watching the grass grow

I think that's what we're all doing on November Hill these days. The horses and donkeys are all still eating their hay, but often enough I find them investigating green stuff coming up in various places. Yesterday I found numerous piles of manure in the paddock by the gate to the front field, which is off limits until June. A clue that I need to reinforce the gate in case certain ponies decide to shove through.

It's amazing how quickly the fields are greening up. The combination of regular rain and sunshine these past weeks is obviously a potent one for pasture.

Yesterday was like a domino run of little episodes that made the day seem like a game.

I was in the barn doing chores when I heard a tapping sound from inside the feed room. I thought it was my daughter, who is fond of sneaking up on me and making little noises. At some point it went on too long to be her, and I went to check it out. A small bird was building a nest inside my riding helmet!

In the afternoon Rafer Johnson joined my daughter in the arena for her second ride of the day, and he found the dressage whip lying on the ground. My daughter called out to me that he was using the whip to draw in the arena footing. Now we have a budding equine artist on our hands!

Overall, a fun day with the animals.

They're all in good spirits, and doing lots of marching about the back field. I've got the arena gates open on both sides so they can have a complete circular route, which gives them a bit more marching room with the front field off the rotation. It also makes riding time more interesting, with lots of possibilities for adding to the arena work.

Tomorrow we're getting a load of screenings so I can resurface Cody's stall. Once I get his finished, we'll open it up and then close down Keil Bay's stall so we can work on it. Stripping the stall, closing it off to the horses, and giving it chance to air out, dry out, and me the chance to get in and do some deeper wall cleaning, is a big chore but very satisfying.

And discovering a very local quarry with amazing prices ensures that I will be working on a number of barn projects I had put off  thinking a big load would be both unwieldy and expensive.

an alchemical weekend

My husband and I spent most of yesterday and on through the evening at Gerry's memorial service and a smaller celebration of his life afterward. I don't think I've ever attended such a moving memorial - the service was standing room only, with probably a thousand people in attendance. The smaller celebration (which in my mind was going to be more intimate) had around 200 people. 

Gerry's family were amazing people, who all spoke beautifully at the service and then stood for nearly two hours receiving all the friends who had come to honor him. It was easy to see where Gerry got his gift of friendship - his parents, brothers, and extended family were gracious and made each person feel honored to be there. Gerry's wife Mandy was a pillar of strength who did the same thing.

And the celebration afterward had music, beer, barbecue, a revolving slide show of photos, mementos everywhere, a wall to write on, a room for friends to tell stories on videotape, and an amazing group of people all completely open to talking about Gerry, about how his death has moved them, and about how they intend to move on with their lives.

It was about Gerry - and yet it was also about every single one of his friends and family. I don't think anyone could have made that happen had they tried - Gerry's gift in life is also his gift in death. Nothing was ever only about him - he engaged with everyone he met on a deep and genuine level, and that was what the celebration was all about.

Last night I dreamed all night long, dreams full of people and conversation and situations. Each time I woke up (I think I woke up twice during the night and many times this morning) I fell back asleep only to dream again, and again. I think my brain was trying to process all the energy from yesterday, clearing it out of my head.

Today was different and yet the perfect partner to yesterday.

We cleared beds, we burned cuttings and yard debris. We stripped a stall and removed mats and cleared the surface beneath. The day rolled on with work and a few breaks and tonight I think I will sleep soundly. I'm exhausted. But in a good way.

There was something about yesterday that felt like the alchemical process: transforming tragedy into gold. As today's burning and clearing has felt like a process of purification, cleansing, and readying for spring. It's almost too big to write about - one of those passages of time that is so full, you can only live through it, absorb every bit of it you can absorb, and trust that the experience will ripple out through the rest of your life, something important and relevant and sacred.

Thanks, Gerry, for leaving us with so much.

gray afternoon thinking of novels in progress and songs that tell stories

taking measure

It's time to get out my measuring tape and open up the Excel program to get new weights on the equines - my plan last March was to do this monthly but I didn't. I calculated weights last March and I did it prior to deworming, and that's it!

The hay analysis for the interim hay came in via email yesterday afternoon, so before I start doing the math, I want to make sure the weights are current and as accurate as can be.

The good news is that after studying and doing the math twice before, with this report I can scan the raw numbers and make some sense of them. This hay won't be hard to balance, and while the iron is a little higher than our local hay, it's still low, as are the sugars/carbs. Great for easy keepers.

The less good news is that I've decided to stop feeding beet pulp, which is going to shift my calcium : phosphorus ratio and especially with Salina's complete senior diet, I've got some substituting to do.

I may plug it back in if balancing w/o it is too difficult, but over the past six months I've seen the quality of the beet pulp decline considerably, and was getting more and more disgusted with the rinse water coming off the beet pulp as well as with the way the actual pulp looked upon close inspection. The smell changed too, and although the horses didn't stop eating it, I felt I was putting something less than healthy into their feed tubs every day. For now, I've subbed in Ontario Dehy's Timothy Balance cubes, which I've been using for the pony and donkeys. The cubes have some beet pulp in them, so I'm not getting away from it completely, but it's a start.

Just about the time I get over doing the math for this hay, it will be time to do it again for the local spring cutting!  But my hope is that each time I go through this process, it gets a bit easier, a bit more intuitive, and at some point it will be No Big Deal to do the math.

There's actually a spreadsheet on my desktop that runs all this for me - but it is in itself overwhelming and does nothing to help me understand how to get from the raw numbers to final results. I've been playing with the spreadsheet a little but am not relying on it or using the numbers it pops up as I type in the values.

On other notes, there is a growing glimmer of green in the front field, which will increase over the weekend as we get sun after a day of rain.

And daylight savings time happens this weekend, which means more daylight after husband gets home from work, which means more time for outside chores that need both the husband and the light of day!

impromptu riding lesson

Yesterday afternoon I was at the barn and had encouraged my daughter to get her rides in before the rain came. It was one of those unusual days where we were getting little bits of rain, then sun, then clouds, then sprinkles, etc. 

I was so busy in the barn I didn't notice that she'd come outside, and only realized it when I noticed the pony's bridle was missing from the tack room. The next thing I knew he was in the barn aisle being groomed, and there was no sound, just a girl and her pony, going through a routine they've been through hundreds of times, needing no words to communicate.

They were there, and then they were in the arena. At some point I stopped what I was doing to watch. She was riding him bareback, as his pony saddle is now too small for her, and we keep changing our minds about what we want to replace it. We were initially thinking a dressage saddle, and now we're thinking a treeless Barefoot saddle, but whatever we do will require a fitting, and with everything going on we haven't gotten around to it.

Sometimes she uses her Little Joe bareback pad, but mostly she rides him bareback these days.

As I watched, she had finished warming him up and was moving into the working part of her ride. She's a very quiet, naturally balanced rider anyway, but yesterday afternoon her body seemed particularly still and only moved with the motion of his gaits. The picture of the two of them caused me to hold my breath.

She had the reins in one hand and her legs were perfectly still against his sides, but the pony was walking, trotting, cantering, circling, turning on invisible cues I could not see, even when I tried. The contact was there, but not through the reins or the bit. This was a pony anyone would say was "on the aids" - perfectly so - and yet the aids were not visible to my eye.

She often carries a dressage whip when she rides him, which she uses to do a "tap, tap" cue if needed, but yesterday she didn't even have that. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a beautiful, quiet, harmonious ride, and I couldn't take my eyes away because I wanted to learn from what I was seeing.

I've figured out that the mark of a wonderful horse and rider team, for me, is when the ride seems to approach the sacred. To speak would be an unforgivable interruption, and the only appropriate response is to watch, silently, and hope I absorb some of that magic.