ve been eating strawberries for some time, and we finished off the sugar bush barriers in short order. Today I had the first of the raspberries of the season.

I digress. In between sessions of picking up poop – first, Pete made videos of the mares, doing agility.

Horses are different when it comes to this sport than are dogs. They really don’t care about pleasing their owners, or at least mine don’t. They just want the treats. So be it. We got the videos done, then decided to do Tyra’s video over. She had a near flawless round, then botched it on obstacle ten, the water crossing. I remarked to her as she entered that this obstacle was “really scary.” She heard me and could not, of course, tell that I was joking. I worked with her after this, using the clicker and she then did just fine. I at times wonder that those who don’t use a clicker do in this particular instance.

It was as we were finishing up that the dogs began barking and we heard a truck pull up next to the gate. Pete was right, our package had arrived, this being a library cart for the seniors at the Palmer Senior Center. Interesting, the delivery guy (the cart came via Sourdough Express) said he was a reader, and so Pete and I told him about the Bright Lights Book Project. It was a missed opportunity, one that just occurred to me. We could have asked if Sourdough Express would provide us with free book shipping.

This afternoon we had two visits – first of all, Bill did come and get his manure. Secondly, Malinea Savigny came with her two-year-old daughter so we gave both the Squalor Holler Property tour. The horses were a big hit – and fortunately, all behaved.

I talked with Malinea about her book project, which is the one with First Books. She’s been doing what I’ve been doing, but on a much larger, and more organized scale. She’s sent 36,000 books to villages – in my estimation a staggering amount. This has been a volunteer effort on her part, and it is soon to be a volunteer effort on my part.

Unreal, what goes on around here, in between sessions of picking up poop.

208. 7/29/21: A Conversation with Tyra: Goodbye Pat