White Snakeroot

White snakeroot is a plant that is poisonous to several animals, including horses.  It can cause death in a matter of days.  The thing is I should have known this from school, but I had forgotten about it.  Probably because I had a million other things I had to remember and knew I could always look up the information if I needed it.

Diane told me on the morning of the 7^th that we needed to look in the pastures for white snakeroot that she heard there were several horses in the area that had died from it recently.  I told her I had no idea what it looked like so we Googled it.  My grandma watched Dean while Cecilia, Diane and I went out in the pastures to start looking.  It grows mostly in wooded areas so we started in our pasture.  At first we saw a few plants that looked like it, but we weren’t quite sure so we pulled the plants and went on looking for it.  Then we found a couple patches of white flowering plants that matched the description perfectly.  We did our best to pull them and put them in the Ranger so we could dump them in the burn pile, but some we had to just break off at the ground because we couldn’t get the roots.  We removed the two patches we found and moved on to look for more and we found the mother load!  The entire back corner of our pasture was filled with it.  There was no way we could pull all of the plants so we decided we were building a fence.  We went back to the shop and grabbed supplies and ran some hot wire.  The horses were not thrilled about it when they saw it.  With any luck they haven’t bothered to eat the plant yet.  Brad talk to his cousin and found a chemical that will kill it, so now we just need to find time to spray the plant.

After building fence I caught Ollie so Vincent could go riding in the arena with Diane.  He is starting weekly riding lessons over there and we are all very excited about it.  Well I am excited about part of it, the part where I have to chase his horse through the pasture to catch him doesn’t sound like fun.  It was fun to see him ride and when Vincent was done Joel and Cecilia also had their turns.  My grandma pat was with to watch and she enjoyed seeing them ride.  Joel and Cecilia also took turns riding the fake cow they use for roping.  Kristine has even taught Joel to put his arm up in the air and spur it like he is riding a bull.