September 15, 2021
The Sanctuary has joined with the AVC’s “Benchmarking Study” to evaluate the health and welfare of horses on PEI as well as caretakers’ attitudes towards equine management. They will ask questions about the general care of our horses, assess our farm, and perform body condition scores on each horse.
It is always good to have new and different eyes to assess the herd. Horsekeeping requires a lot of watching, and hands on touching, to keep on top of health issues. Sometimes when you work with them everyday, you do not see any thing strikingly different. I depend upon Trailblazers and volunteers to tell me when they notice anything new and different that could be troubling to the horse.
Budgeting is important to most households, especially farms, my budget is more outgo than income. That seems the way of things these days. But I think the budgeting of time is very important to manage anything. Growing up on a well managed farm, gave us skills to manage time. Each task had a time allotted to it. We knew how long it took to milk 40 cows, feed the chickens and geese, tend to the daily chores of sheep, cattle and horses. Time was allotted for the “WHAT IF’ disaster factor. But most the time everything ran in a very smooth manner. Time was even allotted for household chores, we knew exactly the time it should take to sweep the floors properly. And you worked to that clock if it was your turn to do a chore. The necessary chores were done efficiently in a timely manner, to have time for the fun stuff, I loved my time off to read books about horses. Now I am still efficient, I know exactly how much time a chore will take. Although now it is “round to it” organizing. For example something that may take a couple of hours, getting “round to it” might take two weeks, 2 months, or a year.
My raised garden beds did not produce much this year, I attribute it to not putting in time on a daily basis to care for them. I planted too early in cold soil, and then there was a lot of rain. No heat. Good growing for peas though! I had lots of them to munch. I should have reseeded the root vegetables. I am lucky, I followed early training, I preserved the bumper crop of last year. I still have lots of pickles, relish, and jams to tide me over for the winter. I might have to refresh my supply of Mustard and Beet Pickles. That is not a big chore. I have been gifted with plums, it appears to be a bumper crop this year, plum jam will be on the list. A couple of hours will give me enough supplies for this winter.
School started: our Trailblazer youth program is now on Saturdays 9am – 2am. Our program is not all about riding. The animals are used for learning about their life, and sharing their care. By law we have to keep them in. Saturday Trailblazers walk the fences, they discovered what wind can do to trees and fences. Then we restored part of a pasture fence, so the herd can get a full zap from the Gallagher. So far so good, the pony Pytor hasn’t visited the neighbours yet. The kids are part of the Gracie training, too. She wasn’t unhappy about pulling a tire about. Soon she will be pulling the cart.
The “Smalls” program is very successful, having a barn full of them on Sunday afternoon, is truly a fun time. Maxine and I are grateful for all the volunteers that come to help make her leadership less hectic.
The new adventure grove activity is bale jumping. Do check out our Facebook page, Maxine posts pictures and videos of all the happenings at the Sanctuary. It is a wonderful thing to have a techy in residence.
Take care of each other. Love and Hugs from Yogi and the herd.