04.07.08
Winter’s Passing
It has been a long and arduous winter in New Hampshire, one that has seen record snowfalls. We have over a foot of snow still on the ground, often hard-frozen and crusty but slowly dwindling with warmer days. Our horses have given up doing much wandering, it is too much effort for too little gain. They have eaten all the tree bark they can reach, they can’t dig through the crust for leaves or dead grass, and life seems pretty boring in general so they hang around near the barn hoping someone will throw them some hay.
On the good side, snowboarding has never been better than this year, with a longer than usual season as well. Plenty of base, plenty of fresh snow, great conditions for riding. We finished up our last runs at Mount Sunapee this year…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfXBanwJYo4
this is Hubby’s top to bottom snowboarder’s view from one of Sunapee’s slopes, with me trailing down to the lift at the end. LOL. He is faster than me even when he’s shooting a video on the way down!
We’ve had a decent run of maple sap and the sugaring is over for us… it wasn’t a great season, lost a couple of batches due to inattentiveness to the boil-down, and lost some sap when buckets blew over due to the sinking snowpack. We’ll end up with maybe 2 gallons of syrup, where usually we get at least four gallons.
Looking forward to post-mud season, we have ordered pairs harnesses for the boys and a pole for the Eagle 4-wheel carriage. We have pretty ambitious hopes to hitch Gilford and Glendale together before the end of the summer. This will all depend on how things go of course; we will seek professional training assistance for the first few times hitching them as a pair. Glendale has only been hitched to the training cart maybe 6 times in our lower pasture, so he needs a lot of road miles put on him first.
Some carriage driving/training manuals advise thoroughly training both horses individually before putting them together as a pair. Old time methods however put a green horse with a more experienced driving horse in ORDER to train the newbie. So we are thinking to try it, with due caution and the advice of an expert.
With that in mind, we will soon begin separating the mare from the two boys in their turnout. We do that to prepare her for their leaving the barn when we’re training them together, but mostly so that they can become more bonded to each other (desirable for a driving pair). This will be tough on the mare, who suffers a lot from separation anxiety. Hopefully she will end up bonding with her two boyfriends across the fence and find solace there…
The horses have started shedding out, and have already gotten their spring shots, Coggins tests, and recent trims and hoof-shaping. I’ve been doing some tack cleaning and conditioning, checking for repairs needed, ordering bug spray and fly trap bait juice, and dreaming of warmer days when the mud is mostly gone!
