Waiting for breakfast

Like clockwork – they are waiting at 8 am and 5 pm.

Christmas Day 2009

Its cold and the horses are fuzzy.

Winter in Montana

I always feel bad seeing the horses weathering these low temperatures and covered with snow, but have to remember they, at least Tosca and Carmen (Samson was comfortably ensconced in his Mama’s tummy) are from Northern Alberta and wintered out in the pasture with no man made shelters.

Here they are coming in for afternoon snacks covered with snow. Makes you feel cold just to look at them!

Now the garden is ready for spring

Of course we had lots of help, but the new fence will keep them all out until spring.

Veggie garden

Looking to the spring when we plan to plant a huge organic veggie garden, we had a friend come over with his tractor and tiller and dig up a large patch of the pasture. Of course the peanut gallery had to get involved until they realized this involved a huge green noisy giant, hehe….

Working on the land

We have gradually been working away to get the pasture cleared of the dreaded Russian olives and are making great progress. On November 5th (Guy Fawkes Day) for all you fellow English people, we had three great bonfires going, a bit hairy when the wind came up, but we’re really happy with how the pasture is looking.

Round Pen

Since we moved onto our property on September 5th and my birthday was September 8th, it seemed I had the perfect excuse to buy myself a birthday present. Which was of course 15 panels and a gate to make a 60′ round pen. Here it is set up in our paddock. Tomorrow I will start working with each of the horses, all of them need training, and this is a great way to start.

One of our priorities is to clear the pasture of the russian olive trees that have been allowed to run rampant over the last 15 years and have pretty much taken over the pasture. So today we were out there with the chainsaws, pruners and root killer. I built a double compost bin because I couldn’t stand to burn all the foliage and fruit from the trees, and we started working backwards from the front of the pasture. BOY are there a lot of those little trees, as well as a lot of bigger ones, and lots of deadwood too.  The horses love the foliage and berries and have cleaned off all they could reach, so every time we dropped a tree we had all three of them around stripping the good stuff off. And of course we had to take branches to the two horses next door over the fence too!

Big Sky Draft Horse Expo

We went down to Deer Lodge MT last Sunday for the draft horse show at the Powell County Fairgrounds, which is a great local venus for people all over Montana to bring their teams and compete.

Deborah Derr from United in Light was there as always raising awareness and $$$ for her rescue in Livingston, here is a short video so now you know what she looks like!

Here is the Unicorn Hitch class

And here is the 6  horse hitch class

Its great to see these big rigs, but they aren’t really local, usually from  farms in Idaho and Washington which are big and wealthy farms and they have been breeding drafts for generations which is why they have such well matched teams.  You should see the trailers and rigs they turn up with too, on a par with the Bud Clydesdales….