Irish Spring Soap Rated #1 by Donkeys Everywhere

With flurries in the air and more snow on the way, for all intents and purposes, winter is here.

Snow covered radishes anyone?

Aside from the snow, there are two other ways to know that winter has come to Gael Glen Farm.

First, we have started feeding our livestock hay.  The grass and weeds in their pastures will soon be inaccessible as a food source so we have started transitioning everyone on to hay.  This is never particularly difficult as all the animals prefer hay to fresh grass anyway.  Go figure.  The animals waste a lot of hay though and it is expensive, so we try to wait as long as possible before switching them over completely.

Just standing around the water cooler...or munching around the hay barrow, as it were.

Second, we have lots of wild critters trying to shack up with our farm critters.  Call us old fashioned but we try to discourage barn sharing.  Wild critters tend to chew holes in floors and walls and dig tunnels under everything.

Irish Spring soap is the ideal wild critter deterrent.  The bars are so super smelly than no critter wants to sleep alongside this stuff in their burrow.  This soap is also non-toxic so when a wild critter actually manages to huck a bar out of their hole (it has happened) and it accidentally gets licked/chewed/ingested by a ravenous donkey (oh, Charlie!), she just gets soapy fresh donkey breath as opposed to a deadly tummy ache.

Charlie the donkey is no stranger to the powerful tang of Irish Spring.  We rub it on wooden parts of her barn to deter her from chewing them.  This behaviour, called cribbing, is common to equines but it is destructive nonetheless.  We certainly do not want Charlie chewing her barn to bits.  I think Charlie might actually enjoy the pungent aroma of Irish Spring soap (I mean, really, deep down, who doesn't?) but she certainly does not like its taste.

With winter here not too much else changes until we get so much snow that we have to start shovelling paths, gates and barn doors.  Or until our outdoor water taps freeze and we have to start lugging buckets of water out to the barns twice a day.  That is dreadful.  Oh, winter...you are so cold and you always overstay your welcome.  Is it too early to wish for spring?!