bringing in the horses

Hey look, I actually got my camera out again and there's kids and horses involved.

Bet that's a real shocker, eh?

Every evening we bring the horses in for the night. Keep them off that sugary grass for a while and improve their waistlines. 

We've started trying this Paddock Paradise concept in conjunction with rotational grazing in our horse pasture to try improve horse health and pasture management. But I'll spare you any more details, most people start glazing over after the first few words on that topic. If you made it through the sentence above you're doing pretty good.

For a while I was making the trek by myself, and often riding Fritz-ers on the way back (bareback and with a halter) to give him some more hours of pasture riding. Clay noted that I looked like Mary riding on a donkey to Bethlehem. I'm assuming it was a compliment.

Margaret fits on Fritz a bit better than I do.

Then the kids got wind of what I was up to and decided to crash the party. I'm glad that they did. Fetching horses out of the pasture is a chore that I don't mind doing every day, but it's even better with some cute, exuberant helpers.

Amelia uses her pointy fingers to drive those horses down to the barn. She's a natural.

My usual routine is to give each horse an apple treat and some loving before swinging a rope at them and hollering for them to "walk on" to drive them down to the barn lot. When the kids love on the horses it's a more involved process and, on this particular evening, involved a lot of picture taking.

 

Margaret got the itch to hop astride so she proceeded to launch herself in Fritz's general direction.

 

 

With some coaching, and a very tolerant equine friend, she finally managed to get on board.

Ta-da!

Margaret loves Fritz-boy.

William thinks Chico, Samson & Fritz are the nicest horses in the whole world. 

 

It's a tough life on the farm. But somebody's gotta do it.