A Day At The Farm

"What do you do at the horse-farm?"

I wake up at 6:30am, drive out to Paris, KY by 8am, and start mucking the stalls. Sometimes Mary's cats have slept in the barn and greet me. Bunny, the kid-goat, gets let out of her stall and immediately drops little round poops all over the place. She recently just got her own tether so that she's not always underfoot, maa-ing, and eating the calendars. The stalls are refreshed with water and food, and the horses are walked in from the fields, one at a time. Each of them gets cleaned--rubber mitt, curry comb, hard brush, soft brush, hooves picked, mane and tail brushed. Usually Kate and Bugsy get tacked up and we ride them to exercise them, and to enjoy the day a little bit. (cicadas! wind in the pines! big skies and rolling hills! little wildflowers that change every few weeks!) Sparrow, the very sweet ex-racehorse that is a little crazy from being mistreated (we assume) in the past, gets ridden next. Mary rides him in the round pen to feel his mood, then we head out to one of the pastures for a little more room. He's making good strides towards being 'civilized'. He likes drinking from the hose when we rinse him off. Vesper, the tiny yearling, gets some round-pen work on a lunge line, and then we have lunch. After lunch, I usually do some mowing. As in HOURS of mowing. I love it. It's very meditative and I can see my accomplishment. Plus, a new excitement for me, I get such satisfaction from mowing down the weeds and then seeing the bright new green grass growing in the patches where the weeds had been. Sometimes I drive the tractor, sometimes the zero-turn, or the weedeater or the hedge trimmer. When I'm on the tractor, I'm up high and get to watch the swallows swoop around me as they snack on the bugs I stir up. There are lots of vultures and eagles that are pestered by little birds. I get to watch the storms come in (temperature dropped 25 degrees in less than 5 minutes the other day as a SW wind blew in a cool thunderstorm during the hottest day of the year so far). I love being outside and watching the seasons change. Aaaaahhhh...