Snowman Accident?

Karin made it in with Studly who was so excited to be at mom's that he ran right over to her snowman and relieved himself, right in the most obvious spot. This made it look like the poor snowman had an accident as no one would let him inside last night.

Do you know how hard it is to 'hold it' in the cold?  We awoke to -10 degrees. I waited to go outside to check the waterers until the sun came up but even then it had only raised to -4. Only 1 waterer wasn't full and that turned out not to be frozen but the float was stuck from the ice yesterday not allowing the water to flow. This was on one of the weanling paddocks and they didn't seem at all thirsty. Mark was up working on taking the trailer off the truck.
Mike and Diane left for Springfield but not before Mike called to report we will probably have to bring all 23 horses at Middle Grove here since the second tractor failed.  Instead Karin put an ad out on the Farmington facebook page and within an hour we had someone from the Middle Grove area willing to move in hay.  They knew exactly where we wanted the hay and sent me a text with the pictures below:

stating "I took these Nov 2017 of the horses, they were so beautiful and right where we could see them."  I asked her if they had any hay for sale as the last 25 bales we have reserved would need to be scheduled and unloaded but she didn't have any hay for sale but her husband was willing to meet with the hay man, unload and feed."  A few minutes later another farmer responded to Karin's ad and this one not only is willing to move the bales in for us, also had hay for sale.  He is going to bring 7 bales on Friday if the weather is ok and move them in. If the horses like the hay we will order the rest from him and just have the 25 bales moved here when the weather is decent. We are going to keep the first person's number as we may still need it but are thrilled to find hay close by Middle Grove. Our other bales were stored in Princeville, IL and it takes too much time to haul them.
This afternoon Ruth, Joan, Karin and I went to mom's for games. We sure don't want to be outside in this cold. It was snowing pretty much all morning dropping another couple of inches on top of the 3 we got last night. The snow is beautiful but sure makes walking dangerous as we can no longer see the solid slippery ice. Karin called off play practice again for Sunday. It is just too dangerous to get up to the barn and get the horses into the barn with all the ice on the ground.  Instead they are going to try to practice next Saturday morning. Time for some horse pictures so we may as well do another age test. Oksana was born June 14th, 2012. The video below is Eliza giving birth to Oksana.

Mark and I were at Wheaten College for a reunion when Eliza went into labor. Karin and Steven were in charge. Karin ran the camera while Steven assisted. They tried very hard to get Eliza to lay down for the delivery but she had no idea of what was going on and just wouldn't lay down. This was the first time we had ever had a mare deliver standing up. Mike was called to help catch the baby. The next picture I have of Oksana she is a month old. She was sold by this time and the owner was making payments on her.

The buyer continued to make payments until she was within a thousand of having her paid off when she decided she would rather have 2 of our warmblood mares, Cor and Clair instead of Oksana. We gladly made that trade and Oksana was then ours for good. Emily took her to the IL Horse Fair when she was not yet 3 years old.

The picture below was taken on Jan 18th, 2019.

We couldn't be more thrilled that we were able to keep Oksana for our program. She is another of those beautiful Raven daughters.  Anyone who has a Raven offspring loves them. They are like the Golden Retrievers of the horse world. They love people, want to please and intelligent. We say that because Oksana is always curious about everything. She has to taste things, knock things off to hear how they sound. step on crinkly paper, pick up whips and swing them around and nothing can be left out if Oksana is loose in the arena. She even had to check out the heater and singed her nose whiskers last year. 

We are having a lazy afternoon but plan on leaving for the Night of Worship at 6:15 pm as it starts at 6:30 pm. If you aren't doing anything come on down to the Hanna City Gym for a wonderful evening. There are a lot of bands scheduled a speaker at 7:30 pm and singing groups after the speaker. This is FREE and there will be FREE refreshments!