spirits and angels

Since today is Halloween, and in honor of the Celtic celebration of Samhain, I'm offering a true and mysterious tale of spirits and angels.

When I was a little girl, in the middle of the night of the first sleepover I remember having, my friend woke me up to ask why there was a man standing by my dresser. I looked around the room and saw nothing, but she insisted there had been a man standing there, and that he had been watching me while I slept.

This same friend reported this on more than one occasion during our childhoods.

When we were teenagers, years later, we were having a sleepover at another friend's house. There were 5 of us there, and we were in the kitchen, doing what adolescent girls love to do: listening to music, talking, and eating.

My aforementioned friend and I were sitting on one side of the kitchen table, our backs to the kitchen window. The other three friends were on the opposite side. They suddenly started screaming and ran out of the kitchen. My friend and I flew around the table and followed.

It turned out they had seen a man's face in the window. They each described the face in some detail. As they went through their individual descriptions, my other friend's face became more and more puzzled. "That's the same man I saw watching you those times," she said.

I've come to believe that this man is some sort of spirit being who, for whatever reason, has looked out for me my entire life.

I don't know who he is. My maternal grandfather died when I was young, and I do remember going to his funeral. But physically he doesn't resemble the descriptions of the man my friends described.

In any case, his presence has always been benign, and it's always been true that I have had an aura of safety that has carried me through some dicey situations.

I'd love to hear your stories if any of you want to share!

my new intention with reference to the novels

Ezra Pound said:

Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Now I know why it is taking me so long to get these novels right AND why writing novels is such a transformative, wonderful process. It's alchemy of a very special kind.

cast-away

When I left for my office late this afternoon, Rafer Johnson was in his cast. He'd spent the morning (he and Redford put themselves in Salina's paddock this a.m.) lying in the sunshine on top of Salina's pile of hay, while she tenderly plucked strands from beneath him and Redford stood guard behind him.

We allowed Salina to spend an hour with Rafer and Redford in the barnyard this afternoon, and Rafer took an afternoon nap once again with Salina standing guard on one side and little Redford on the other.

When I came home tonight, Rafer's cast was gone! And in its place he now has a spiffy little splint on his ankle, to give him support as he heals that hairline fracture.

We're charged with the mighty task of taking the splint off every 2 days, giving him 1 day without it, and then putting it back on. For a month!

I'm not real sure how putting the splint back on the donkey is going to work. But we'll figure that out in two days!

Redford is now braying loudly for Rafer whenever Rafer is out of his sight. My daughter said that Redford did caprioles today when she had to take him for a walk away from Rafer during the procedure. The Flying Donkey returned - but at least this time it was on the end of a lead rope and there were no walls involved!

hush for a while

We suddenly have COLD here. I was shivering in the barn before we came in for dinner last night, but realized later in the evening that the temperature was 34 degrees out and would surely drop lower. So around eleven, I suited up in my husband's LL Bean down coat and my black fleece hat and marched out to the barn to blanket the horses.

I always wonder if I should blanket at all. But given that they go in and out all night long, and since two are older, I do it. I'm using single weight sheets, so not piling on the layers, but still... do they really need it?

By the time I went out last night it had dropped to 32 degrees, and the forecast for early this morning was wind - and a high not cracking the 40's. I tossed my blanketing dilemma to the birds and they got their sheets on.

It was so quiet out, the way it gets when the cold comes. Quiet with horses snuffling and then the pure sound of a donkey braying in the night. Rafer Johnson and Redford got cookies and then my husband came out to help. I mucked and he blanketed and we gave extra hay. Rafer Johnson escaped the barn and headed directly for the round bale! He is walking well now, using his leg almost normally. The puffiness is almost gone.

I was glad my daughter and I had devoted the day to switching the donkeys across the barn to the center stall, nice and warm, and moved Salina over to the end stall beside them. The geldings have their three stalls back. And everyone can come in if they want, or take a walk if they want. Donkeys in the barn aisle for now, but eventually they'll get access to the grass paddock with Salina.

Those LL Bean coats are warm - my body was toasty but my fingers started tingling in the cold night air. And those few moments of cold quiet reminded me of a favorite Sam Keen passage:


The Word is still spoken in sparrowsong, windsigh, and leaffall. An electron is a single letter, an atom a complex word, a molecule a sentence, and an indigo bunting an entire epistle of the sacred. The ocean whispers its mystery within the chambered sea shell. Listen quietly to the longing in your heart for love and justice and you may hear an echo of the holy word that addresses you. Hush for a while. Be still and know.


-Sam Keen

For some reason the cold nights and early mornings of winter are times I hear this most succinctly.

feeding the "whole" herd

A few trims ago, our natural hoofcare trimmer recommended I head over to Pete Ramey's website to read THIS article, as he knows I'm constantly trying to learn more about feet and keeping them healthy.

As a result of reading the article, and then following up by talking to more folks who steep themselves in hoof/whole horse knowledge, I signed up for an online course in equine nutrition with Dr. Eleanor Kellon.

The course, NRC Plus, was already full, but she allowed me to audit the class beginning in November, and then I will be a full class member for credit in the February section. In effect, I'll get to go through the material twice, which sounds good to me!

Our trimmer, Pete Ramey, and Dr. Kellon all strongly recommend getting pasture and hay analyses done while taking the class, so that the numbers and percentages are actually relevant ones to your horses. THIS is a good place to get that done at a reasonable cost.

Pete recommends a few places to go to for custom supplementation (if needed) once you have all the data and want to add in only and exactly what your horses need based on the feed/hay/pasture analyses done in the class, and applied to the individual needs of your horses. I wasn't surprised to see Horsetech listed. Rod and his staff have been enormously helpful to me over the past year and a half, making custom blends for me based on the changing needs of my herd.

I'm very excited about Dr. Kellon's classes, and learning how to feed my horses with confidence based in knowledge.

Right now they are off all processed feeds, and looking wonderful on a combination of soaked beet pulp pellets and whole oats, with a good salt blend mixed in. I tried alfalfa pellets but they wouldn't touch them - and come to find out, that particular brand of pellets has "feed grade animal fat" added in for "palatability." I need to find some alfalfa pellets that are pure alfalfa next trip to the feed store.

Salina also gets rice bran, and the two big geldings get black oil sunflower seeds. They all rotate through several vit/min mixes during the course of the year. I've also started giving probiotics after deworming.

I think I'm doing a decent job but I'd like to get it better, using more real data. I've started to see how powerful it is to be able to customize the tubs for each of my horses, and I'm so excited I wanted to share the links in case any of you horse folk readers have interest.

It's my answer to the "ignorance is bliss" conundrum I posted about a few weeks ago. Hopefully Dr. Kellon can help me synthesize all this data into a good, organized plan.