40 Years of Horses!

 A long, long time ago, I bought my first horse after years of being horse crazy, three consecutive summers of attending a week of Girl Scout camp where I did the Horse Camp option (the third year earning my way to camp by selling enough cookies to go at no charge to my parents, who'd told me they couldn't afford camp that year and I'd have to sell 300+ boxes of cookies to qualify for the week of camp to be 'free'-- I was an incredibly shy kid but I managed to knock on every door in a 5-mile radius of our house and take orders for cookies as long as my parents put up the time and gas money to drive me further than I could walk), and months and months of begging my parents to let me buy a horse.  They finally said "IF you can find a horse for the amount of money in your savings account, we'll think about letting you buy it."  

And so I did. After having a prepurchase exam done on him, he was delivered into my ownership on Labor Day weekend 1984.

The rest, as they say, is history.

My first horse, an 8 year old purebred registered Arabian

(with a tail that had been partially amputated after an injury a year or so prior to when I bought him).

I was twelve, almost thirteen when I got my horse. I think my parents figured horses were just a typical phase little girls go through, and that in a year or so I would grow out of it and we'd sell the horse and all the horse gear and be done.  They even put up stipulations I had to meet in order to keep the horse:

• Maintain at least a B average in school (I'd been an Honor Roll student all through school up to that point)
• Take riding lessons so I'd learn to ride safely
• Join 4-H and do the horse program

The first requirement was not an issue for me; I got good grades because I liked learning and school was something that (with the exception of multiplying and dividing fractions) had always come easy to me. Five school years later I graduated in the top 10% of over 330 students in my graduating class.

The second and third requirements, instead of pushing me away from horses (like maybe my parents secretly hoped), just sucked me in further.  So much to learn!  I couldn't get enough!  I went from learning to ride well on my first horse, to selling him and breaking out not just the next horse I bought (paid for with the earnings from the first horse, which I sold for more than I'd paid for him, but also by months and months of cleaning stalls for the lady I bought him from--my trainer) but also the young horse my mom bought in 1987 intending it to be her own horse.

In addition to joining 4-H and being extremely active there, I was one of the founding members of my high school equestrian team, which finally got approved and became a real thing my junior year.

My second horse, a 7/8 Arabian, 1/8 Quarter Horse I bought as a coming three year old

and then trained under saddle both western and hunt seat.

My Mom's horse, which ended up being too quick for her;

which I then started to teach to run barrels  but never quite finished 

(In the above pictures I'm 3 months pregnant with my first son; the reason why we soon scrapped the barrel racing training and the mare sat for over a year unridden.)

Then there was a haitus in ownership for several years, most of which I continued working at horse farms but not owning a horse of my own and not riding much.  I had met and married DH and then popped out babies #2 and #3 in rapid succession.  A week before baby #4 arrived, we became the owners of a pony I'd known from back in my 4-H days.  He was in his late 20s by then and ready to be retired from the showring.  So he became a backyard pony my kids loved on and learned to ride on.

The Pony

When my youngest child was 3, the barn owner I was then working for, was looking to downsize her (very large) herd of Holsteiners.  She offered me the choice of one of three she would sell for the same price.  All mares, all in the 10-12 year old range, all very green broke eons ago and not ridden since they were 3 or 4 years old.  I chose the one whose build and personality I liked best. I didn't have the full asking price at the time, but I put $1000 down and worked off the remainder of the balance over several years.  And that is how I became the owner of a papered warmblood horse.  I trained her mostly on my own, with some intermittent riding lessons (as I could afford them/work them off) for help.

The Mare and I, about 8 years after I'd bought her.

Shortly after putting down The Pony due to Cushings and advanced age (32), I caught up again with my second horse, the 7/8 Arab.  He'd been at a therapeutic riding center for over a decade and was in his early 20's.  They were going through some financial difficulties that necessitated dispersing some of their herd.  Being that he was now on the older end of their roster, I inquired if they might be willing to sell him to me.  So, he came back into my ownership, for my daughters to ride, and has been known here as The Old Man until his death in 2018.

The Old Man

In 2007, I went into a 3-way ownership on an 8 year old registered Quarter Horse.  He was supposed to be for my daughters to ride, the daughter of a fellow boarder to ride, and the farm owner to occasionally trail ride as her health allowed.  I ended up buying out the other two owners over the years, and he shows up in several stories posted at this little place here until I sold him in 2017.

The Quarter Horse

My two year partnership with the California Horse followed, from summer 2017 until 2019.  He is mentioned in many horse updates.

The California Horse,

all 18 hands of him!

Almost immediately after the California Horse left Michigan for Oregon (where his owner's parents had bought a farm), I purchased Camaro, the second purebred Arabian I have owned and trained.  The photo below is from our one and only show, in June 2021.

In June of 2023, The Poetess became my next horse.  Maybe my final horse, we'll see.  Looking to train her as far as I can (based on how my body holds out and how she ages).  DH would like to retire in about five years and hopes that he and I will be doing a whole lot more traveling after that.  I'm not so sure I'll be 'done' with horses that quick. Maybe ten years from now.  In 10 years I'll be almost 63.  Not a whole lot of women that age still riding and doing barn chores on a regular basis.  Fifty years of constant horses/horse chores might be enough.  Time will tell.

'

Knitting Update, October 24

 

I worked on Sixlet's Christmas stocking until I was about halfway to the heel portion, then I put it on hold. I needed something much more portable (that didn't require seven skeins of yarn for all the colorwork) to take on vacation with me in September.

Since Faline had recently found that her beloved purple sweater I knit for her when she turned two (finished product can be seen in this post) has gotten rather short in the arms and body now that she's about to turn four, I decided to raid my stash of yarn and see what yardages I might have that would be enough to knit a sweater for a much taller girl and use that as my take-on-vacation knitting project.

What I found was some lovely light blue/turquoise yarn that I'd purchased about five years ago intending to make a sweater for K3 but never ending up having the chance to actually use.  Now that K3 is way way too big for that to be enough yarn for a sweater for her, I decided to use it for a new sweater for Faline. And only I --and now you-- know that K3 was supposed to get a sweater and hasn't.  So it's all good.

I am using the Sunday Sweater pattern again (same pattern as the purple one), only making it in the size 4/5 using the longer body and arm lengths included in the pattern.  I have roughly 3" of body left to knit, at which point I will probably set it aside for a week or so and go back to working on Sixlet's stocking.

As far as reading goes, I finished two books in September:

• My Gun Has Bullets by Lee Goldberg is, I think, his first novel.  It's quite satirical and comedic.  I'd say it's sort of a murder mystery, but not nearly the same as his Eve Ronin series.  I could definitely see the progression in his writing from his early works to his novels of the 2020s.
• The Man From St. Petersburg by Ken Follett.  It's been over four years since I read anything from this author and now I can't imagine why it took me so long to pick up another book of his.  I love, love, love his writing.  History, intrigue, well developed characters. . . need I say more?

Currently, I have just started reading Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons.  I've heard this book mentioned a few times around internet-land in the past six to eight years, so I decided finally to give it a try. I'll say that the foreword is rather long and didn't keep my attention very well; if I had skipped that part I'd probably be further than Chapter One by now (five days after getting the book from the library).

Sewing and Stitching, September Update

The Airplane Quilt top is now a flimsy! Meaning all the piecing is done and borders are on.

I have all the components needed to finish this quilt: backing, batting and red-white-blue variegated thread for doing the quilting.  The next several weeks are going to be quite busy, so I doubt I will actually get any part of it quilted before the October sewing and stitching update. Sandwiched and pin basted, maybe, but most likely not quilted.

A few weeks ago I grabbed the pile of worn out jeans that has been accumulating for a couple of years and cut the seams and waistbands out of them.  I would like to make DS2 and Surprise a jean quilt for their Christmas gift this year, and might finally have enough scrap denim to make one.  No way to know until I start cutting the pantlegs into the 6" squares I'll need and see how many squares I get. That's the next quilty thing on my docket.  

Other than cutting the squares from all that scrap denim, jean quilts are super fast to make.  Being heavy with all that denim, I don't put batting in them, so once the squares are cut and sewn into rows all I have to do is sew on the flannel backing, tie every other square, and the quilt is finished.  If I have enough denim, it should be no problem to whip this one from start to finish in a month's sewing time.

But before I cut denim squares, I need to make some repairs on horse turnout sheets before the weather gets to be the cold & rainy type.  So far we've had rain on warm days and our chilly Fall-like days have been dry ones, but I know before very long I'll be wanting waterproof sheets to put on horses so they don't get chilled in the cold rainy weather Michigan can have when there's a hurricane working up the eastern seaboard in late September and October.

There has been no cross-stitching done since I finished the beading of the Celtic Santa, although I am contemplating doing some small designs on perforated paper that I could make into Christmas ornaments to give to each of the grandchildren in December.  I need to put a bit more thought into that and also look at what other projects (both crafting and outdoors/homesteading) are slated for the next several months to determine if that's a feasible thing for this season or not.  I don't want to take the time to stitch those and get some done unless I am able to get all six done, if you know what I mean.  It's an all-or-nothing task.  Not that Sixlet will know if he misses out this year, but Buck will.  And Faline most definitely will.  That girl is about the most detail oriented three year old I've ever known (except maybe myself but I don't remember things from when I was three.  Four years old, yes.  Three years old, no.)

August Frugal Accomplishments

 August didn't seem like an especially frugal month, as I ended up purchasing a bushel of cucumbers to make pickles out of since my cucumber crop (and most of my garden this year) was a bust.  However, when I looked at how much I spent ($56 in cucumbers, roughly $4 in dill and less than $6 in vinegar) to end up with 36 pints of dill pickles and 24 pints of hamburger dills compared to how much similar size jars of pickles at the grocery store cost, it was still a frugal win.  And it's nice to have all that down in the cellar instead of having to worry about running to the store when we are in need of pickles.

We did harvest a couple peppers and cherry tomatoes from the garden, and I got a tomato, a green pepper and two cucumbers for free from a local roadside free veggie stand someone puts their extra garden produce into for community members to take.

As always, we ate mostly from the freezers, pantry and cellar.

I gave DH a hair cut.

During a trip to Goodwill (in which I dropped off some items no longer needed at this little place here) I scored 4 mini casserole dishes for just $1.99 total.  I'm hoping to try making some personal size casseroles or deep-dish items in them this Fall.  My theory is that with four of them I can make a normal size recipe, divvy it up into four dishes for cooking, maybe have to slightly adjust the cooking time, and end up with a meal for me when I'm alone plus three more to go in the freezer for future use in DH's lunchbox on the days he has to go to work in person.

DD2 came over one day while the Olympics was still underway and enabled me to watch some of the streaming Olympic coverage (specifically the equestrian events) with her using her Peacock service via her laptop connected by an HDMI cable to my tv.  In exchange, I let her use my washer and dryer to do some laundry while we watched.

The city about 9 miles away had a series of free outdoor concerts once a week this summer, and DH and I attended two of them; a polka band and a folk/rock band.  Both were very good somewhat local bands, and the concert series is something we are going to try to remember to check into for next summer.

I bought from a friend a complete dressage bridle with bit and the exact style of leather reins I've been lusting after for years, plus an additional headstall and headstall/cavesson combo, all barely used, for about half the cost of the reins alone if purchased brand new by themselves.  I really don't need another dressage bridle but for that price with the reins I've been dreaming of. . .

I mended: 

• two pair of riding gloves, 
• a cornhole bag that a seam was coming loose on, 
• a sports bra the bottom of the zipper had come unstitched,
• two pair of DH's socks that had small holes in the toes, 
• a doll of Faline's (that had belonged to her mother) whose cloth body had given out at one side seam (did a 'skin graft' with a patch made of muslin) and the stitches holding one plastic leg to the body had broken (superglue to the rescue!), 
• and a favorite Minnie Mouse tutu of Faline's that the stitching on one tier of tulle had torn free.

DH bid on and won from a local online auction a wooden workbench/cabinet with drawers and a Formica top plus all the contents therein for $25.  It is definitely worth a whole lot more than that and it was fun to see what treasures it held--a drawer full of wrenches of all sizes including some homemade specialty ones that had been welded together, a drawer full of snap-ring pliers and other pliers, sockets the size for working on tractors and large equipment (which he doesn't own and had been sort of making do without), a 6-ton bottle jack and a bunch of tools I don't remember off hand.  There is also a small sink in the top which can be covered over with a matching piece of the Formica, the whole thing is on casters for easy moving.  Plus in one drawer he found an interesting vintage wooden item that I identified from the far reaches of my childhood memories to be a pipe stand (my paternal grandpa was a pipe smoker when I was very very young).   Doing some googling told us the pipe stand could probably be resold (after a cleaning and some polishing of the wood) for at least what DH spent on the entire workbench.

As part of an ongoing project related to the building of DH's shop in 2022 and getting our barn finished off for horses in 2023/2024, we worked on prepping to extend our driveway to go past the horse barn and reach DH's shop so that both building are easily accessible by vehicle all year long.  This included extending the culvert that runs under our existing driveway.  Rather than hire that work out, we decided to DIY-it.  The existing culvert had been damaged on both ends over the 22 years since the driveway was built, and in the process of digging it up to a good point we could attach the new extension to we found it also had been squashed in the center section (probably the weight of cement trucks turning off to deliver to the barn and shop. . . ).  So we just replaced the entire culvert while we were at it.

Burying the newly lengthened culvert required dirt to be brought in, and we were able to 'reallocate' quite a bit of the needed dirt just by taking the topsoil off the route of the new driveway to the barn and shop.  There's still some more fill needed, and we'll more than likely grab that from the area I've been referring to as the outdoor riding arena since the topsoil needs to come off that too before bringing in the sand footing for there.

All in all, I guess August wasn't without some frugal wins.

Knitting Update, September

 I finished my Churfirsten socks!  They were finished before the end of August, and I remembered to take photos for posterity!  The first photo shows the pattern really well, but isn't very true to color.  The second photo has the color pretty much spot on.

Right after grafting the toe on the second sock, I went to my yarn stash and dug out the tote with the instructions and yarn for making Sixlet's Christmas stocking.  It's so nice that I've made this pattern four times all ready; all I need to do is to chart out the stitches for Sixlet's name and just follow my notes from making his parents' and siblings' matching stockings and it will come together easily.

Hoping that I can get this all knit up before Thanksgiving.  Barring any unforeseen time-consuming things happening between now and then, it shouldn't take more than two months of evenings to make.  I've all ready cast on and worked through the cuff portion and the first six rows of colorwork.  I forgot how much I like doing colorwork (although I'm out of practice keeping all the yarns from twisting together just in the course of knitting one row).  Perhaps next year I'll finally knit the sock pattern with tons of colorwork that I've been meaning to knit for about 10 years now. . . 

I don't feel like I've done much reading since the last yarn along, but I guess I've done enough to get through three books:

You Only Die Once by Jodi Wellman, is kind of an inspirational read, I guess.  It's meant to get you thinking about the things you want to do/see/be in the however many years of life you have left no matter what your age.  Judging from the number of notebook pages I filled while doing the exercises in this book, I definitely did some thinking as I read (mostly confirming thoughts I'd all ready had swirling in my mind for years).

The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason is another great Inspector Erlendur mystery.  I found it completely engrossing and had a hard time putting it down.  In addition to the great story-telling and keep-you-guessing mystery portion, there's a quite interesting bit of Cold War era socialist/communist theory and practice in the storyline that I think Americans could take heed (warning) of today.

The Museum of Lost Quilts by Jennifer Chiaverini is the latest installment of her Elm Creek Quilts series.  Long time readers of her quilt series books will recognize several parts of the story.  While they are woven together in an interesting way, I did find reading some of it a little redundant.  If you can't remember storylines of books you read years ago, this probably won't be an issue for you.  I just tend to have the kind of mind that hangs on to stuff and dredges it up from the far recesses if I try to read the same book, or watch the same tv show or movie more than once. (That tends to drive my husband up the wall as he'll be channel surfing on tv and land on a show for about a minute and a half before I'll say "seen it" and request a change of station.)

Lilacs in August?!?

 In early August, the leaves on my lilac bushes started to turn brown and curl up.  By the middle of August, they had all fallen off.  Then, a week or so later, I noticed little green buds forming on the tips of the branches.

And this past week, the lilacs began to bloom!

Never in my 52 years of life have I seen lilacs bloom in August.  They always bloom in May.  Then they are done for the year. But, there they were, right in front of me, indisputably flowers on my lilac bushes.

Apparently, it is possible for lilacs to bloom more than once in a year.  If they lose their leaves due to extreme stress (typically drought, bugs or disease), and they can and do rebloom.  We definitely have not had a drought this summer; this has been a crazy good season for regular and abundant rain.  Must have been either bugs I didn't see, or an airborne virus.

Huh.  Learn something new everyday.  And to be walking around in August heat and humidity while smelling the lovely unmistakably Spring scent of lilacs is quite a strange experience.

Horse Update, August

As in July's update, K3 has been coming once a week to 'help' me with training the LBM.  This is good for the Little Black Mare, as it reminds her that she has to listen to humans of any size, not just adults and not just me (as a rather strict human when it comes to minding personal space or who's the boss in the horse-human relationship).

It is also good for K3 as it gives her something she can be responsible for (keeping her 'job' schedule of working the horse once a week), something of her own interest to learn and work at, and it gets her into the mentally calming atmosphere of being around a horse.

Each week, when it's her day, K3 and I talk about our game plan for that training session.  And then I put her in charge as much as possible.  She has to get the horse.  She has to groom the horse.  I do the saddling as she's not strong enough and the saddle is too heavy for her to lift over the LBM's back and set down nicely.  The LBM came to this little place here being rather nervous about the whole saddling thing and it took months for her to learn to stand still, that I wasn't going to fling this saddle at her and whack her in the back and sides with it's parts and pieces.  So, for now, I do the placing of the saddle and K3 does the girthing.  We are working on K3 getting coordinated enough to do the bridling.  That's coming along, but I still stand behind K3 and help hold the LBM's head still and in the right position while K3 fumbles with holding the bit in one hand and the crownpiece in the other and keeping everything from twisting.

Once the LBM is saddled and bridled, the three of us walk out to the 'arena' that is behind the barn (so there's a fenced in area in case of mishaps and a loose horse) and K3 does the longeing.  This is something she has been learning, and, while I typically still stand behind her and man the whip as needed (which entails just raising it as needed as encouragement to move out on the line or to change speed--or keep moving when the horse gets lazy and slows--not cracking it or touching the LBM with it), K3 makes the decisions on how long to walk, when to begin trotting, when there's been enough trotting, when to halt and change directions.

Then it's time for K3 to get on.  We are still having her begin each ride on the longe line.  That is when we do a quick recheck that the LBM is listening to K3's aids for walking, halting and trotting.  It's also when K3 rides in trot, as she is still learning her seat and trying to stay balanced at that bouncy gait. I don't want her using her reins for balance (and inadvertently banging the horse's mouth), so rather than have her try to trot and keep her balance and steer right now, we're sticking with being on the longe where she just needs to think about balance and going into and out of the trot.  We'll tackle steering--ie going solo--at the trot when she's developed her seat a bit more.

Depending on how much trot we work on and how tired K3 is from that, we either end the session there, or I remove the longe line and K3 rides solo at the walk for a bit.

Solo walk work involves a lot of turning, halting, and going over a single ground pole.  Both to make sure the LBM is listening to her rider (vs just following me around) and to give K3 practice at these skills (and being the boss of the pair, not just a passenger).

On the days when K3 isn't the rider, I work with the LBM on developing more balance at the trot and canter as well as riding through visually confined spaces in a relaxed manner.  She was doing awesome riding out and around the property until about mid-July when the corn in the fields got tall enough to not be able to see over.  And thick enough that you can't see through it.  And the leaves long enough that they wave in any sort of wind.  Scary stuff for a prey animal like a horse.  And we're practically surrounded by corn this summer, including in our own 15ish acres that we lease out to a crop farmer. 

So I had to take a step back from riding her anywhere and everywhere and concentrate on getting her to be calm while working our way closer and closer to the monster-hiding corn. Which meant sticking to super familiar areas with great visual distance for a few weeks as well as keeping a fence between us and the corn.  This week we finally rode between the fence and the corn for a short distance at the end of a training session, then turned and went back to the barn before she had the chance to get anxious about what might be lurking inside the wavy seven foot tall green wall.

Poetess just had her very own long post, which pretty much brought you up to date with how she's doing.  I will add that this morning I rode her for the first time without anyone else being on the property.  DH had to go in to work in person today, and I really didn't want to lose out on a training session with the Poetess in his absence, so I figured I'd work her like I normally do and see what happens.  She was very good and it was no big deal.  In retrospect she had no idea if he was home or not, so his absence only matters to me (as a safety measure in case the horse manure hits the fan--causing me to hit the ground--which so far she's shown no inclination to initiate.)

Barn-wise, there hasn't been any new construction done.  I've disappointingly had to replace dozens of the T-post insulator caps in the past three weeks.  I will have to get in contact with where I purchased them from last fall, as they are supposed to have a 5 year warranty and we haven't even gotten through twelve months of use yet.  It's not the horses pushing on the fence that's breaking them where the fence tape runs through them, either, as it's always in the mornings that I find the top 'rail' of the fence sagging with another broken insulator and the horses are always in the barn overnight.  If anything is putting excessive force on the insulators, must be deer hitting them.  Which, if they are designed for a horse to push on/bounce off of the fence without breaking, a little 100-some pound deer shouldn't be beyond the integrity of the caps.