Back in the saddle again

Been a wee while between posts... Partly due to me being a lazy bum and also partly due to me having swine flu. Well at least the doc thinks it was swine flu. I felt awful - 4.5 days in bed, sleeping 18 hours a day for the first few days, it was hideous. Am still really tired and get puffed out quite quickly which is yuck.

However have managed to ride Oscar twice now since the flu hit me and he has been a doll. Almost toooo cruisy!! Had to remind him to wake up a bit the other day, with a wee tap from the schooling whip. Decided I was working way too hard and wasn't going to last much longer and it was time he took some responsibility.

Ellie and I bought some poles each - so I now have 4 new poles in the paddock ready to work on our jumping with. Ellie splashed out and got ten for her paddock which we have already test-ridden. We've been working on some jumping exercises in a book I got - the exercises look deceptively simple but are way trickier than they look. Highlights that we have a complete lack of bend on the right rein. Which I kind of knew anyway but hopefully these exercises will remedy that.

I've entered us for our first event for the season - a dressage day with the Waitemata Riding Club on Sept 12th. Hoping he will be more settled at Woodhill Sands this time, the other two times we've been there he was really tense and it wasn't much fun to ride. Third time lucky?

Ben has been busy on the farm chopping gorse and making a track that we'll be able to ride through in the far paddock that is mostly bush. Haven't seen it properly yet - I can walk down there but I don't reckon I'd have enough puff to get back up the hill just yet!!

And we sold six of the heifers we bought in autumn last year, plus two more and on the list for homekill, so all eight will be gone shortly. Then just have the 22 left and we'll sell five of those by the end of the year hopefully. And then get some replacements next autumn. That's the plan anyway!

We're also going to fert the hay paddock in a few weeks, hopefully will bring a bumper hay crop. And depending on how money goes will also fert the house paddock and maybe the two main paddocks I use for the horses, just with some lime.

Not many exciting pics lately, but here are a couple of the cows mowing our lawns for us

And Oscar all ready for some work (and looking half asleep...)

Lunging Oscar

Oscar is pretty much turned out for winter now, but I'm still working him a wee bit on the ground. Hopefully by the time winter is done he'll have the lunging thing 100% sussed. He's pretty good now although after a while he will attempt to bog off over towards the gate in the direction of the others (who don't give two hoots about what he's doing). So I just need to be a bit quick watching him and catching it before it happens. He is not exactly very clever or quick about trying to take off, but seems to know when I'm not paying attention!!

The chooks helped this morning which was actually kind of useful as it got him working in a nicer frame :-)

He was also doing some great lengthening in his trot after about 15 mins. He is still happier on the left rein than the right so I need to make sure I work him evenly and hopefully we'll get more even muscle development than he has now. Been trying to work him over poles but the little bugger is very good and avoiding them.

Not a lot else going on at this time of year, it's not too muddy so far. Had a decent amount of rain in the past week but yesterday and today have been pretty dry and warmer so hopefully the grass might grow a wee bit.

About to plant my first lot of garlic, ever! After meaning to do it for years I am going to plant some this weekend. Fingers crossed it actually grows... not sure how easy or hard it is to grow?

Remodelling time

I have horse pens! Well... almost.... The fencing contractor finally turned up to pull out the posts and ram them into their new homes (about 6 months after we had things ready to go), to get things set up for two horse pens and also to make the yard paddock bigger. We basically swung the yard fence out to the left, to join up with the big shed. This view is looking towards the house, you can see where the old fence line was, pretty much where the tyre and black feed bucket are in behind the cavaletti that Oscar was leaping over yesterday (jumping them like it was a 1m oxer with a 90cm spread - drama queen).

This view is looking almost straight down the old fence line, from the pens.


Choc here is modelling one of the pens. The three posts closest together will make the two entrance ways, and I'll put rails up to the left and right of each entrance. Where you can just see the blue baling twine on the left post is where the side of the pen Choc is in will be.They are 3.5m x 4m so are a good size. Will probably put rubber down (like the rubber in arena surfaces) to stop them become a quagmire in winter.


And Dee, looking fat and modelling her mud coat. She is all but sold to a client of mine who lives up north. She's going off to be a hack and broodie. She will LOVE having babies again I think.

We also put the heifers (and Harry) around the house for the day, to try and mow the lawns a bit. Last time I put Oscar and Bert around they didn't really make a dent in the grass, so hopefully the cows will do a better job than the horses did. So far they are chowing down quite happily.

This is Harry on the left, who has gone from being brown and white to black and white, and huuuge! He is 9 months old here and the other heifers are about 14-15 months old. The chicken is kind of wondering what is going on...


And in other news this week, the Hilux has gone :-( I sold the tyres separately to get new ones for the Bighorn and then sold the rest of the Hilux to a guy in Morrinsville who is going to fix it up. Took him a wee bit to get it on his trailer but it's all gone now and all that's left are the stumps it was sitting on. Bit sad really!

Brrrrr!

For the second morning in a row we've woken up to frost on the hay paddock - never had it frosty before and it makes me extra happy we decided not to fertilise last week!! It is usually a warm-ish paddock but this morning especially looks rather white. Took some pics:



It's so cold, Sunny had to find a warmer spot to snooze...


Sheryl has managed to remove her stitches so had another vet visit on Tuesday morning and came home sporting a head collar. Not very impressed! She has been giving us sad and miserable looks (talk about guilt tripping) but it's only for five days all up. Her tummy is looking a bit bruised still and there is a bit of exudate but it's not too bad.

Grown up time for Sheryl

Sheryl was speyed today, after being a bit of a hussy for the past week we thought it was getting a bit late. Meant to have her done a few weeks ago but just didn't get round to organising it. So today was the day and she is now back home, and already has jumped on the kitchen bench!! She's a bit out of sorts, fair enough! The test will be if her appetite is still as voracious as ever - the way she eats anyone would think she'd been fasting for days.

Here is the video Ben did of her and Sunny, it's very cool!

Here comes the mud...

Albeit a bit earlier than expected, we have mud. Not too bad just yet but enough for two certain uncovered horses to have a good time rolling in it. Some pics of Choc and Dee from this morning during their mid-morning nap time:

Two fat muddy ponies

About to roll....


Rollin, rollin, rollin

Bit of a sad day yesterday, Em and Bert left for new grazing, so wee Oscar spent most of the afternoon screaming and had a bit of exercise running around. Managed to placate him with food, funnily enough... he's happier today and now that Choc and Dee are in the next paddock as opposed to having an empty paddock between the three of them he is more relaxed. I'm doing his teeth tomorrow, along with Spyke's, so hope he behaves himself getting down to Ange's place (we're going to use her stables).

Tossing up whether or not to turn him out for winter - I have just clipped him and planned to keep him going over winter but have been so busy lately I'm just not sure about the reality of keeping him going. There is a series of Mini ODEs at Woodhill Sands that I was thinking of doing with him which is probably all we'd do over winter in terms of competing. Will see how the next two weeks go maybe.

Have a video of Sunny and Sheryl to post up here too but it's on the other computer. Very cute vid, Ben did it over a week or so, videoing them being cute and cuddly at home.

Have got our full complement of cattle now as well, 30 all up plus Harry (who is destined for the freezer in a year or so). Eight heifers who will be ready to go this Aug/Sept, 17 who will go Aug/Sep next year and five who'll hopefully be ready to go before Christmas. Should make a decent profit from that. Plus still got the hay to sell too. Meant to be fertilising the hay paddock this week but the rain has been a nuisance plus actually getting the contractor tied down to a date has been a bit tricky... he's also meant to be doing some pens and fencing work around the yards for us that has been dragging on for a while. Keen to get the pens sorted soon so I can put some kind of surface down before it gets tooooo muddy.

Test driving a new saddle

So it seems Oscar's saddle is no good for him now - seemed to be good when we first started out but now he needs a wider one and I can't get my current one repacked so I've had a CTD jumping saddle on trial for the past few days. The rain has held things up a bit, every chance I've had to ride lately, it's been raining. But not today! There was even some blue sky so we went down to the arena and had a play.

Very pleased with how he went, especially since I've hardly ridden him in almost 3 weeks and also he's not been ridden on his own at the arena for a good few months now. He was perfectly behaved and quite keen which was good.

So here's a wee video, shows some trot work, lengthening the trot which he does so easily, and our first real leg yield (albeit for only 2-3 strides, but still!) and popping over a couple of wee jumps at the end. Oh and some canter which just shows how much I flap my arms around when we canter, awful... arghh

Anyway upshot of it all is I think this saddle is pretty good for both of us really. Would like to have at least one more decent ride in it, weather permitting....

We have some new cattle as well, we had 5 weaners delivered yesterday and 17 last weekend, bringing our cattle herd to 30 all up. Eight will go in Aug/Sep, they are looking good right now, big beefy girls. The new lot are black and white faced heifers, plus a few murray grey heifers.