Happy Memorial Day and Updates

I realized today it has been almost a week since I updated my blog so this post got a bit long. Nothing out of the ordinary has been going on, just the usual level of busy. I hope everyone is having a nice memorial day and has taken a moment to think about and be grateful to the many troops who have suffered and died for us for many generations. Coming from a family with a lot of former members of the military (Army and Air Force) I like to take a few moments to think about the significance of Memorial Day.

Jason and I have had a fairly quiet last few days together. There is tons of work that needs to be done around here, especially mowing the pastures. I have no doubt Jason will be horrified that I am posting pictures showing our over grown pastures. On Saturday as we were walking across the farm after we had finished feeding everyone breakfast he made the comment that the “place looks like a dump.” Well personally I have to disagree. No the pastures don’t look perfectly manicured but quite frankly I don’t see any of the horses complaining!

We spent a few hours on Saturday afternoon visiting the Belle Meade Plantation which is located not very far from our farm. I haven’t visited Belle Meade Plantation for so long I can’t even remember when I was last there. Probably when I was in middle school? In Middle Tennessee there is no shortage of gorgeous old plantation homes to visit. Belle Meade is particularly interesting to me as the plantation was never a field crop plantation with cotton and the usual southern crops. Belle Meade was famous for their thoroughbred horses.

The main carriage house at the Belle Meade Plantation

Bonnie Scotland, considered to be one of the foundation sires of the thoroughbred breed in North America, stood at stud at the Belle Meade Plantation. Some of the notable thoroughbreds that would trace their pedigree back to Bonnie Scotland include Seabiscuit, Secretariat, Giacomo, Smarty Jones, Funny Cide, Barbaro and Mine that Bird to name a few. At its peak the Belle Meade Plantation was known as the oldest and greatest Thoroughbred breeding farm in North America. The beautiful main mansion presided over 5,000 acres devoted to breeding horses with numerous, impressive barns and outbuildings throughout the property. In fact the oldest registered racing silks in the United States belonged to the Belle Meade stud.

Jason in front of the Carriage House

These pictures do not do justice to his gorgeous color

Trigger and I made it to the arena and I let him go. Trigger put on a show of galloping, bucking, rearing, roll back turns and generally just going crazy like I’ve never seen. I even forgot to take pictures for the first part of the show, I just stood there watching him with my jaw on the ground! I was seriously wondering when the last time was that this horse had been turned out. I’m thinking it had been quite awhile. He kept it up for almost an hour before finally calming down. Needless to say Trigger has been MUCH easier to handle since he was allowed to blow off some extremely excessive energy.

These were taken after he had calmed down and was just running laps; at first he worked in huge, crazy bucks and lots of rearing in addition to tearing around the arena at Mach 10.

Otherwise we’ve just had our usual happenings around here. Gwen, our amazing farrier, was here one day last week. Horses were fed, some were groomed and/or bathed, stalls were cleaned, water troughs were scrubbed. Just another typical week at the farm!

Short video of Mina and Jo, world’s cutest fainting goats, playing on the “stump complex.” (That is what Jason calls it anyway!) Jo

#pictures #weekendupdate #offthefarm #meettheresidents #goats