Wordless Wednesday: First Grazing of the Spring

 Finally, the brutal winter has released its death grip on the Highveld, and abundant summer begins to return in verdant green.

We have a while to go before the browns and grays finally give way to deep green pastures, but there is food out there for the horses now, which is a breath of relief for all involved. Especially old Skye - the toothless old lady came through the winter really well this year, but she's grateful to have all the soft, easy-to-chew grass she wants instead of her regular soupy meals of Speedi-Beet and senior meal.

Those meals served her well this year, though. She was on 3.2kg of Spurwing Senior, plus about 1kg of Speedi-Beet mixed with another 1kg of Capstone Cool Time. I hung soaked slow-feeder teff nets for her, but she only managed to eat about half a net per day. Still, it was enough for the old girl to come through the winter looking just fine for a thirty-three-year-old horse with no functioning molars.

The broodmares came in for the breeding season. I had to kick Ladybug and Magic out into the fields, and move Thunder and Lancey to the barn so that the ladies could have their foaling boxes back. Arwen is still sleeping out, only being due around Christmas, but Faith and Rene are inside at night now.

At 325 days, Faith is taunting me. She has a massive edema, poor girl, but no udder to speak of yet (sorry for the mare udder shots!). She also had this weird stuff on her teats??? Like I've foaled down plenty of mares and I really don't even know. It was only for a day, and it's definitely not wax. Maidens always have something new to show me, I swear.

At 329 days, Rene has every sign of imminent foaling except that I can't seem to express any milk from her udder at all. It looks pretty full and tight, but she just won't give me a drop to test the pH. So I'm hoping for wax as she's an older girl and has had a few babies before. Honestly, it could be any minute now or only in another two or three weeks' time. At least the mares look good - at dreadful expense. Still, it's better (not to mention cheaper) to keep a fat broodmare fat than to try to make a thin broodmare fatter.

Two happy faces greeting me every morning. I thought they might be a bit feral - I don't think these two girls have slept in a stable in their lives - but they seem to be enjoying their new digs.

Faith being way too gorgeous (and standing with splayed legs and a hanging tummy, lol).

Her mane is so perfect!

Arwen is very happy to still be sleeping outside. She's a bit of a monster in a stable, to be honest, but she'll have to move inside when she approaches her due date (precisely so that BabyDragon can learn to be a good baby in a stable from day one). As usual, she's handling her pregnancy with great aplomb - no edema, no discomfort, and a steadily growing udder. I felt BabyDragon kicking the other day, which was pretty special until OriginalDragon also thought she might get in on the kicking action (I can only assume things were getting a little uncomfortable).

In general, she's been her usual snuggly self, and seems relieved to be in a field with the other two ladies instead of having to command the herd as her belly grows.

I think Sir Flash, one of my two adorable school ponies, might have had a touch of ulcers at the end of the winter. It was a hard winter for everyone in the bitter cold and with absolutely no grass, and I couldn't find any of the coarser hay with lower nutritional value that works on these chunky little buggers. Instead I had to feed beautiful hay out of slow feeders, and Flashy's weight stayed perfect, but he was a little cranky towards the end. I put him on some zeolites and that began to help, but the tide really turned when I threw him out into the pastures. He's back to his friendly little self now.

He was his usual tolerant and versatile self last week, doing everything from working riding,

to helping me give a young horse a lead over his first few little logs,

to jumping all clear rounds with one of his smaller kiddos at a training show. I am so grateful for the amazing people who make up my little yard. We really don't have "barn drama" and it's thanks to them 💜

No schoolie appreciation post would be complete without mentioning my precious little Stardust, of course. I think every kid in the yard learned to ride on her.

Sleeping out seems to suit both Magic and Ladybug, who are now best friends. It's such a relief to have Magic outside and feeding himself on nice soft green grass instead of having to do his regimented feeding schedule and worrying about ulcers and impactions and all the rest. He still needs a little weight after his miracle recovery, and he did get picked on a bit during his first week out with the herd, but he's beginning to thrive again now. I'm just so grateful to kiss that soft little grey nose every morning.

The spring grass gave even the old retirees a little extra bounce.

This old man is a 25-year-old OTTB who, believe it or not, played Trenton's Pride in Racing Stripes. There were two Trenton's Prides, one in America and one in South Africa. This old chap is the one in all the scenes with the zebra. He is not villainous at all and can be rather a sweet old fellow when he wants to be.

The grazing isn't great just yet, but looking back on this shot from nearly two weeks ago, they've put on a lot of weight already. I'll have to keep a good eye on the Nooities, although it's a relief to have Arwen's body occupied with cooking a baby instead of just getting fatter and fatter.

The beloved fixed all the summer fences for me, of course. And helped me move all the horses in the scorching heat.

Here's to summer. God is so good.

Wordless Wednesday: Perfect Skies

 

I don't think there is anywhere in the world with skies as wonderful as we have here in the Highveld in summer.

We are waiting on some more rain to turn the world truly green, but every sunrise and sunset is a fanfare of grace, a promise of provision.

With views like this, what can we do but keep our eyes Heavenward, and look beyond the little fears and failings that so threaten to overwhelm our days?

My sister brought back this little reminder of grace after her own holiday in Parys, Free State. I love these walls - they're concrete made with sand from our beloved farm - but it's nice to have a little something to break that brownness and call our hearts back to truth every time we see it.

Ladybug turns five today. K was riding her for a little while, but I took her back last week, and she has been a treasure. Squeezing her into my schedule gives me hope that I really will have time for BabyDragon in the window between him/her coming into work and Thunder retiring from competition. Of course, who really knows what my schedule will be like in five years' time?

She had a little trouble with a strongyle infestation in the winter, but is coming into spring looking great and ready to start building some real muscles. After my chunky Friesians, I'm still not used to how gawky a baby warmblood looks.

Magic continues to thrive, especially now that we have some green grass for him to go out on during the day. His weight isn't perfect yet, but we're getting there.

It's warm enough now - most of the time - that the ponies can enjoy a nice cool shower after a long afternoon of lessons. I'm so proud to see how so many of the kiddos are turning into real little horsepeople, delving into their ponies' care with more depth as I push them to do more things on their own. I micromanaged a lot early on in the yard's existence, but the more I kind of make them do themselves, the more these kids are turning into well-rounded horse folk - and bonding with their ponies, too.

There's nothing like a long ride through a golden afternoon in good company.

School horse Flash (as in Zootopia, not DC) enjoying a bit of green grass between lessons.

Dragon pie is 280 days today. Just 65 sleeps to go!

Horse of the Year Show is in two weeks, the first one that we've missed since 2016. It's usually in February, so I would have ridden a newly pregnant Arwen there this year, but it was moved to November thanks to lockdowns. This is a much better time of year for HOY, honestly, but it just didn't work out for me. I have a little Nooitie/Welsh gelding I could have taken with a kiddo on him, but I decided to save for Gauteng Champs instead on the slim chance that I can afford to take Thunder. If things work out, I might go and volunteer instead.

Rene is 315 days today, creeping up on that "normal" window of 320-370 days. I have no records of her foalings at her previous home, but if I had to guess, I think she's not going to go far over 330 days. She might prove me wrong, though. The ladies come into the stables for foaling season this week, to the chagrin of Magic and Ladybug who will have to sleep outside for a few months.

Hacking with a livery and her sweet youngster. This fellow is just incredible and so respectful to ride with. A real pleasure to his owner and to me!

My little semi-retired livery turns 21 today, and in true Welsh pony fashion, he is not all that respectful to ride with, LOL. I had to hop off on this ride and lead him past a rock that was definitely going to cause some airs above the ground. The little man is loving life and still as sound as a bell after spending his entire life taking kids around jumping courses - and that's why ponies will always rule.

I caught the chicken farmer contemplating the mysteries of chicken life in a decidedly attractive manner. That large bush is the spinach in the background - it somehow survived the winter even though I did not water it even once, and is now plotting world domination. I keep having to trim it back because it tries to climb through the electric fence.

God is so good 💜

August/September Photo Dump

 Well, August and September happened.

Seven weeks after coming home

First things first: after ten days in hospital, more money than I spent renovating our house (yay for insurance!), and a whole lot of prayer, Magic is home and thriving. He was a skeleton when he got home on the 20th of August, with a boatload of medications and a very strict feeding schedule. The poor soul had really been through the wringer - he was about 3/10 (which is not bad actually, considering that he'd been starved for 6 full days), with terrible phlebitis and scrapes all over him from the night he'd thrown himself down in the stable in pain. He was so subdued, too. I had visited him five days before he came home, right in the middle of his hospital stay, and the fight had gone out of him. I was ready to put him to sleep them; it just seemed a better option to set him free. His lovely team of vets persuaded me to give him one more day, with the proviso that they would immediately put him to sleep if he had any more pain, and that night he finally took a turn for the better. Still, he had been through appalling suffering and it showed in his eyes and his soul. He just didn't have anything left in him. He felt so tired and not sure if he even wanted to be here.

The transformation since then has been amazing. When he first got home he was on seven small meals a day, with medications three times a day, and I did everything myself except his 9:30am feed when I was at work. I just felt like he needed me, or maybe I needed him to need me, or maybe we just needed each other a little bit. I was so burned out within a couple of weeks, but it was absolutely worth it. He finally went out on pasture during the day last week, and he was leaping and bucking and snorting and playing like he'd never had a sick day in his life. That was when we both finally felt like it had been worth it. Before then, I had been wondering if it had been selfish to put him through the hospitalization for as long as I did, but when I saw him gamboling around like an idiot I knew it was OK. He's now back to living his best spoiled life. Summertime will be easier on both of us because he can go on pasture 24/7 and never colics when he's on pasture, but in winter he has to be on a super strict feeding schedule:

6:15am - 300g Capstone Lifetime Balancer with a handful of lucerne pellets, all soupy, and a tablespoon of Epsom salts. 2kg teff in a slow feeder, dampened.

9:30am - 1kg lucerne pellets, 750g Capstone Cool Time, 1 tbsp Epsom salts, 1 tbsp zeolites, 10g Protexin (probiotic), soupy.

12:30pm - 2kg dampened teff in a slow feeder

3:30pm - same as 9:30am

6:30pm - same as 6:15am, but with 2 generous tablespoons of Epsom salts and a tablespoon of zeolite added to his balancer and lucerne pellets.

So he's a very high-maintenance little lawn ornament, added to which he has only one functioning jugular vein and his face tends to get pretty swollen after a day of grazing, but that doesn't affect his welfare at all. In fact, he is a happy dude who is currently roaming around the yard pretty freely to get all the juicy grass and making a general nuisance of himself.

The fruit trees' blossoms came and went, replaced by leaves. It is so good to see something green in the world again.

I think perhaps the combination of waiting for the rain, generally disliking winter, and having the beloved work away for the last three springs in a row have given me a touch of pseudo-SAD. My mental health was not great right up until the first rain. Since then I've been back to really happy.

We had many miserable, cold and cloudy days before the rain finally came. This was in late August, right after Magic came home. Two of my newer liveries went on their first long ride in this group, and they were all just perfect.

I had the two big girls in front to set the pace, so Lancey and I could hang out in the back, keep an eye on everyone, and enjoy the friendships growing between the kids. This is most of my SANESA team for next year and everyone is such good friends. I am super blessed to have a no-drama yard (and I stomp on drama the moment it looks like it wants to appear).

Lancey has stayed in consistent work. A lot of this has been lungeing and hacking, but we've made some progress on the schooling front too. When I had a couple of school ponies out of work for one reason or another he helped out by teaching some kids how to lunge and do Join-Up, which he is a little pro at (I have video of him doing beautiful Join-Up with a five-year-old, which is adorable).

Another reason why August/September are not my favourite time of the year. With the dry ground, the electric fences pretty much quit working. The beloved spent days trying to come up with solutions for why this particular young livery was climbing right through the fences even though the tester was showing that they were on.

I certainly enjoyed the view.

The pregnant fairies gave me grey hairs. More accurately, Faith did - Arwen has been plugging on merrily, now at just over 270 days, with nothing but a minor scrape on her belly to complain about. Faith was the third in a very uncharacteristic string of colics (potentially to blame on a bad batch of hay) that I had. These have been my first non-Magic colics in easily five years. Anyway, I decided not to take any chances and had the vet out the moment I saw what was up, and she was fine by the next morning. The owner of her foal was angelic enough to pay her vet bill, which was extremely kind of him.

She lost a little weight, but nothing too bad - for which I'm very grateful as we're now entering the last stretch of her pregnancy. She is 303 days today, with Rene at 307 days. I have no idea what either of them will do, Faith being a maiden and Rene new to me, so I'll be on foal patrol in the next couple of weeks.

Our first few days of T-shirt weather finally arrived in early September, to my huge relief. It was still bitterly dry and gross outside, with unbelievable winds, and we were all waiting desperately for rain. We had a few days of oppressive, dry heat.

The kiddos rode at Gauteng Finals, where Jamaica's kid had a massively unlucky stop that cost her a place on the team, and Zorro's kid squeaked onto the team in her discipline. Thanks to some relaxations due to COVID I did manage to shove Jamaica's kid into nationals, so all ended well. We also got to visit Kyalami Corner for the first time, one of the yuppie upmarket malls in the heart of South African horse country. Everything was pricey, but at least they had pretty statues.

It was so, so dry. At least it was easier to keep Lancey clean.

I wanted to go for a ride with his long mane blowing romantically in the wind, but it ended up getting snarled up in my hands more than anything else. Another reason why he lives in plaits.

Just the beloved washing my jacket for me late one evening after work because I was having a little meltdown about how I was going to be a trainwreck at SA Champs. I was not a trainwreck, my jacket was clean, and my man is an actual superhero.

My favourite Friesian, who for blog purposes we will call Madam President because that's exactly who she believes she is, on the second day of SA Champs. I have never been so nervous in the days leading up to the show, but once I was in the warmup I was surprisingly OK. In fact, I was great - really focused, not too relaxed, but not panicking. I rode every stride and Madam President showed up to work the way she always does. We had run into some issues with the contact in the weeks before the show, but we pulled it together and had solid scores for a placing in the middle of the class in good company.

Beloved couldn't be there on the first day of the show, but he was there on the championship day, which helped me calm down quite a bit.

It was unforgettable. My first SA Champs ever, on probably the best dressage horse I have ever had the privilege of riding. Madam President will inevitably outgrow me and move on to the upper-level rider she deserves, but I'm bent on enjoying every ride while I've got it.

 The following week was a Friesian show at my favourite venue in Parys, which was amazing to experience as always. I didn't ride because Madam President had had enough pressure on her already, but Coach rode the stud stallion, who was a very good boy.

Erin came over to spend the day at the show with us, and posed beside the big fella for scale. He is just over 17.1 and all power, but he stood across the aisle from a mare at the show, and I lead him around the farm with a flat halter and no chain. Such an incredible creature.

It's so hard to believe that last year's foal crop has turned into yearlings already. This one is my personal favorite, the oldest of them, who just turned one last month. There's so much to like here.

The rain came in late September, and it was wonderful, wonderful rain - about 60mm in a week. It was nice and early, and the pastures have gotten a good start on growing. My garden woke up, too, even though we'd been watering it for weeks. There's just something about rainwater that no artificial means can beat. A continual reminder of how helpless we truly are, and how great the Lord's mercy really is. This phlox was a huge bush last year and reseeded itself; I didn't even know until it started blooming.

After another six weeks off for that check ligament injury, Thunder finally returned to work, having lost so much of his muscle tone and fitness. Between the check ligament and the biliary he had in the autumn, he's had three months off this year. And we started out so well. Anyway, I did two weeks of lungeing and continue to have him on a fairly strict lungeing schedule right now, hoping to build up a ton of fitness. It's always hard with him to balance fitness and freshness, but I also switched him to a super high-energy, high-protein feed, which seems to be working. He's even sassy sometimes now, which is great. As long as he has the energy, I can redirect it.

At least Lancey still looks like something. We have been chipping away at the gait quality again. He is much better off my leg, and we've been able to take his big, rushy trot and turn it into a more engaged, rhythmic trot. The canter is another story. He still won't let my rein aids go through him in the canter. I identified a problem in his response to the left rein and worked very hard on that with a ton of renvers/travers, which does seem to be helping. I honestly really look forward to having BabyDragon and training it properly (or at least, as a dressage horse) from day one - I love my two repurposed beasts, but I remain aware that Lancey could have been Elementary-Medium or Medium by now if I hadn't spent all this time fixing his man-made problems with the contact.

I rode this super cute green bean livery for his mother while she was on holiday. He is accident-prone but adorable. The rain had already brought a flush of green to the veld in the background here; it feels like the earth is alive again. As soon as the green came, my spirits just lifted, and the horses are obviously much happier to have something succulent to nibble on.

Without constant dust hanging in the air, we can see all the way past Bloekomspruit almost to the Vaal Dam again.

The wind still hasn't quite stopped, though, which hopefully means that we'll have good rain this season. I'm not sure if the thought that a cold winter and a windy spring bring a wet summer is entirely based in scientific theory, but I'm clinging to it anyway. These kiddos enjoyed a nice long ride on the last day of school before spring break. The one on the right has been riding with me since she was three years old, which feels like a ridiculously long time.

Having a lunge between lessons. I am so happy to see summer coats returning, too.

On a perfect, wet Friday at work after a beautifully stormy night, an angel spread its wings in the sky. Africa's summer skies are just something else. The horse in this photo is my second favourite Friesian, who had been off with an injury for months, but is finally back into full work now. He is a huge pleasure to ride and we get along really well - we actually make really good progress together. We'll give him the blog name of Shy Boy.

We went away on holiday together for the first time since we moved into our cottage in 2019. There just never seemed to be a point in going away while the beloved was still living and working three hours away for five months of the year - we spent too much time away from home anyway. This weekend was very, very sweet, and just a much-needed break from everything. It finally managed to set my inner dial back to "happy" after a hard spring.

I'm aware of just how honoured I am to have my very best friend as my constant companion. He is a tremendous blessing. My lighthouse.

We came home to perfect skies. Old Skye herself gave us a bit of a fright while Magic was in hospital when she spiked a low-grade fever and had some diarrhea, but she shook it off herself and carried on with her life. She seems to be enjoying her privacy and I think perhaps her days of running around in a herd are over. She was the best old lead mare for so many years - I think she's ready to just hang out with companions over the fence, and not have anyone in the field with her to try to play or push her around.

Of course one of the best Friesian mares waited until I was away to suddenly pop out an early baby with no prior warning, as maidens do. Mom and baby are both healthy and happy, and the little guy might look very small next to his enormous mother, but he's destined to reach over 17 hands himself.

Foals are the best. He's a very bold little man, always exploring and definitely a fan of wither scratches. I've gotten to spend a lot of time with him because his mom has rather too much milk and it tends to squirt all over his face, which then needs to be washed. There is a line of people eager to do this tedious chore but I managed to nab it for a few days before the grooms were onto me and started doing it early in the mornings before I got there. He certainly isn't starved for attention.

This was his first day outside. His dam has been an absolute rock star even though she's a maiden, taking really great care of him and letting us do what we need to do, too.

I had my first carriage driving lesson! It was pretty amazing, and actually not that difficult once my seat realized that it wasn't on a dressage horse and my foot realized that it wasn't in a car, and my hands realized that it was OK to pull to slow down. This very tolerant mare is a fantastic old schoolmistress and helped me out. I hope to drive Madam President someday.

There are so many things I love about summer, but perhaps my favorite is the longer days. Instead of shuddering out into the cold just after six in the morning, I can head out early, before the world gets going, and lunge my horses in the golden quiet.

This summer is going to be simply beautiful. I have lots of plans for it, but ultimately I'm just glad to be here where God put me. God is good!