We are alive. Our program still exists. Prudent use of funds and the dedication of program participants and volunteers, along with some very important and generous contributions, are keeping us above water.
In fact, in some ways we have grown. We have expanded our heritage sheep herd to include two more Hog Island sheep. Mandy did the leg work to arrange for the purchase from Mount Vernon. Now we have to shear them and market the wool. Shearing while maintaining social distancing is not without its complexities.
Thanks to the Teller family, especially Ella, we have two Buff Orpington ducks in one of the pasture ponds
Bella Note, who may be the highest percentage Grand Canyon mare left (readers, let me know if I am wrong abut this!) will be joining our program and Tam will do great things with her. They are going to make a wonderful team. She will arrive around the first of May.
Riding lessons have been cancelled for quite a while now. I hope to resume a regular lesson schedule in June with emphasis on extreme social distancing. That is hard with very little kids but if parents are diligent in helping out we can make it work.
In late summer we will have several foals born from the beautiful Choctaw stallion, Big Muddy, and we will have a Corolla foal born to Baton Rouge. Great work is being done on building a shaded seating area around our central round pen. It will be stunningly beautiful when all of the vines grow in to cover it.
We are getting a lot of great horse training done. Matoaka, a Corolla mare and one of the last wild foals from my Red Feather has taken to the woods wonderfully. Audrey has put a lot of miles on her. The girls are working to get our big Marsh Tacky mare, Taney Town, ready for me to ride. Curie has done a great job with Match Coor, a pure Banker stallion with a wild mother from Shackleford and a wild father from Corolla. Michelle and Peter have trained Rosie to the point that she is beginning to be ridden in the woods. Jenner has built a tremendous relationship with Sean and Jerry, two donkeys that he and his mother, Brooke, now have under saddle. Jackie has gotten the colonial garden planted. Lilly is about ready to have her first ride in the woods.
Ann Bonny might have a little Highland calf out there one morning soon.
The time has not been without its disappointments. We are having the coldest, wettest spring that I remember. A grant from the Livestock Conservancy allowed us to divide the New Land into five paddocks, but grass is weeks behind schedule due to the weather. I reached the point of being worn out clearing the about 15 acres of Jacob's Woods way too soon. If I had spent about six more weeks cutting down trees instead of riding that silvopasture project would have advanced much further. We received a grant from Walmart that will help by allowing for the purchase of treated fence posts to replace the temporary posts that I made from the trunks of many of the trees that we cut down.
The courts in Virginia have been shut down for all but some cases that could not be continued and arraignments and bond hearings. Crime has not been suspended. New cases are steadily coming in to prosecute but our normal routine of trying cases has been derailed. That creates a constant level of tension that remains whether one is awake, asleep, eating, riding, or watching TV. The virus itself creates a constant level of tension. Little noises seem like much bigger bangs, and even small bangs seem like earth shattering explosions.
Hard to remember that there used to be a time that I enjoyed turning the computer on. Now it serves mainly as a conduit for crisis advisement. Seems that many more people are having difficult times than I have ever encountered.
Our program is being negatively impacted by my inability to manage everything out there, (and in the remainder of my life), the way that I had before this world wide crisis hit. While I have many things that I am keeping together very well at the horse lot, I have other things that I have abandoned. I simply find myself unable to do grant proposals or work on long term ideas for the program. I was taking a Master Naturalist course in order to better run our environmental education programs. Those classes are suspended and at the moment I cannot find the intellectual energy to catch up with them on line. I hope that I do so. I was learning a lot in those classes. My biggest failure remains in my inability to help program participants understand how important it is to keep pastures from being over grazed and to develop the pastures into stronger living environments both above and below ground. Some program members have taken on the important job of clearing brush from the New Land with pure zeal. What Matt has done out there is incredible.
Yesterday we created four new vericompost sites and began making about 200 gallons of liquid microbial fertilizer. It was a great opportunity to introduce new families into microbial farming and permaculture concepts.
It was actually fun. Not fun, but. Not fun, if only.
Just pure, raw fun.
Seems like forever since the horse lot was a place of just pure, raw fun, but it will be fun again.
Blaze Foley captured where we are in in the third verse of, If I Could Only Fly :
"The wind keeps blowing, somewhere, everyday
Tell me things get better, somewhere, up the way
Just dismal thinking on a dismal day
And sad songs for us to bear"
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