First official day of spring and the farrier is here today! Denise is out with the horses this entire morning and is trimming 19 of their toes. Calculating that out, she in total is trimming 76 hooves. Many of the horses are well-behaved when she works with their feet, however, a few of them don’t enjoy it as much so we try to feed them hay, give them some love during their trimmings, and some extra praise when they are finished. Denise does a wonderful job with their feet, and having horses of her own, she is a horsewoman and understands how to adjust her trimming to each particular horse. The 19 horses who are finished have lovely, clean hooves. We love spring hoof trimming! 🙂
Tag Archives | girls
While the cats are laying by the wood stove, Daisy is rolling in the snow, horses are napping in the sunshine, the Road’s End Farm staff is working to get ready for summer 2017. We are getting applications sent to us from people who visit the paper trail and download the 2017 application. One big project we have coming up is to restructure the arts & crafts program. Katie Coe will be working hard to order new supplies and throw out the old ones. Not to mention, she will be using her muscles to move and reorganize the entire room. This has been necessary for a long time and we are lucky enough to have someone as dedicated as Katie to help us take on this project.
As we hunker down during this massive snow storm, the wood stoves are burning hot and the horses are certainly getting extra food for both breakfast and dinner. Their winter coats are still fluffy, and we will not shed them until much further into spring. While we wait for the wind to die down and the snow to stop falling, all the humans and indoor animals are trying to stay by the wood stoves to keep warm. We will give the horses extra grain, hay, and love tonight, as the blustering winds are not pleasant for any animal. Stay warm!!
We are spending a good amount of our time cleaning up the farm before the ground unfreezes and becomes too soft for the tractors. We are cleaning brush out of Peacock Park, the pines in Wheelocks, and in the trees next to the Cape Cod House. Similar to work duty during summer camp, we haul the brush onto the trailer, drive to the bonfire, dump the load, and begin again! Doing brush is one of our favorite jobs. In line with the philosophies here, we love getting our hands dirty and doing some springtime cleaning of the farm.
As we continue with our normal chores of feeding the horses, fixing fences, and making sure all the horses are happy and healthy, we are still having mixed emotions about this unusually warm weather. On one hand, we are certainly enjoying the sun, on the other hand, this hot weather in February isn’t what the horses are used to and it can be tough on their body with a winter coat. We are also having some early mud with all of the snow melting away. Despite our mud season saying hello to us a little bit sooner than normal, one has to wonder if this will help us out down the road and make our true mud season not as muddy? We will certainly find out.
The best part about being a summer horseback riding camp for girls, is that we get to run our camp during one of the best seasons – summer! Allowing for all types of outdoor activities – canoeing, hiking, swimming, and most importantly, horseback riding in our rings and on our trails.
