Emma

Mom and I left at 7:00am for a trip to Iowa to pick up a FHANA registered Friesian mare named Emma and her colt. We arrived at Wendy's farm around 10:00am and met the animals. Emma was all bathed and ready for transport. She has a gorgeous colt by her side by the Shire stallion Powerful Paul Wendy is keeping but Emma is to come to our place to be bred then back to Wendy's until she weans her colt.
We made it home before 1:00pm making good time. Below are a couple of pictures of Emma right after we unloaded her.

Mark was working on the pond overflow. That is leaking pretty bad so he made a path to the overflow with the concrete that was torn off the drive.

He is filling the pipe up then hopes to be able to fill the pipe in with cement to plug the leak.

I had to take a picture of the blooming  Rose of Sharon bush. It has such gorgeous color.

We picked up mom for our trip out to Middle Grove for the evening stopping at Casey's for pizza then John's to drop off a tool Tim had borrowed. Middle Grove was packed with people and cars. Below are just a few of the kids at play in the campground area.
Below are the 4 Reinhard girls cooking dinner.

Willow relaxing after playing hard all day.

Braelyn on the 4 wheeler

Tate was playing ball with Steven Davidovics

Braelyn climbing the gravel pile

 Braelyn playing with the Davidovics kitten

 Willow and Ella in line to taste the fresh fish caught cleaned and cooked by Spark

 Fedi building the fire for the evening while a carbol game is played in the background

Charlie, Jake and Andi's baby boy

Braelyn and Taegan are fascinated by the kitten

Faith and Anni trying the delicious fish just caught, cleaned and cooked today.

Hannah and Bethany hard at work playing carbols with Karin

Faith and Braelyn at the top of the gravel pile

Taegan

Karin posted the video below of the day, they all had a great time!

Happy Birthday America

Happy Birthday America, the land of the brave, the home of the free. Aren't we blessed to live in this great country! Today is also Indy's birthday, she turns 3 today.
Mark helped move 3 bales in this morning, one in the Middle paddock, one in the second paddock and one in what was formally known as Evan's paddock but now belongs to the Friesian mares & Killian. The living quarter trailer was cleaned out and hauled to Middle Grove for who ever needs a place to sleep. When I arrived at Middle Grove I had to take a picture of the drive. Check out the gravel, this drive is probably at least a half a mile long and I always thought one would have to be rich to afford gravel.

Karin had a group out riding, Susan and Dan's boys were catching critters in the creek Below Abram is showing me the bullfrog tadpole with legs he caught in the creek.

 Mike, Rhoda and Emily were working on fences. The herd was down by the lake grazing.

The trailer was parked down at the camping spot and by the time I got the truck back up to pick up the stock trailer for the trip to Iowa tomorrow the riders were back dripping wet from their lake crossing. Karin posted this short video of the ride.

The weather was perfect, sunny and warm as soon as Mike, Rhoda and Emily arrived we decided to go out on the big lake on the pontoon boat and jet ski.

Emily's friend from Forrest arrived but forgot her swimming suit, that didn't seem to matter one bit, she jumped in clothes and all. 

It was relaxing to cool off in the clean clear water.

 Eddie and Dana arrived with Nick, Mary and their 2 kids so Diane gave them a pontoon tour of the lake.

Below are Nick and Mary's two children.

Tubing on this lake is always fun. Everyone had to take turns.

By the time we got the kids back, their grandpa Eddie had to show off the fish he caught on the dock.

At 4:00pm I needed to head back to the farm, the stock trailer needed to be cleaned out and our steak dinner needed to be started. Something about swimming all day makes one ravenous! 

We drove over to mom's to watch the fireworks with her.

More Moving Manure

Emily got the middle paddock all scraped then took the skid steer over to Rachel's to start on her paddock. Karin arrived and used the skid steer while Emily drove the tractor and manure spreader around those fields. When Emily came back she said, "Rachel had some good stuff!" In other words that manure over there was better than ours over here. Probably because Rachel has Sunny who really produces. Not really, the real reason is hers sat for a couple of years.
A bunch of the family went to Middle Grove to camp for the rest of the week. I'll haul the living quarter trailer out there tomorrow.
Dave Obgerfel had the service tonight comparing the Freedom by the document Declaration of Independence with the Freedom we have in Christ by the Bible.

Yesterday's News

Yesterday was so busy there wasn't time to write. Emily took only Mytross and her colt in to Dr. Hoerr's, the stock trailer was needed for Middle Grove. Mytross' uterus was clean but she had a small tear that was infected. Her coggins was drawn and the foal given it's foal shot. We were short Diane at work and wasn't able to finish. Not only that we weren't even able to get done by noon. Lunch was rushed just not enough time yesterday to get everything done that should have been done. As soon as I got home the house needed to be cleaned and a bedroom prepared for company coming in from California. Rhoda and Emily were busy bathing horses and Emma (not that Emma was going to the show she just rolled in manure). We left for the show just after 5:00pm and got there in plenty of time to sign up for classes, tack up and warm up the mares. Ayanna and Indy weren't the only Friesians there, Monica brought her 4 year old Eisis. Their best class was hunter hack, which is walk, trot, canter and 2 jumps. Indy won the class and Ayanna came in second and NO they weren't the only horses in the class!  Below are a few pictures of the evening.

The speed classes were really large, The first speed class the girls entered was bending poles. Indy was so funny, she starts into the arena and stops dead staring. It looked like she was posing for the crowd. She didn't win a ribbon but did finish without knocking any poles down. Rhoda placed 6th with a blazing time of 54 seconds. Probably because Ayanna didn't knock anything down and cantered. Emily got a 5th place ribbon in some kind of equitation class. Lots of pictures of the show were taken and placed on the Horsemeister Inc Facebook page. When the sun went down it was too dark to take decent pictures. Thankfully I drove separate so could leave. The riders and horses didn't make it back until midnight. The flag race and barrel race all took place after I left.

Mytross

Mytross has a yucky discharge this morning. We will need to see about getting her a vet appointment. She had retained her placenta for over 12 hours but it seemed to come out complete. Her colt is doing fantastic. Emily is willing to haul her to Dr. Hoerr's if they can fit us in. She will probably take Ayanna in also for an ultrasound. Today is Goldie, Emily's cow's due date. Emily thinks she will deliver tonight.

No Funday Monday

Today was a work day and with the Reinhards gone instead of vaulting Karin came to help move manure, lots and lots of manure!

5 full hours of scooping and dumping then hauling and spreading.
Karin ran the skid steer while Emily ran the tractor pulling the manure spreader. They finally quit when the tractor ran out of gas around 2:00pm. We were all more than ready for lunch by then.
After lunch Rhoda arrived to work on the show bill with Emily and give Indy and Ayanna one more practice on the games. I had to run down to work to pay the first of the month bills and by the time I got back there were 3 horses missing and no riders to be found. I took the golf cart over to Diane's thinking they may be taking the mares swimming but Diane was there along cleaning up her golf cart.

Mike told her to clean up all the battery connections. She is probably hoping this will make her's faster than mine. Driving back up to the barn Kenna's calf was running around bucking. A picture just had to be snapped of that except by the time I got close enough she stopped and looked over as if to say, "what are you looking at!"

Mytross' colt was taking a nap in the paddock, when he heard me coming he jumped up and stretched.

He thinks he's all that! The trail riders arrived and each one walked over to the pedestal and asked their mare to climb up.  Karin on Jenis went first.

Then Indy and Emily followed by Rhoda and Ayanna.

After dinner Mark worked on scraping the middle paddock then moving the cement pile from the broken up drive way over to the pond. The mares had to be locked up. They are now wondering when I'm going to let them out.
Mike and Diane hauled 4 horses to Middle Grove for the upcoming 4th of July holiday. Sally, Jenis, Missy and Cookie are now out there with Lily, Rosalie, Sangria, Ella, Scarlet, Hadassah, Solomon, Jasper, Clair, Cor, Prissy, Lilypony, Holly, Bunni, Mika, Paris, Jewel, Sissy and Star.