Early Release

Our local school district has a policy of early release, every other Wednesday. This makes it so difficult for parents to arrange for child care. But for Kai and Immie and I, it's been more fun. Kai is as horse crazy as her great granddad and loves to go riding with me.

Every August we go driving.

Every August, the Freitag family puts on a Camp Out for the Western Drafter's Club. We drive down to their place in Halsey, OR and have more fun!

Fay drives other people's ponies and shows them how to set lines.









This year he helped Sheila fit her brand new work harness for her Haflinger mare.










Fay rides with Larry behind his Belgians and I ride my Appy behind the wagon.












Fay also helped set up a three abreast, six pony hitch. They were so cute.












We have wonderful meals, one included corn on the cob.

Parade Crazy, August 2009, Pt 2

We had so much fun at the Threshing Bee. My oldest daughter joined us. That was the line behind us for breakfast!











































We rode in the parade, all three of us, Fay and I on the team of Fjords and Amanda on Immie.

I think she's telling Best that he has to be a good boy for mommie. He hadn't had a saddle on in a year before I rode him in that parade--and it was only his fifth time to wear a saddle anyway. He sure hasn't figured out how to stand for mounting. ;))

I never have pics of parades, I'm always riding or driving and have my hands too full of horse to take pictures.

Parade Crazy, August 2009 Pt 1.

Not all the lack of blogging can be blamed on Beauty's need for training. As all of Fay's family and friends know, his hobby is being in parades with his horses. These pics are from August, the second weekend, the Threshing Bee at Dufur. The first series of pics are from the day we brought the horses home from a pasture out Chenowith. Fay had talked to the guys at The Dalles Disposal, they said it would be fine for him to bring his horses by and weigh them on the truck scale.

Feather weighed 1540lbs
Immie weighed 1140
Best weighed 1460

And because I was busy tying horses to the trailer I missed the best pic of all. They were weighing Fay on the truck scales to be able to subtract his weight from the horses'. The look on the people's faces in the truck waiting to get in and weigh was priceless.

You can also see why the horses weigh as much as they do: their welcome home snack was fresh corn stalks! Then all the hay they would eat.

That long gap in my blogging....

Here's the reason for my lack of posting. Bless Fay, he goes at horse training very seriously. It has to be every day available. I loved the two hour rides every morning. We went to the saddle club grounds, we rode out on the street, we went out Seven Mile road and up on the ridge. Rabbits, gray diggers, dogs, people, deer all kinds of wild life.

Catching up some more.

My oldest daughter and her step daughter come to visit every summer. Deonna has to ride too, this is her chance to be a farm girl.

Catching up.

As you can see from the pics, we're catching up in more ways than one. Our horses are kept in a pasture behind our house. It's fine if they're on our side of the creek, but with my lame knees I can't dance across the rocks like I used to, nor can he and I walk the mile around to the other gate at the saddle club grounds. How many people bring their horses home by truck? My oldest daughter was visiting late July and took these pics for me.