Good Friday morning y’all! I’m a bit behind on my blog posts, but hope to get to it this weekend! Some fun things have happened and some fun things are in the works with the horses. We have had a little drama, but nothing a big fat vet bill didn’t fix (insert eye roll here).

In the meantime, enjoy some pics from the farm from the past couple weeks.

We are a good 3″ or more behind on our average rainfall so it was pretty exciting when we got a non-forecasted quarter of an inch in early June. I can’t help myself, but take pictures when it rains.

RAIN, glorious RAIN!

The surprise goat kids are growing quickly. They are both white, but I can tell which is which by the skin color on their faces. Hansel’s is black and Gretel’s is pink. I think it is adorable that they are more or less pink and blue.

Baby Hansel Goat plays in his feed pan. Kids!

Our sweet barn kitty napping under the hay soaker. He’s absolutely the sweetest cat I’ve ever had. True to barn cat form, though, he’s been leaving bits and pieces of his kills in the barn aisle. I turned on the lights yesterday morning to find a bunny head and other various sundry parts. Gross!

Sleepy Murtagh

Boot City and I have been diligently patrolling the pasture to pull up sticker weeds and the other evening we came across this cute box turtle. He/she wasn’t very social, though. We released it on our neighbor’s side of the fence, away from our dogs and on his/her way to some water.

Come out, come out, wherever you are!

When I left for work this morning I saw this snugglefest in the corner of my eye and had to snap a photo! It’s funny to see a 100lb sighthound snuggling with a pink squeaky bear.

Sterling snuggles.

I’m planning to take Coco to a local English show tomorrow morning, perhaps catch a game of polo and get lots of work done around the house and farm this weekend. I hope you have a fabulous weekend!

This past weekend a group of us affiliated with the fox hunt I ride with went on a trail ride at one of the properties where we hunt. This is newsworthy because the weather was AMAZING! It was forecasted to be in the high 90’s and we got lucky with a very cloudy morning and even a few rain drops.

I took my Mom’s little yellow horse, Casey. His mane has completely grown back and I think he should be called Fabio now.

Casey and his Fabio mane. I keep it braided at home so his neck doesn’t get so hot, but took out the braids for trail riding day.

Casey was awesome on our ride. He hasn’t done a ton of trail riding so I’m always happy when we get out and he has a good experience. He’s only 5 so getting good miles in now will pay off a lot on the long run. Trail riding can be unnerving for horses because they see things they don’t normally see out on trails (animals, 4 wheelers, all kinds of things!), riding in a crowd can make them nervous, and having to cross water and ditches can be scary.

A group selfie. You know your horse is good for trail riding when you can take photos and completely drop the reins and he just keeps going.

Since I’m working to sell Casey for my Mom I want him to have good, constructive experiences when we leave home and he got just that last Saturday. He crossed all the ditches, never spooked at anything, didn’t get terribly worried about where the other horses were. We rode in the front some and in the middle some. He’s got a pretty good walking pace, so he’s unlikely to be at the back just because of his speed.

Literally my favorite view. #lifebetweentheears

We are always so grateful when our hunt landowners invite us out for trail rides. It is a great way to explore the properties while not being busy with hounds. This property is still relatively new to us and we have struggled with knowing how to get from point A to point B at times! It has a steep ravine through the center of the property and is quite wooded. We spent some extra time finding ravine crossing spots and pulling down dead tree branches when we had the chance. The nice thing about Casey is that he isn’t crazy tall. This property will be interesting when I start riding Simon because he’s about 5 inches taller than Casey!

Lush green grass in JULY and glorious clouds make for a pretty spectacular view.

Our group stayed pretty slow, which I liked. Galloping in a group seems like it would be great fun, but it always brings out the crazy in one or two horses and someone ends up on the ground and/or scared half to death because their horse is a victim of “groupthink” and freaks out because it wants to win some proverbial race or at least keep up. I’m not one of those riders who enjoys that kind of chaos. Save it for the warmup ring at horse shows where there is always plenty of drama!

Riding in the middle of the group for a bit.

We had a potluck lunch after the ride complete with homemade Shepherd’s Pie and homemade Gazpacho soup.

This was a relatively quiet week at the farm. The weather is heating up to typical Texas summer temps, which makes me kind of sad. The spring and fall here are delightful, but the summers really are brutal!

Sweet little Harriet had her first heartworm injection this week. She was quite lethargic the first day, but has pepped up since. She will have two more injections in a month and hopefully will then be cured and ready to be adopted!

I can’t even with these two! This is no less than 150 pounds of dog on one dog bed. Never mind that there are at least two other same-sized dog beds they can use.

This is Mickey, our most recent foster from the Fort Worth shelter. He is your typical 6 pound dog who acts like he is 60 pounds! He is also heartworm positive so will be starting treatment soon. In the meantime he is trying his paw at goat herding.

Pardon her closed eyes, but this is Coco modeling her new fly sheet. She is a solid 16hh so I have mostly bought her sheets and blankets sized for a horse that tall, which is generally a 75-78 depending on their body type. Well, Coco has a very compact body and she was tearing up her size 76 fly sheet because it was too big and didn’t fit her correctly. This sheet is a 72. She is so petite!

This photo is a barn evening in a nutshell! Peaches asleep in the middle of the doorway. Quila chasing chickens trying to find eggs to eat and chickens wandering in the barn aisle and pooping on the floor.

Happy weekend y’all!