Equus Survival Trust West Coast Event

Equus Survival Trust, representing equine rare breeds in North America, is having an event concurrent and included in the Western States Horse Expo in Sacramento, CA. There will also be a Combined Driving Event. All this will be happening at Rancho Murrieta, May 9th through 12th.

I will be there with Pepper and Nell, representing Gotland Ponies. We won't be in the Combined Driving Event, but with the EST Breed Pavilion.

Kinda scary, kinda fun.

The Horsey Things that are not the Fun Things

I posted this to the Yahoo Group Recreational Equine Driving. I might as well post it here too. Maybe I'll add some photos.

Its raining again. We get almost all of our annual rainfall between November and March. We are now at about 130% of seasonal average. For horses, that means a lot of mud. Three ponies are in the paddock attached to the barn. The mud is incredible. I have a bigger pasture but the grass is now undergoing its fastest growth. Our grass is the native grass and does all of its growing so that it can produce seeds before the moisture stops and it dies. Its very dangerous for ponies, so they can't go out until it dies sometime during May or early June. The ticks are vicious until then anyway.

My roundpen is covered with plastic sheeting so it will be dry underneath. This way I don't have to wait for it to dry, we just uncover it. We buried a drain at the base of the hill above the round pen so that the water from the hillside will not percolate down into the roundpen and seep under the plastic.

Today begins a non-raining period of about 4 days so we can roll the plastic off and I can put three ponies in there to blow the stink off their brains and so they will be able to have dry legs for the farrier on Wednesday. This is good because the roundpen is by the road and the farrier wont have to take his truck on the driveway and we don't have t worry about him getting stuck and then calling our neighbor with a tractor to get him out.

Yesterday the man road was closed because of all the people in San Jose trying to drive up to the snow. I drove(auto) down and they were hiking up in droves, having left their cars parked illegally to get tickets. They had children of all sizes. its a narrow road without a shoulder. Unless they and their kids were up to a 10 mile hike, they were not going to make it. I counted 150 cars in the section of road before the closure where I might have seen 4 or 5.

I only went down to get chains an quick links because the ponies drag the feeders to the muddiest part and I want to attach them where I don't have to wade in mud higher than my ankles to feed them. I don't like to rinse my mud saturated socks in a bucket to get the dirt out before I put them in the washer.

Coming home, the Sheriff almost didn't let me in. He didn't recognized my Mt Hamilton Range Improvement Association pass. He said "You're lucky you didn't get one of the newer guys. He wouldn't let you in."  The new guy would recognize me. He's came to my house and introduced himself. I see him on the road frequently. My address is on my car registration and my insurance card,  but I shouldn't need an address here to come here. My card signifies that I am a land owner. So today I will deal with that, only because he was jerk.

Two new ponies in November and I can't play with them. Like I said, not the fun part.