Tomorrow, Belle goes to a new home. A riding home, down south where no doubt she will be loved and adored.
I’m a little sad.
I would have liked to rehome Emma and see how Belle went after a week or so alone. My guess is she would have been sweet as pie and rideable, but sometimes, the universe doesn’t work like that.
So after tomorrow morning, I will only have one horse.
It remains to be seen how Emma does alone. I suspect she’ll fret. A lot.
It was smokey last night. There is a bushfire about 35km away and the wind was blowing the smoke straight towards us. Rather unpleasant.
Unfortunately, as unpleasant as I found it, I had to spend a lot of time standing outside, talking to the mares, who could smell the smoke and had gotten stressed.
No chance of the fire making it towards us, but they didn’t know that.
Today it’s cleared a lot and it’s just mildly hazy. The temperatures have dropped too, along with the wind dying down.
This is what it looked like last night. That photo is straight-out-of-the-camera with nothing done to it except a resize.
This is what hay is really meant for, says Lucy.
Also – We added to our family today. Meet Susie, our new Springer Spaniel pup. Mum was springer spaniel x border collie and her dad was a purebred springer spaniel. Isn’t she gorgeous?
Yes, I’m trying to get back into the habit of posting here regularly again.
This makes me happy:
22 bales of Lucerne (alfalfa), stacked in my undercover area.
Also the sunrise this morning, after I’d resettled the baby. I snapped some photos and then, as the house was still silent, I went back to bed.
And the latest photos of the mares, who are looking sleek and happy:
Happy Australia Day everyone. It’s been a good good day. I’m still a little stunned, I awoke to an email from Heather Armstrong – Dooce – thanking me for letting her know about the newspaper article and congratulating me on also being included. Dooce, she of the 1.6 million followers on twitter! Emailed me! Sheesh.
I’ve been avoiding thinking about rehoming the mares. Too much trouble, emailing their previous owner made me panicky, it was easier just to leave them in the paddock and tend to their needs.
But.
There was an ad in the paper, from their previous owner. She was looking for homes for all of her horses, including my mares.
The universe has a way of working things out though, I was outside taking photographs this evening. I’d been out there for oh, about 2 minutes when one of the workers from the farm next door pulled up. I walked over and talked to him, originally to ask about buying some hay. He admired the mares and I mentioned I was trying to find new homes for them. We talked about horses for a while, turns out, he owns the stud just up the road from us. He has Thoroughbred mares and a Quarter Horse stallion and makes a bit of money off the foals. We finished up talking and he said he’d talk to the Farm Manager about the hay.
A few minutes later, there is a woman, on the other side of the fence admiring the mares. I wandered over and talked to her about the mares too. Turns out she is part of the stud too, and is very very interested in Belle. I gave her their registered names and she noticed the brand on Belle’s shoulder. Funnily enough, she has two mares already from the same trainer that trained Belle.
When she left, she was planning on going home to check out Belle’s bloodlines and she is very interested in giving her a new home. Of course, it’s all up to the guy I was speaking to first, but it looks like Belle may have a new home in the works as a Broodmare/Riding horse.
Emma, well, she wasn’t interested in Emma. Her words ’she’s a bit big and I am done with big horses.’ I don’t blame her, Emma can be rather intimidating. We’ll see how it plays out, she’ll be back later this week to let me know whether she wants Belle or not.
***
Hay news: Our grass has been slowly dwindling, to the point I’ve been getting a touch nervous looking at it, anxiously watching the mares to make sure they’re not dropping condition (they’re not, yet). I’ve been bothering my partner, trying to get him to sort out his father’s ute, so we could go and get some grass hay.
After today’s conversations with the stud owners though, the farm manager drove past as I was (still) outside. He pulled over, mentioned he was baling lucerne (alfalfa) tomorrow morning. I asked how much and he’s going to sell me the hay for $5 a bale. I’m thrilled to bits! Lucerne at the moment is selling for $10 a bale and $8 second cut.
It does help living right next door. On top of that, he is going to just throw me 20 bales over the fence for us, so we don’t have to worry about collecting them, or transporting them. A wheelbarrow and a 30m walk will be it.
I’m quite pleased. I said I wouldn’t be able to get to an ATM to get money out for a few days – no rush. He’ll catch up with me later this week when they harvest the poppies.
***
In completely unrelated news, my other blog, Sleepless Nights was mentioned in the Sunday Tasmanian, the newspaper read by more than half of our state. They also used my photograph and I got photographers credit.
I’ve had a good week.
Click on the photo to view it larger to read the article. You may have to click a second time to maximise the image once it appears.
I went to bed last night with both mares in the same (large) paddock. I woke up this morning, with Belle in the smaller paddock and Emma looking pissy.
The hot tape was still intact, the star pickets hadn’t been budged and Belle looked smug.
I suspect that my beautiful girl can jump. I mean, sure, the hot tape is at least 3ft off the ground, but she managed it. It’s the only explanation I can come up with.
Good thing the other side of the boundary fence doesn’t look as interesting.
New Years was fun. (Is there a sarcasm font invented yet? Someone should get on that)
Well actually, I’m exaggerating, it wasn’t that bad at all. I couldn’t find anywhere on the internet letting me know about planned fireworks displays and the pub up the road did fireworks last year so I was preparing for the worst. It was hot hot hot all day with a fireban in place until 9pm.
However, there weren’t any fireworks. Nil, nada. I was thrilled.
We did have a huge thunderstorm though. At one point, we had lightning surrounding us in all directions. I was thrilled. I like thunderstorms.
The mares got a little spooky, but they calmed down once they realised we were outside watching the storm with them. They must have picked up on our moods because they soon went back to grazing without twitching an eye at the thunder. So that was good. No injuries to report at all!
Oh and if you’re interested, I have a post up at one of my other blogs, talking about criticism in the blogosphere. Not the random drive by trollings, but people disagreeing with you in you comments and handling it.
