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Archive | Horse Camp Off-Season

The off season at Road’s End Farm Horsemanship Camp revolves around caring for the herd of horses, maintaining the land, and preparing for the next summer camp season. With a small crew of full timers at the end of the road, we work every day to keep this beautiful farm here for the girls who come every year to enjoy the horses and the wilderness in rural Chesterfield, New Hampshire.

With April camp behind us now, we are so grateful for all of the hard work from the campers we had last week. Road’s End Farm looks beautiful! We were able to rake most of the leaves and gravel with our extra hands (many hands make light work!) and the grass is beginning to turn bright green! We always want to rake off the leaves and gravel before the grass dies so during summer camp the premises of the farm can be lush and green! 🙂

 

The leaves that fall each year, which amount to we are sure many thousand, take many hours for us to rake up and drag into the surrounding woods. With the campers here to help, the time for chores is cut almost in half and we are able to rake up almost all of the leaves on the entire farm. It took the entire group of campers about three days to rake up all of the leaves behind the cape cod house and behind the arts and crafts room. We were able to rake before the black flies camp out, whew!! The rain we are having these past couple weeks and the leaves cleared off of the grass are contributing to the brilliantly green grass we are seeing on the lawns! We would like to extend a huge thank you to our April camp crew! 🙂

With camp about one month away, we are working to prepare the farm for the summer and the help that we receive from our campers is invaluable. We also hope that each camper who participates in such important work to the farm feels a sense of ownership when they come during the summer and other off season camps. With the family-style atmosphere at Road’s End Farm, we encourage each girl to treat Road’s End Farm as her second home. We certainly hoping the the ownership that each camper feels in working to make a place she loves better brings about a sense of pride and joy within each young woman.

Each morning, we walk around the farm and we watch the grass turn a vibrant green before our eyes, and the trees begin to grow buds which will evolve into leaves in the coming weeks. Everything is more green than we seem to remember, and maybe that is because we have been looking at snow for so long! The horses are looking longingly at the grass and we will wait until the ground hardens to let them out. If we were to let the horses into the paddocks while they are still soft, they would likely make big holes in the field. With the weather treating us so well, the paddocks are almost completely dry and the horses are frolicking in the sunshine each day.  Springtime at this New England horse camp has arrived!

 

View from Green Mountain VistaApril camp is here! We have 10 campers joining us for one week of springtime fun! We are feeding horses, raking leaves, picking up brush, and doing some general springtime farm chores. Not to mention, we are shedding horses winter coats and they are starting to glisten! The campers love taking care of the horses, as the horses are the heart of the Road’s End Farm camp program. Spring cleaning has officially begun at the end of Jackson Hill Road! 🙂

 

April camp will begin this Saturday! We have small off-season camps for campers who are interested in spending some relaxing time at the farm and reuniting with friends. As of now, we have 10 girls coming and we have lots of ponies to shed, spring jobs to complete, and fun to be had! We truly love these smaller off-season camps that allow the campers to see the Farm in different seasons and get a feel for what the camp feels like without 70 other campers. The horses are eagerly anticipating the extra attention! 🙂

 

We are getting ready to transition into the new stable and yesterday was spent moving all of the saddles. So far, each of the saddles has been moved and Katie is now unscrewing and removing the saddle racks so we can refinish them and put them up in the new stable. Lesley has spent a good amount of time going through and making sure each saddle and bridle have tags and each item of tack is suitable for camp. With how many saddles and bridles we have, this task is quite the undertaking. We will post pictures of the tack rooms as soon as they are set up – stay tuned!

 

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