Sad Day

We lost a great horse today.  J found Lady dead this afternoon.  In a 15 acre field she managed to get wedged between the fence and a steep bank. She was eating hay with the other horses 5 hours earlier.  When J came back from feeding the cattle he found her but she was already gone.  There was nothing that he could do.  I'm not sure how old she was but she was probably in her twenty's. 

 We had been keeping her for J's dad while he spent the winters in Florida.

 She was an extraordinary trail horse with her signature white tail.  She never spooked or even looks twice at anything.

 She was a friend.

 She was a mentor.

 And she could even be counted on for a parade horse.

We'll miss you Lady.



Link to farm photo friday

65 Degrees

Today was a beautiful 65 degrees.  A perfect day for a ride around the farm.

 Hank walked along at a pleasantly brisk pace.  Nothing ever seems to phase him.

 It's hard to believe that is section was so thick with rose bushes pre goat herd that we couldn't even see our cattle when they were in here.

 There are still a few remnants of the multiflora roses.

Looks like I might have a little cleaning up to do later.

Maybe I could add it to some of J's wood piles.

Gearing Up

J has been anticipating the next big ride.  I've looked it up and there are at least 7 rides within 5 hours of us this spring and summer. 

 Jessica hasn't been ridden much in the last 4 months and this was her first time in the new barn.  After a little looking around and warm up lunging J got on and she did fine.  The wind was gusting to 35 mph outside and there were a few snow squalls.

 She did check out Kit.

 He had a prime viewing spot.

Jessica can't quite work up as much speed in here as she does in the outdoor arena but all in all it was a good workout.

Kit's First Snow

The snow is all gone now.  It melted in just 2 days.  This was Kit's first snow experience. 

 "It looks kind of wet.  Cat's don't like wet feet."

 "And that looks wet and cold."

"And you think I'm going to walk on that!"

Lights, Camera, Action

They've been working on the barn for a week and a half.  Look what we finally got. 

 A circuit breaker and....

 LIGHTS.  12 high bay lights.

 And shop lights.

J didn't think his shed lights were in the same class as my lights though.

Horse Judging

V and E competed in the B&B Horse Judging Contest this past weekend.  They had a 3rd girl from another county lined up to be on their team but 5 minuets before the contest started her FFA coach (whom she had already checked with and said it was ok) said she couldn't be on the 4-H team.  I went to the office and asked if there were any individuals judging that could be added to our team and there were 2 girls from Maryland.  So now we had a full team of 4. 

 There were over 200 4-H and FFA kids there.

 Team mates were not suppose to be standing next to each other

 but you can see there was no love loss there.

 The classes were pretty good this year, Saddlebreds, huters, quarter horses, reining,  pleasure and equitation.

V was the only one to get an individual ribbon, 5th  in reasons.  The "team" placed 5th in halter, 5th in performance, and 5th overall.  The Maryland coach was a little surprised but pleased her girls got to go home with some ribbons.   I hope to have an actual county team for the next contest.  We'll see.

Black Eye

I managed to give myself a black eye 2 nights ago.  I was going to include a picture but decided I didn't really want to post a close up of my face like that so you will just have to do with the description.
As I said 2 days ago during the snow storm the lights flickered a couple of times before we went to bed.  Then at 1 AM we were rudely awakened by all of the smoke detectors going off simultaneously.  I usually leave our bedroom door open but V was staying up later so I closed it halfway to keep the light out.  I forgot about that at 1 AM while I was trying to put on my robe in the dark because the power was now out and my head was ringing with 6 smoke detectors going at full pitch.  So with that I ran my face directly into the edge of the door which abruptly stopped my smoke detector progress.  J, still in bed, did ask, "what did you hurt?'  He use to just say, "what now?' whenever I let out a painful noise so I guess he has learned that if I yell something is usually wrong.  Anyway, after I picked myself up off the floor I had to disconnect all of the smoke detectors to stop the beeping and now I have a black eye.

This was different than J's smoke detector problem he had while the rest of us were off to California for the Rose Parade.  When I called home the first day he said one of the smoke detectors was beeping.  I told him where the spare batteries were and thought that would be the end of it.  The next day he said it was still beeping.  I said to press the test button to reset it.  The next day it was still beeping.  I said to check the breakers that maybe they were all wired together and he could just flip the breaker to shut it off.  When we got home it was so late I didn't even try to check on where the beeping was coming from but the next morning on my way to work there it was, in my purse.  I had left my pager at home and it had gone off and was sending a reminder beep every 2 minutes.  J had put up with it for a week.