Taking care of horses hooves can be a nail biting experience, unless you have a horse that has the natural ability to do the job for you! ”Do not try this at home” 
Mounted on Windflower
Today Windflower Dancer was mounted for the first time, but twice. This is from the last time down in the pasture, with Marianne behind the camera.
Alexandra mounted her bareback and she was a little tickled when Alexandra got up but as soon as Alexandra was in position and she felt the balance she calmed completely and just stood there quiet as a cavalry veteran. What a gal!
Weekly Photo Challenge: Blue
Blue Roan horses are hard to resist, as is this weeks theme: “Blue”. So here is our first entry ever, for WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge.
Good times ahead
Another long-weekend is coming up and life on the ranch is just great. The horses are enjoying every minute of their first spring in Sweden. The weather’s been perfect for both horses and grass, some rain some warming sunshine but not too hot. It’s also been perfect for some insects and then I’m speaking of the Swedish “knott” or what you may call midgies. The horses obviously don’t lik’em, but they’ve already figured out that “knott” only stay out in the open (don’t know why), they never fly into the stable.
So now there’s more reasons for the horses to like the stable. It’s also nice for the horses to sleep laying down flat on the side on the cozy bedding of clean dry peat, while one pair of barn swallows pay a visit and the rain is pooring outside, or while the sun is shining for that matter. Since the horses can go in and out of the open stable free of choice any time, we know they love their own hideout.
When mucking out the stable we can walk around the sleeping horses without bothering them at all. Hard to believe that they were basically unhandled wild horses less than a year ago.
Soon the horses will have their first grazing out on the summer pasture and that´ll be some party I don’t wanna miss. They are grazing every straw they can find in the corral and we have been giving them a few handfulls of fresh grass every now and then, in addition to their daily meals, so we know that releasing them out on the summer pasture will be appreciated, to say the least.
Today we even saw the cat and our Cocker Spaniel standing side by side eating fresh grass!
Apprentice week!
Last week Alexandra and her classmates had an apprentice week at school. Alexandra made a succesful week at the local race horse stable; Höiom Stables.
She was very happy for the opportunity to work with these fine thoroughbred race horses! Here are some pictures of Alexandra and “American Accent”, linked from Höiom Stables.
Horses on a string
Now it’s been five months since three Nokota horses moved in at our ranch. A few days ago they lined up for a photo, as it happened positioned exactly the same way as in another photo we took on new years eve, four month ago.
Wild Prairie Rose (2011) closest to the camera, Windflower Dancer (2010) in the middle and Bluebell Star (2008) in the background. Rosie still has a lot of spring fur left, but Wendy and Bella are dressed for summer. The Nokota horses are special because they are adapted for the most extreme of inland climates; very cold winters and hot dry summers. The winter coat is as thick as the coat of the islandic horse, the summer coat is as slim as the coat of a desert horse.
They really like to play in snow and they love hot dry summer days. Yesterday evening the rain finally came after several weeks of drought, so now the grass is “stampeding”. Guess what the horses have been doing today. Running around in the rain and rolling around in the mud? No they have been standing inside the horse barn looking out, complaining about the swedish weather
29th of April 2012
31st of December 2011
Nice beginning of May
Another weekend with warm and dry weather. It’s beginning to look like a drought, but later this week there are promises of rain. We have been preparing the mold to cast a manure storage (to fulfill swedish agricultural regulations). Later this week the concrete will arrive. This week Alexandra and her schoolmates has an apprentice week. Alexandra will do her week at a thoroughbred horce race stable.
Bluebell and Windflower has been trained with saddles. Wild Prairie Rose, our sweet yearling, is growing fast now and gaining both confidence and height.
Rosie is a fast runner too. Windflower wants to teach her to stay in line
But no hard feelings…
Horses and roe deers
Late this afternoon a roe deer came for a visit and a snack of fresh grass. The horses made no business of that, probably didn’t want to scare her off. After a while the roe deer walked under the electric fence and back into the woods. Last summer she (or some of her “collegues”) had two kids grazing in the pasture all summer, we saw them last week too. Good grass tends to be popular.
A picture and some words
A picture can say more than a thousand words.
I don’t know who said it first, but the statement is something of a riddle, because the number imposes a limit of words while a picture is unlimited in size and content. Ive’ been working with technical drawings all my life and know for sure that even a relatively small picture can say a lot more than a thousand words in a universal language, but also that a picture can leave a thousand words unsaid.
By that I mean that some pictures are only correctly understood if accompanied by words, if one wants them to be interpreted in a certain and precise way. On the other hand, take any DVD-players or cameras user’s manual and you soon realize that no picture and no words in it will ever make you understand how the damn thing is supposed to work, the only way is to try by doing, trial and error.
Of course a book without pictures can indeed paint greater pictures in ones brain than any artist or photographer can create, when the art of writing is the goal by itself. A picture is easier and more natural to take into our conscience. In order to understand words, we need to learn how. That’s why small children’s books has pictures only, then we move up to pictures and words, finally we have learnt to read words so good that the words make the pictures for us.
Now, what can we say about this here picture? Well, it is not arranged or manipulated in any way. I went out early in the morning to feed the horses and then back in again for breakfast and a cup of tea, got stuck by the laptop for an hour or so, went out to a clear sunny day to clean up after the horses. After a while I spotted them in the pasture beneath the barn and rushed in for the camera, walked out and shot a picture from long range. As I walked closer both of them noticed me coming, but not more than that, so I took some more pictures, this is one of them.
So, how did I react? Well, I suppose I should have been a bit worried, what if something sudden scared the horse, it could be dangerous! Yeah, well not this horse and not this girl. The horse feels safe enough to sleep, not in spite of the girl resting against her, but because of the girl being close and that they trust each other. If kids grow up like this I think they get a good feeling of what is important in life and I mean both of the kids, the girl and horse.
If we want to save our world, this planet, we must like all of it including ourselves. It’s like the old Indian proverb; “Talk to the animals and they will talk back and you will get to know each other. What you don’t know you fear.”
Now another update about how our horses are doing. This will be in fewer words, though. Windflower Dancer is as close to being ready for a rider as it gets. Bluebell Star is now ready for a saddle, so she is not far behind. The warm dry weather is helpful, making the horses feel at home. They don’t mind snow and storms, but they just love warming sunshine.
A new weekend
The horses are advancing in a steady pace. When we saddle up Windflower she stands quiet without resistance, without being tied up, looking forward for some attention just the way it should be.
Alexandra can now stand up in the stirrups to let Windflower feel the shift of load, she is getting the hang of it, she does not look surprised at all any more. One of the first things she got accustomed to was things moving around her head, so that is no concern at all. Very soon it’s time to get mounted.
The dandelions are blooming so the spring is also advancing, even if this one was found on an unnatural “hot spot”.
The fruit trees we planted last fall are waking up, apple, plums and cherries.
The grass always seems better on the other side of the fence, one mystery horses has been wondering about ever since fences were invented. (I wonder if there will be a genetic predominance of horses with long necks and flat noses in a thousand years from now? Soon it’s time to open up the summer pasture, give it a couple of weeks so the grass has a chance to be ahead of the “herbivores”.
Bluebell Star has become a real lady and her temper and personality is as sharp and sweet as she looks. She is also advancing in her training at a slow but steady pace, not as easily as Windflower though, she needs to think more, not so suspicious only careful and thorough.
Our good neighbor south of our ranch are taking out the spruce timber that fell down during the storms last winter, a new (?) repeated weather standard the last seven years.
In the evening some clouds rolled in from the west as the sun was setting behind the forest.
And the horses finished their supper on the front porch in their usual places, Windflower to the left, Bluebell in the middle and Wild Prairie Rose to the right. Funny how horses and humans share the same compulsive liking of habits and procedures, it’s probably something about the herd life.
