Unbridled Optimism

Been building this program a long time. Winter is normally our ugly season of mud and dull colors of gray and brown. Wendell's ideas on soil conservation have reduce the mud much more than 95%.

And that is just one example of why I feel better about our program going into the next year than I ever have.

And....I am not going to list all of the other reasons because if I start listing the wonderful things that program participants have done to make this place work I will miss someone.

And that in itself is a solid reason to feel optimistic. So many people have done so much with so very little.

One of the reasons that I look forward so much to the next year is that my daughter Ashley Edwards will be working hard to take the Road To Repair programs as far as they can go. It will be a lot of work on her part, but the changed lives will make every bit of it worth it.

And it won't be her only role at the horse lot. I have promoted her to the position of Minister of Goat Affairs. The new land gives us the opportunity to preserve historically appropriate strains of Colonial Spanish Goats. The goats, the Ossabow hogs, the settler's farm, the colonial chickens, and our hand made post and rail fence will all provide a picture frame, a setting both for education and promotion and preservation of the nearly extinct strains of pioneer horses of the southeast.

And we now need only to obtain historically appropriator cattle. I do hope that 2017 brings us either Arkansas Piney Woods Cattle or Cracker cattle.