Busy day

Have had a very productive day here so far. Ben shifted more hay from last season's crop down to the old shearing shed, we've got about 70 bales down there now for our cattle next winter and still some up in the big shed, which would be good to sell but will see how that goes. We have told the contractor we want the hay cut in the first week of January - we got mucked around a bit last season so have said that's our deadline, if you can't do it (aside from weather) we'll get someone else! We put fertiliser down at the beginning of November so we should get more than last season's 800 bales.

Today we also fixed up the main doors on the big shed - one had been hanging off it's hinges for a while and was being propped up which was a huge pain to open and shut. So that's all sorted.

And also the other small door into my feed room, which came off it's hinges over the winter I think it was.

A cow got in there last week:


So good to get the door back on!!

We just need to sort out the door going from the sunroom to the patio now, have measured it up so hopefully will find something on Trademe soon that fits.

Yesterday we did a bit of work in the garden - which is not doing that well this year. The peas - well I don't really know what happened to the peas but they didn't really grow :-( The tomatoes are also going very slowly but have started to fruit so that's something.


My garlic is about ready to pick soon - first time I've ever grown garlic so hopefully it has worked ok.


And we've also got some broccoli planted, slightly overdue! They were in the seedling trays so long one started to grow a head of broccoli. Oops.


Oscar has been going well, although had a wee bit of a break from jumping as he got a bit sore in his front legs - the ground is pretty hard right now. We entered the Te Atatu ODE a few weeks ago but pulled out after the dressage. He did a nice wee test though. And best of all he was very grown up about being away from Bert - we even rode past Sarah and Bert with them going in the other direction and Oscar didn't even try and follow him. Very happy! He was great with all the goings on - the Te Atatu ODE is reasonably big, must have been about 80-90 horses entered and there were the usual PC kids galloping around flat stick (one of which almost got booted by Oscar who took exception to how close they came!). On the whole he was very relaxed about it all which was fantastic.

Looking very cute tied up at the truck

And doing his Spanish horse impression

He just wasn't jumping like normal in our warm up and was putting in little stops and cat leaps and I ended up coming off. It just didn't feel right (or safe) and sure enough he was sore.


Gave him 2.5 weeks off and the next ride was great - he was quite forward (for him!!) which was really nice. I am going to send him off to Lisa Coupe for a bit of schooling in the new year, am really looking forward to that. He still is quite green with some things and I think it'll be easier/better for him in the long run to get stuff sorted out properly early on. Mostly canter work, he is not very balanced and still has trouble with left canter although not as much, but still finds it hard to bend. He felt stiffer than usual on the last ride but then he had done bugger all before that so fair enough!

I had been riding Em a bit while Oscar was off, and we even entered the WRC Showmanship day that involved some jumping, was hilarious.

The next thing planned for Oscar is the WRC mini ODE at the end of January, should be a fun day!