Exploring the Western Neighbours'

 Now that I have a super outride horse again, I've been riding all over our farm, alone and with kiddos. It's no small space, either - 230ha (over 500 acres) and nearly all of it is super accessible on horseback.

I love our home trails and know them like the back of my hand, but we're both feeling ready for longer and more exciting adventures.

I really don't think there is any better place in South Africa to own horses than the farmlands surrounding Heidelberg. We're close enough to the city (Johannesburg/Tshwane) to be spoiled for choice when it comes to specialist vets and competitions - one of our country's main venues is a 60-minute drive from our farm gate.

Still, the area is gloriously rural. Heidelberg is an adorable historic small town, and farmlands abound. I could explore virtually endless tracts of land without having to do more than cross a road or two. Road riding just isn't a thing out here.

So when the time came to ride further, it was as simple as sending a text to our lovely neighbour on the west (who has helped me out with many hay bales in hard winters, and also leveled my arena area for me. You rock, lovely neighbour!). As usual, he was very happy for us to ride in his fields, so I rustled up K the ex-working student (now managing a riding school of her own) and Milady to go with us.

We took the usual route down the hill along the east paddocks, having to ride through the cows to do so. Lancey didn't care; Milady was fairly concerned, but kept it together.

Our moment of excitement occurred at the bottom of the hill. I wanted to canter the long stretch across the top of the soya bean fields to the border fence, and when I asked Lancey for a walk to canter, he instead launched into the biggest bucking fit I've sat in a while. It caught me off guard and he gave four or five good ones before I reeled him in. The little guy mercifully doesn't kick up behind, but he can dolphin leap with the best of them.

If it was any other horse - barring Thunder - I'd have bailed there and then. Because it was Lancey, my nerves only hit about a 3 out of 5, still acceptable. Also, I might not enjoy such hijinks, but riding the Friesians has given me a seat of steel, so I actually didn't even wobble in the saddle. The moment I got my reins together he also stopped dead and stood there like the good boy he had momentarily forgotten he is.

why yes I was riding in sweatpants, it was too dang cold for leggings

I took a deep breath and we trotted for a bit instead, and he didn't put a foot wrong. Any horse can have the odd moment. I considered walking for the rest of the ride, but my fear had stabilized to a 2 or so, and I didn't want to make an issue of it. So after a while we dropped back to a walk and then popped to canter and Lancey headed off at the sweetest little collected canter you've ever seen. He was truly perfect for the rest of the ride, barring a few of his usual little spooks, which always happen in place so they don't worry me one bit.

We did run into the one problem with riding with K and Milady. K is very sweet with this nervous dressage auntie, but Milady definitely does not canter at the same pace as a well-schooled Arab with a nervous nelly aboard. Poor K was stuck trotting behind us for much of the way until I settled and pushed him to something more like a medium canter.

It remains to be seen what solution we'll come up with. K reckons I should just loosen up and have a little gallop, but I reckon she should teach Milady to canter properly, LOL. 

With that we were passing the last bean field - walking now to save Milady's little TB toesies on the rocks - and then we had popped out into the lanes around the neighbour's mielie (corn) fields.

Our goal was to find a way around the poplar grove to the game camp on the east side of the farm against the tar road. There are some amazing animals in there, and I've only seen them from the road. Game viewing on horseback is brilliant - they're not as frightened by horses as by cars.

We rode up towards the farmhouse. There are new barns and things there, but we passed by the back of them and came upon some very old outbuildings. Swaelkrans has been around for generations, and the old klipkraal - a small enclosure built from stone taken from the very koppies upon which the farm is built - was a giveaway that these buildings were very old. No one builds klipkrale anymore, but they were the order of the day a hundred years ago or more.

The farm has the most beautiful tracks everywhere. We headed along a field that looked like it'd been planted with winter grazing, then along the bottom of a poplar grove - and there it was. The game fence was right there!

Of course, the game had chosen to graze on the other end of the camp, so we could see neither hide nor hair of them. We decided to try riding up the other side of the trees to see if we could spot them.

The trees were pretty spooky, with a lot of rustling going on, but Lancey was fantastic. He had one or two little looks and kept trying to go behind Milady in his nervous moments - a relic of early training with a lead horse - but as soon as I put him in front, instead of next to her, he was pretty happy to just trundle along.

We had a canter along the grazing field then, and that was amazing. He didn't put a foot wrong and I even got him into a medium canter so that poor K could canter too. 

Around the trees, we didn't see any animals, but we did come upon a real treasure: an ancient oak tree, gnarled and twisted and golden with autumn. It was so beautiful that we dubbed it the magic tree.

The tree was beautiful, but also pointed to how old this farm really is. Oak trees aren't indigenous. Whoever laid the stone for that old klipkraal planted this oak tree, perhaps a sapling or an acorn then, for children of future generations to play beneath its boughs. That tree probably saw the Anglo-Boer War, during which Heidelberg was briefly the capital of South Africa, and decades of British colonization afterwards.

We'd been out for a while then, and I had promised the man I'd make pannekoek for lunch, so we started heading back towards home across the hay field.

Avoiding the shooting range, we headed between two bean fields, a road so long and straight and uphill that the horizon called even my name. I agreed to have another canter, and we were off.

Lancey was absolutely amazing for this. K's bleats of protest from behind me spurred me to finally take a light seat and allow Lancey to open up just a bit. He got a little heavier in front, but when I asked, he half-halted instantly. His neck was long, his tail was up, and he was just eating up the ground.

My worst fear came true when Milady came up alongside me, and then cruised on past - but Lancey didn't give his left sock. He just went on cantering like a good boy, and I let them pull away from us for a little before asking him back down to a walk. We were fine, but I wanted to know if I could ask him to walk even with another horse cantering away. He obliged immediately, jogging a couple of steps on a loose rein before falling into a quiet walk on the buckle while K pulled up Milady some distance ahead of us.

That was super confidence-building for me. We walked the rest of the way home in the interests of keeping Milady from becoming a joggy, snorty mess, but I was feeling really good even after the bucking fit we'd had early on in the ride.

It's all about making deposits into that trust bank. Lancey has been giving me good experience after good experience, and my trust bank is full enough with him that he can make the odd withdrawal without affecting it.

He power-walked on the buckle, eating up the distance with his swinging Arab stride, and K and I had a chance to chat and enjoy the sunshine. Winter days are picturesque in the Highveld, and even though it had been heavily frosted and well below freezing this morning, the afternoon was balmy and lovely.

We were all happy and chill when we got back, and even though most of Lancey's clip has grown back out again, he'd barely broken a sweat even though we'd done about 7-10km in just under 2 hours.

It was a really great and confidence-building experience for both of us. We have so much space to explore without even having to cross the road, and I really look forward to seeing more of it between these little Arabian ears.

Just so grateful to be blessed again with a glorious horse like this, a horse I trust, to enjoy this absolutely breathtaking landscape with. There is no better way to see the Lord's awesome creation than this.

Despite the cold this week, I also rode Thunder several times. He feels great and pretty strong considering that he's had such a long break, so we've been riding movements from the Medium tests, leaving the more strenuous preparation for Advanced work for now. Medium 2 has some complex geometry in it, but he finds the trot work easy (the extended trot notwithstanding). The canter work was fine, although he got a little tired and started missing the right to left flying change towards the end. This is typical; his canter left is always the first thing to lose strength after a break.

Hopefully I'll have pics of him soon. We should be having a lesson in two weeks, and then Lancey will (God willing) trot down centreline for his first Elementary tests later this month. 

Bonus pic: Noah continues to be adorable and getting more cuddly! 

Scripture reading has been interesting. I'm into the reign of Solomon now, and have finished Song of Solomon (whoa) and almost done with Proverbs. There is just so much practical advice in that book, advice that holds true even so many centuries later, the Word of God as living and active and dynamic and applicable as always.

God is just so good 💜