Smashed

Karin, Emily and I left early for a trip to Middle Grove. We had 4 mares and 2 foals to pick up and hoped to fit them all in one trailer load. The horses were no where in sight when we arrived. Karin called then we started hiking. About 15 minutes into the hike we heard them but only Jenis showed up. She is always the first to greet people. We hiked up the hill to find the herd spread out grazing under the trees. Karin went looking for Whitney, Emily got halters on Jurista and Jewel, gave both of those mares to me then left to find Rosalie. I started hiking back to the road with Jewel, her colt and Jurista. The herd came galloping up behind thundering like a stampede of buffalo followed by Karin with Whitney and her filly then Emily with Rosalie. The herd was waved off so we could get these 6 horses out the electric fence into the next field where the rest of the horses couldn't follow. We decided to put Whitney and Jewel in first and hoped their foals would follow. Jewel's colt needed just a bit of encouragement then jumped in first followed by Whitney's filly. We wanted to try to get all 4 of those in the front of the stock which took all of our muscles. It was pretty funny and Karin posted a video of it on Facebook. Rosalie and Jurista were put in the back and off we drove for home.
After the horses were unloaded we went to breakfast at the Hog Trough. By that time we were hungry and tired and it was only 9:20 am!
When we got back Karin took Rosalie to the outdoor, picked up the tarp, and promptly watched Rosalie hurl herself out of the arena, catching the top rail and smashing it to smithereens. I guess we forgot to do any tarp training with her. She is 2 and a half years old and spent most of that time out with the herd at Middle Grove. Guess what Rosalie got today? Yep lots of tarp training. By the time Karin was done she was following the tarp, walking on the tarp and not caring if the tarp was rubbed on her. I snapped a few pictures after the work out for the website.

Mark picked Nick up today for a couple projects. The first one was to take down the falling ceiling on the old garage roof. Good thing both of these guys wore hard hats. We had a lot of rotting ceiling tiles and wood. Mark was able to grade the driveways today and Nick worked on mowing around the paddocks and the outdoor arena.

 Our next job was to grade and rake the arena. The road grader actually works well on the arena. Below Mark is just grading.

 Once the grading is done he ties the rake to the grader and rakes the arena leaving a nice finish. 

 Serenity and Emma along with Emma's colt and Indy's filly came running up to watch but soon got bored and decided to go back to grazing.

Jurista was brought out next for a few pictures.

 Serenity came running up to greet her. These 2 were buddies at Middle Grove, they were glad to see each other again. 

Karin, Sarah, Nolan, David, Caleb, Jessica, Mikayla, Mitchel, Emily and Jake drove up to Chicago for dinner and a show at Medieval Times. They are hoping to bring home some new ideas for our spring show. Funny but they knew exactly what to pack...salt, butter, plastic forks, and napkins.

This evening we went over to Dennis and Gertie's new house. They bought a house just a mile from ours. It is really nice, seems to be perfect for them.