Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: "God Is God.....

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: "God Is God.....: and He ain't us". So writes Steve Earle and so should understand all who seek to preserve mustangs. The Spanish horse was an in...

Quick Tip # 41 Balance Your Strength By Strengthening Your Balance

Rebecca learned to become a good rider faster than any student I have ever had. Her success rested largely on her years as a gymnast. That experience gave her strength and balance.

An idea that I read in this month's Men's Health brought this idea along. Instead of merely lifting weights in a gym, use the bags of minerals or feed that you have access to to get stronger and gain balance. Carry the bag of feed on either shoulder and do deep knee bends. Cradle the bag like a baby and twist your truck as fast as you can. Run while holding the bag under one arm (short distances fifty yards, etc). Be creative.

As always ask your doctor before try any of this.

Many more novices fall from a horse than are thrown from a horse. Strength, balance, technique and confidence will prevent most of those falls.

This form of exercise builds strength and balance.

Wind Row Composting

I was so happy that it would have made me turn handsprings (if I had ever been able to do so). Pulled up to the horse lot last night, looked over to the sacrifice area where the round bales are to see that Dan had brought his tractor over and pushed the manure and wasted hay fragments into a long line of composting material. The line of compost is perhaps 70 yards long and creates a berm on  the lower side of the dry lot/sacrifice area. The berm will radically reduce runoff and will quickly break down into near powdery compost.

By pushing manure into such a line and keeping the height no more than knee high an enormous portion of the composting material is oxygenated. I hope to add substantial numbers of earth worms to the composting material to create an even more potent fertilizer.

However, one will only receive limited benefits regarding nitrogen supplementation using horse manure from horses that eat grass hay. Such a diet produces much less nitrogen that would be found in chicken manure, or even pig manure. Although nitrogen supplementation is limited, the organic material will build soil in every other way that compost benefits the earth.

We employ filter strips of living vegetation along the lowest side of the pastures. They are most effective in the summer.

It is a beautiful, living system that protects the water and replenishes the soil. When city people look at it all they see are weeds and stacks of what they call "poop." This is another way that our horse lots serve as classrooms.

The horse lot is an institution of learning. I want to keep it that way and build on it.

Those who do not know any better can look at its drab winter colors and muddy, shaggy ponies and only see something that they think needs to be polished. Those interested in reality instead of appearances see a place of healing and learning.

After all, there are hundreds of manicured parcels of acreage with perfectly uniform, monocultures of well trimmed grass found in every locality.

These beautiful places are known as cemeteries, but not a lot of teaching goes on in them.

I Despise Straight Lines

Any concern that the development of our non profit will hinder our programs or cause us to look like a more conventional operation are entirely misplaced. No one who knows me should have that concern.

I do not expect others to see things the way that I do. I do not mind that they do not. I do not expect others to share my views on ethics and morals. I do not mind if they do not understand those views. I only draw the line when I am urged to violate my own views of right and wrong.

In high school our history class went across the river to Williamsburg and we visited the restored Governor's Mansion. The weather was beautiful. We were outside in the gardens where trees had been manipulated into a maze and vines were cultivated so that they did not tangle. A tourist mentioned to her husband how beautiful and natural everything looked.

I did not say anything to her, but I was horrified at the comment. I could see nothing beautiful in the concept of buildings made with slave labor. Such mansions were often owned by men who molested their young slaves and then either sold the resulting off spring,--their own children,-- or kept them on the plantation site as slaves. In discussions with the other kids in the class I was viewed as sort of a spoil sport who would not go along with the idea of "this sure looks neat." Finally one girl said, "Well even if they are not beautiful, you have to admit that they appear beautiful."

That is not where my loathing of the idea of making things appear "nice" originated. I cannot really put my finger on a starting point but I recall hating wearing anything new to school when I was in the second grade. I could not be comfortable in new clothes when other kids my age (the farm workers' kids) were in rags. Probably goes further back then that.

As I got older the idea of submitting myself to the judgement of others to let them decide if my hair, my clothes,my accent, or my music was appropriate seemed patently absurd. I have never understood why anyone would do such a thing.

But on a deeper level "beautification" does not just make me feel selfish, it makes me feel dishonest. Appearances are masks. They hide the truth. Appearances lie.

I try very hard not to lie. A few years before Momma died she lost some of her teeth. It would have been easy enough to get false teeth. Though we never discussed it, I know that she simply thought it to be an improper waste of money that could be better used elsewhere. She expected to die in a few more years anyway and I don't think that she thought it right to use money for something that would only be around for such a short while.

She died without false teeth. She also died with a refrigerator and freezer on the front porch so people in the community that needed food could come by and pick up food to hold their family over until times got a little better.

I used to wear my dentures for jury trials--had to look good to impress the jurors with my appearance. The last time I started to put those things in my mouth it occurred to me that there was a reason that they are called "false" teeth. They lie to create the nice appearance of having teeth. I put them back on the counter.

I don't even know where they are now.

So no, I will not be doing things to make the horse lot appear beautiful. I am delighted with things that actually are beautiful. Near the tack shed I have the most beautiful Chicken Castle that I have ever seen. It's beauty is from the hours of work that Shannon put into designing it and the days that she and Michael put into building it and the many hours that Charlie and Ashley played in the mud and chased chickens while their parents and their big sister created such beauty.

In pasture #2 one can find the most beautiful smoke house that I have ever seen. The beauty came from the lumber that Daddy hauled out there, the plans Joseph made for it, the work that he did, and all of the work that the other families did in building it.

Jackie's painting in the little house walls and ceiling does not merely appear beautiful. The work is beautiful. The beauty is in the countless hours that she has put into the hard work of getting the ceilings right so they could be painted. The rooms are beautiful when she finishes them but there is even more beauty in seeing her repairing and painting them.

So if our non profit were magically offered a busload of money to pave the path and create brick walk ways all around the pastures and our very own show ring, I would very politely turn them down.

If another busload of money came to buy 1000 acres of swamp and cut over and fence to create a real refuge for the Corollas I would jump at it in a minute and go dig all the fence posts myself.

I do not judge others in accordance with the rules that I make for myself. There are over 7 billion people on this planet and I do not have time make rules for everyone. I do not ask others to agree with me or to approve of my point of view. I have no interest in ruling others. I only make rules for myself.

And I follow those rules.

Not All Change Is Bad, Although Nearly All Of It Is

I am in the process of donating the horse operation to our new nonprofit, Gwaltney Frontier Farm, Inc. Such legal paper work changes rightfully cause concern among people who care about our program. For the last twenty years big companies have been swallowing up smaller companies and nothing good has come of it except to line the pockets of a handful of rich people. With that as a back drop it is easy to understand why people that do not understand the need for the conversion to a nonprofit are concerned.

Do not worry. The integrity of our program will remain intact. We will continue to do what we do. We will not be taking any steps to attract Mrs. Drysdale to the horse lot. Ellie Mae and Jed will still be happy with us.

Compromise--one of the most significant and dangerous words in our language. Some compromise is necessary to get anything done yet every step of every compromise is a threat to one's integrity. It is a question that I have wrestled with since I was a little child. I realized early on that if I wore a coat simply because some adult thought that I should, whether I was cold or not, I was taking a huge leap into following the dictates of an irrational, absurd culture.

Not all slopes are slippery, but many are. Hubert Humphrey said that the problem with politics is that one had to constantly compromise on the small issues in order to eventually win issues that mattered. The catch, he said, was to always be able to recognize which issues were big and which were small.

Steve Earle gets a bit passionate when he speaks of Townes Van Zandt "shooting himself in the foot" every time he had a chance for real commercial success. He feels that Townes let people down by pursuing a course that did not get his music out in front of more people.

It is hard to argue with that point. But would it have been better to have become part of the glitzy nothingness of the Nashville sound than to simply be drunk (and ultimately dead)? I cannot say which choice I would have made with any degree of certainly. However, it is much easier for me to imagine being drunk and dead (though I do not drink at all) than to sing painfully frivolous songs whose meaningless lyrics would be adored by screaming fans with meaningless lives.

I have nearly nothing in common with the man that I understand Woody Guthrie to have been. However, given the choice of money and a degree of fame in exchange for having people tell me which songs I was allowed to perform, or walking away from it all; I suspect that I would have been on train getting out of New York as fast as he did.

I have never been under any illusion that I am always right, but I have clearly understood that I am always me.

If I take any step that causes the established horse world to feel better about mustangs then I would have let the horses down. If I take any step in my riding program to garner the approval of the established horse world then I would have let my riders down.

So those of you that are worried that changes will come about that will make us into anything more conventional than we are now. Stop worrying.

All of my life I have had no fear of being tested. That is because the only tests that I have ever cared about have been self graded.

(That is not a picture of Mrs. Drysdale riding Young Joseph.)