Horse Stuff

One of the tasks I like to undertake at least once a year is to inventory all of my horse stuff. This only includes items that are kept outside of my home, though I do have a miniature horse western saddle in my living room as I don't want the leather to get moldy. There has not been a "full size" horse living at our farm in about 3 years, but I still have plenty of big horse items. Who knows, maybe someday I will get a saddle horse and might need one these items, though if I get a saddle horse, it may be a color that doesn't go with any of the items I have saved.  For example, I don't like the way a chestnut horse looks in a red halter, so the red horse size halter in my tack truck isn't going to work. You can read more about this on my blog from February 2010 "Clothes Horse" My endurance saddle won't work on a horse with narrow withers. Fortunately my 2 Wintec all purpose saddles have easy change gullet systems. so they might work. Probably the number one item on my inventory list is "Horse Clothing". God gave horses a nice coat of hair which gets nice and warm in the winter, so why anyone needs all of this clothing--of yes, if I get a Thoroughbred it might not get a nice warm coat in the winter; or what if I decide to show during the winter and my horse has to be kept clipped? According to my inventory list, I have 30 items of horse clothing. Coolers, rain sheets, stable blankets, fly sheets, and turnout blankets in different levels of warmth. These range in size from 42 to 81. I'm not sure who wore the size 81. It might have been a blanket someone gave me just in case I decided to try dressage and had to purchase a Friesian. Brands of clothing include Tough-1, D-Tech, Kensington, Baker, Cottage Craft, Schneiders, Mark Todd, Saxon, Weatherbeeta, Gatsby, and McAllister. As you can see I like to give my money equally to all of the different manufacturers of horse clothing. Some of the above mentioned items are new. or still in the package from the cleaners. I've tried to sell them, but everyone must have horses that don't match the colors I am selling, or maybe they just want to buy new stuff to go with the new horse, and thus began their own hoarding problem.. My list of horse footwear is just a daunting. After all, one must have shoes to match the outfit. Some of these are therapeutic so they never did match any outfit. I have Easy boot "Original, Trail, Rx, and Soaker; Davis boots, hoof socks, Therapy boots (I think I paid over $300 for these beauties) and of course one needs to buy the "Special" inserts to go in all of the above mentioned boots. Like the clothes, some of these are brand new, or look brand new.  I've tried to sell the boots but no one is interested. Guess they would rather spend the $300 for new instead of the $95 which is my listed price. Does anyone need blanket leg straps? I have at least a dozen pairs, and "no" they do not go with the above mentioned blankets. Stirrups? I have Peacock, Swivel, comfort and plain, stirrup pads, and new rubbers for the peacocks. I will not bore my reader with a continuation of all of my inventoried items but suffice it to say "there it way too much", or maybe I have a hoarding problem. In defense of my hoarding I do want to add that last month my son did ask me to take one of his thoroughbred polo horses for a couple of months as she needed some rest and relaxation. Good, I thought, a thin coated horse;  I can make use of some of these articles of clothing Of course on  the first cold rainy day I realized the size she wore didn't go with her color. After all, you can't have a chestnut horse wear red. At least not in my barn !!

Horse Loving Mother's Wish
I have always loved and owned horses, so I had assumed my 3  children would share my love for this incredible animal. There were always horses in their young lives. My 2 oldest  children did ride, took lessons, attended horse camp, and even did some showing. When they were old enough to say "NO MORE" and  conveniently decided to participate in time consuming school sports and activities, I thought my "horse loving children" days were over. My youngest son who was 6 years younger than his siblings, and also never showed much interest in horses, other than riding them while pretending to be a knight in armor. When he was in high school we attended an open house at the University of CT. There was a polo match, which we thought would be fun to watch. Actually it was the horse loving mother that wanted to watch the match. My son watched the game for about 15 minutes and announced that he wanted to play polo. I said "But you can't ride, never mind ride like a polo player. What about joining your high school's cross-country team?" Well he was determined to play polo, so started taking riding lessons and we even signed him up for polo lessons at UCONN. He learned to ride, and play polo well enough to be asked to join the UCONN high school polo team. He played on that team for 2 years, and when it was time to apply to college, he was only interested in colleges  that had polo teams. He was accepted to UCONN, and played on their team for 4 years, even going  to the national collegiate polo game in KY. Once the polo "bug" bit him there was no turning back. Now a  30 year old adult, after many years of struggling to be successful in polo, he owns and operates one of the largest equestrian facilities in MA. I like to brag and say that my son not only plays polo, but teaches polo, learned to shoe horses,, has a polo club, a huge equestrian facility, and best of all, I finally have a child that loves horses.

Fall on the Farm

No, not the verb but the noun, as in "The leaves are lovely during the Fall in New England".
The other day I received a hand-written letter from a friend. She started her letter with "Maple trees turning red,no more hummers at the feeders, kids wearing long pants to school, horses beginning to look fuzzy-could a snowflake be far behind?" What a lovely image of Fall in New England. Yesterday, while out driving I started thinking about all of the wonderful sights, sounds and smells of the season. Of course there is the lovely horse smell, but also the aroma of leaves, pine tree scent, and the moist earth under foot. One of my favorite scents, which always remind me of late Fall, is the aroma of wild grapes. Sometimes I'll stop and grab a bunch, from a vine, to eat while trip-tropping along down the trail. I have  decided that full size horse clip-clop, and miniature horses trip-trop. Trip-tropping is a sound, as is the breathing of my horse. There is sometimes the sound of splashing water if the dogs are lucky enough to find a stream or pond. Yesterday, I heard a strange sound and soon realized that my dog, Windsor, had run into deer fencing. The path I was on was once a railroad bed so fencing had been installed to prevent deer from running onto the track. There is obviously still some around and Windsor happened to find it. Just when I thought I would have to save him, he located a spot where the fence was down and hustled to safety. When there is a breeze I could hear the sound of the leaves and twigs falling to earth. Occasionally the dogs would bark at some unknown monster lurking in the woods. There is the sound of my voice speaking to the dogs and horse. Sometimes I sing, which I only like to do in private, or in a large group of people. Of course, another New England favorite sound is the sound of crunching leaves under foot, or in my  case, under hoof. Visually there is a cornucopia of sights. The beautiful colors of the plants-Brown and yellow oak leaves. Red, yellow and orange maple leaves, Orange sassafras, yellow aspen and birch, the shades of green pine trees. Then there are the red Winterberries, purple asters, yellow goldenrods. The colors of the earth, moss and grass. If the dogs are off exploring I may see a squirrel or a rabbit run across the path. But my favorite sight of all is one that I can see during all of the seasons. That is, needless to say, the sight of my horse.

The New Barn

Well, its not really an entirely new barn. We gutted the interior, replaced the rotted wooden floors with cement (of course there will be rubber mats), and reconfigured/rebuilt the stalls. When we bought this property 20 years ago we converted what was a workshop/garage, into a horse barn. The stalls were built using old, and occasionally new lumber of varying sizes, grades and condition. Needless to say, the barn was a hodge-podge of "compartments" which over the years have housed horses, ponies, chickens, ducks, turkeys, goats and rabbits. Our littlest mini, Delilah, lives under the stairs, similar to Harry Potter's bedroom. I think the measurements are about 4x5. She does have a little "hobbit" door so that she can go outside whenever she likes, but this has to be nailed shut during in-climate weather.  Of the 4 stall doors, only 2 match, and like the stalls, are of varying sizes and types of wood. I do have 2 matching stall latches, and matching halter/leadrope hangers which were purchased at Ocean State Job Lot for 4/$1.00. The "new and improved" barn will have 5 stalls, removable dividing walls in case I someday lose my mind and decide to get something big like a draft horse. There will be drains in all of the stalls so that the mats can occasionally be removed and the floors hosed down and cleaned. Stall doors will match as will all the hinges and latches. I've even splurged and  bought latches in the shape of horse shoes. There is a workbench with cabinets for storage and the windows are better than what are in my home, even though they were cast-offs from a construction job. It will probably be another couple of weeks before the barn is "horse ready". In the meantime all of the horses are living in temporary quarters which happen to be located in my garage.
When we bought this house I had remarked to my husband that the 30 x 40 ft garage would be perfect for horses. Of course he said "no way", and of course 20 years later there are horses living in the garage, and his car is parked in the driveway.(Please note that this post was actually dated 2014)

High Point Driving Horse Champion 2013 Schooling Show Series

 

 

Cho-Cho Char-Lee

aka

Sleepylighthouse Farms Char-Lee(AMHR)

aka

Good Times Char-Lee(AMHA)

The Horse Show

Clipperblades $65; Halters and Leads $135; Misc. grooming supplies $30; Entry fees $70; Body clipping (for the horses) $100; Lunch $20; Gasoline $100; 5 blues, 1 red, 1 yellow, and a Reserve Champion----Priceless !!!!!

The New Fence

I have probably mentioned in previous posts the condition of our horse fencing. It is the Heinz 57 variety, consisting of roundpen panels, chain link, wood, electic wire and tape, and stone wall. We even have sections of  very dangerous stock panels, and a few feet of the equally dangerous barbed wire. For posts we had trees, metal posts and plastic step-in posts. The electric wire and tape sections have been broken and repaired so many times that I considered changing our farm name to Half-Ass Acres! In additon to the fencing, the solar charger had been dropped, broken, and was taped together with Duct Tape. What did people ever do before Duct tape! Needless to say, I was also spending a lot of time chasing horses down the road, or searching through our back woods. One of  the many projects I had planned for this year was to take down all the missmatched junk fencing, replace all the step-in posts with metal posts (yes, they have the yellow plastic safety caps), run 2-1 inch wide strands of electic tape, and buy a new solar charger. Fortunately my son-in-law had some down time at work so he and his father, were able to spend 2 entire days tackling this enormous job. In total they put up 2/3 mile of tape, and pounded in at leat 30 posts. We did still use many trees for some of the insulators. The new fencing looks wonderful, the solar charger is providing a good ZAP, and the horses aren't escaping so long as I don't leave the gate open!