Exile

I am far from home, attending a very useful and important training session for prosecutors. This is highly out of character for me. My white ancestors came to my part of Tidewater in 1674. We have been there ever since. I do not come from some rich, plantation owning Southern aristocratic family. It is just that we are not an adventurous lot. When the west was being settled by immigrants from all over the east my ancestors were right there--waiving goodbye to the soon to be frontiersman and then going back in to get supper and finish feeding up.

The genes that kept my ancestors in isle of Wight and Surry county seem to have thrived in my chromosomes. This trip will be the longest time that I have been away from my horses since the late nineties. This trip marks the first time in my life that I was going to be gone so long that I had to pack more than one bag of clothes. When I left the recent rains had brought green back to some of the pastures. I hope it will still be that way when I make it back home. I hope that the drought does not return in my absence.

This training session is well put together and very important, but I wonder if Sunka will still recognize me when I get home. I cannot help but wonder if I will have aged too much to mount a rough horse when I next see Persa.

Five days away from my horses! I will not get home until Friday night! Bet I will understand how Rip Van Winkle felt when he got home.

A Bafflement

The recent deluge has reminded me of the continuing need to protect the soil against erosion. Last year I stumbled upon a great ally in that fight--hay twine.

Left over hay twine can serve as more than simple pasture decoration. It can hold your pasture in place.

Large handfuls of hay twine radically reduce erosion and increase deposition of soil. When simply dropped into eroded soil cuts the twisted strands create a series of baffles that slow the water speed enough to cause grains of earth to sink to the bottom. I find it more effective than traditional forms of debris used to fight erosion such as broken brick and cinder block.

( No Swimmer had not thrown me in the picture above. I was simply taking a break and discussing a matter of mutual concern with her.)

Brave in a New World

Jessica has ridden before in a conventional riding lesson program. She knew a bit about horses but nothing in her background prepared her for her second ride with us. On her first session with us she rode Comet, and to my surprise, found him to be "slow." Yesterday was her first ride on a formerly wild horse. She rode Samson on an afternoon long ride with about a half dozen other riders.

On a whim we turned into a stretch of woods that I had not walked into for about 30 years. I thought that there was a trail through it but, if so, only a fragment of that trail still existed.

Ice storms over the past decade have killed many pines in my area. The woods floor is a maze of twenty foot tall trunks scattered like tooth picks. Green brier and fox grape vines lace among the standing trees. A week of torrential rain has softened the deep stump holes hidden on the forest floor.

Of course, none of our horses panicked or showed the least bit of concern. The Corollas seemed to feel at home in the tangles and mire. Jessica did not let fear get in the way of solid horsemanship. She and Samson came through it all with only a few scrapes and scratches. Samson is a first rate horse and Jessica is going to be a first rate rider.

Speaking of New Worlds, the horse in the picture above lives (and works) in the Dominican Republic, which was the site of many of the earliest horse breeding operations in the New World. That is a riding saddle on his back, not a pack saddle. A lot of Dominican country people ride on these homemade saddles which are essentially a huge set of saddle bags.

Good Moooooooorning Vietnam!

My blog now has some statistical analysis to which I have access. Of course, I still have utterly no understanding of either the technology behind such things or of the lingo used by cool young people to discuss computer issues. The possibility has been raised to me that my numbers may be a bit inflated because of bots. This greatly concerns me because I have always had great success treating bots with a tube of Ivermectin just after the first frost.

Unfortunately, I can not find the correct hole in this computer to insert the Ivermectin. I fear another calamity as serious as my first efforts at cutting and pasting.( Luckily the white Elmer's Glue washed off of the screen without too much of a problem).

But, as they say, I digress. The statistics are interesting particularly in regard to how many readers there are from other nations.

But with all good there comes concerns of problems. I do not know why, but it appears that I am loosing my base in Estonia. (Hope that it wasn't something that I said.)

Happy Birth Day

For her third birthday yesterday my granddaughter had her first ride in the woods in which her horse was not ponied by anyone. When we reached the woods Emily dismounted and tied the buck rein into a riding rein and we set out. I was on Croatoan, Ruth Ann was on her newly acquired horse, Medicine Dog, Emily on Joseph, Lydia on her great little horse, Owl Prophet, and the baby was riding Wind in His Hair.

She gave a happy little laugh each time Wind trotted. As we exited the woods we were met by Rebecca and Liam. I hopped off of Croataon and Rebecca mounted up with Liam whose third birthday will be coming up soon.

Wild horses, some of my closest friends, Liam showing his ever present smile that even got bigger as he rode Croatoan around the cotton field,Ruth Ann beaming aboard her first horse, actual rain to sooth our parched soil, and the baby trotting on Wind in his Hair.

There are many ways to spend one's morning worse than this.