Wheelin' and Dealin'

I have been answering emails and phone calls all day long. Just when I'd finish answering one, another one would come in.

I don't mind, though, because I'm making progress toward my very important goal of reducing my horse herd.

The trainer and I started discussing some of the details of our arrangement about Senter, so Senter will be leaving here very soon.

The trading-horses-for-sheep deal looks like it is going to go through, so Char and Scylla will be leaving here in about another month.

Shane and Boo will be leaving in a couple of weeks.

And I'm in the process of negotiating price with the young rider who is interested in Selebrity, so if we work something out that we both can live with, Selebrity may also be sold soon.

Plus I contacted a few people who had expressed interest in my horses before, to let them know the news about Senter. One person I know may be interested in breeding her mare to Senter, and the trainer already knows of two possibilities for him as well, in addition to her own mares that she gets to breed to him in exchange for her work training and promoting him.

After a long, full day of nonstop negotiating, now my brain is empty of any coherent thought and I need to go to bed!

Good News

It's been a long day, and I'm heading to bed now, so I'm not going to write much tonight. But I just wanted to say two pieces of good news:

Bonnie arrived safely at her new home.

And the meeting with the trainer went very well. We still have a lot of details to work out, but I think that Senter is going to go away for training and to be promoted as a stud.

I'll talk more about it later, but I'm tired and it's my bedtime.

Goodnight everyone!

And She's Gone

Bonnie's gone.

The shipper came, I led her down to the trailer. She paused at the doorway and looked inside. I showed her the bucket of grain I was holding and let her think about it for a minute. And then she loaded right up.

A little bit of paperwork to sign, and then the trailer pulled away. As it disappeared out of sight down the road, Bonnie whinnied goodbye to our farm. From the stallion paddock, Senter answered.

And then she was gone.

Bye Bye Bonnie

The shipper was supposed to come pick up Bonnie today, but he was delayed, so now he's scheduled to come pick her up at midnight, and haul her to her new home in Massachusetts by sometime tomorrow night.

It will be interesting to see how she loads on the trailer. She's pretty calm, so if they were arriving in the daylight, I wouldn't think that she'd cause any problems loading.

But for her to be out there dozing in the pasture in the middle of the night, and then have some strangers pull up in a truck and trailer with all the lights blazing, and expect her to just walk into a strange trailer, is expecting a lot. For her, it would most likely seem like being abducted by aliens!

So, I'll have my trusty horse-attitude-adjuster with me: a yummy bucket of grain. And hopefully, her greed will overcome her suspicion. Or else she'll just think, "Hey, if the aliens are going to feed me, fine, they can abduct me any time."

She's the first one of the horses I've sold this year that is actually leaving. Boo and Shane sold before her, but they won't be leaving until later this month. Even though I love them all, I'm actually at the point where I'm looking forward to most of them being gone, because that will ease our financial burden, reduce the amount of chores we have to do, and reduce the stress on the land as well.

Horses are very destructive to the ground, and if I didn't already know that we want to plow up and reseed all our pastures anyway (when we can afford it), I'd be distressed about the amount of damage they've done to the pasture land here. But since I know the pastures need revamping no matter what, I don't worry about it much until then.

I cleaned up Bonnie the best I could tonight, because she was filthy from the muddy pasture. But I couldn't get her really clean. I wish that it was warm enough to give her a bath, so she could arrive all clean and sparkling to her new home. But, better that she arrive a bit dirty than she catch a cold from being damp and chilled.

Tomorrow we go meet the trainer who might work with Senter for us. I'm pretty excited about that possibility. I hope it goes well!

Callisto Jumps Again!

This morning, Callisto and a few of the other horses in the mare pasture were visiting over the fence with the baby horses in the back pasture. The babies were feeling frisky and running all around.

A few minutes later, I looked out the window and saw that Callisto was now in the back pasture, happily playing with the babies!

I put on my coat and went out, thinking that maybe somehow the gate between the two pastures had come open. But no, the gate was fine. Other than the fact that Callisto jumped it!

I could tell by the hoofprints in the mud exactly where she went over. No problem! The 4 1/2 foot tall gate is not bent or damaged, Callisto's legs aren't scraped anywhere. She went over it clean, just for the fun of it.

I think I have a jumping prospect on my hands!

She's so cute about it, too. I went out there and said, "Callisto! What did you do?"

And she just looked at me like, "This is OK, isn't it mom?"

So, what the heck, she's not doing any harm, and the babies all love her, so I'll let her stay there at least until evening feeding time.


There's a new development in the trading-horses-for-sheep deal too. The other sheep breeder has tentatively offered to trade me 8 of his bred ewes plus two rams, one of which is a champion, for...

Char and Scylla!

It's a fair offer, value wise, especially since he would also give me $1,500 per foal when their foals sell (or else I could take the foals back for free). But, oh, what a hard decision, to have to give up Char, even to a nice home like this one would be.

The sheep he offered are worth a total of about $6,000. Plus each of the bred ewes should have lambs (probably 2 each) in the spring. If they all lived and I sold them all at an average price ($500 a piece), the whole sheep deal would be worth in the vicinity of $13,000, plus the $3,000 for the foals. $16,000 just for trading my two bred mares is VERY fair indeed!

Of course the reality won't be quite that perfect. Usually a few lambs die, or a few ewes might have singles instead of twins. And not every lamb grows up to sell for high breeding-stock prices.

Still, Icelandic sheep are far easier to sell than horses, plus they don't eat as much expensive hay in the meantime. And, if for some reason one doesn't sell and you don't want to keep it anymore, you can always eat it! So it's a much lower risk investment, too.

But I LOVE my Char-char, and would be so sad to see her go!

On the other hand, if I'm being realistic, my goal has always been to gradually thin my horse herd down to 4-6 of my best mares, plus Senter. I'm definitely keeping my two Art Deco fillies, Grace and Glory. It makes sense to keep Callisto, Callista, and Torchsong, for their builds, height, and color.

So if I look at it rationally, I know that I'll have to part with Char and Scylla eventually, so my main choice should be how to get the most value out of them for my farm while still finding them a home where they can be happy and loved.

Sigh.

Farming is a hard career, physically. But emotionally, it is tougher still.

Opportunity Knocks?

As some of you may already know, my pinto Oldenburg stallion Senter Stage is our farm's pride and joy. We invested a lot of money to buy him. He's an amazing animal with a world-class pedigree and a ton of potential.

But because of circumstances (financial setbacks, poor facilities, and too many other projects) I have not even managed to finish training him under saddle, much less promote him, or even get get my farm set up with the proper facilities so that I could start offering him at stud to outside mares (and thus let him start earning a little income for the farm).

Recently, a woman contacted me about the possibility of breeding one of her mares to Senter. She owns a breeding/training/boarding/lesson barn about 2 1/4 hours from me. She has a nice selection of Warmblood and Thoroughbred mares and stands a couple of Thoroughbred stallions at stud, but she now wants to get started breeding Warmbloods.

Because I really don't have the facilities to house outside mares here---and I already have too many other horses that I need to put training on this year---I asked her if she'd be open to the possibility of putting some training on Senter for me at her facility, in exchange for breeding to him.

Well, we've been exchanging lots of long emails since then and to make a long story short, in exchange for a certain number of breedings, she is willing to temporarily take over and "manage" Senter's career for me.

Meaning, she will train him, show him, advertise him, take him to Stallion Expos, take him to the registry inspections to get him "approved for breeding" so he can start doing full-Warmblood breedings, teach him to have semen collected so he can start doing shipped semen, allow him to stand at stud at her facility (I get the stud fees, she gets the mare care fees), and even transport him back here to my farm so he can be here for my breeding season in May.

Considering all I've managed to do with him in the two years he's been with me is get him under saddle a few times and breed him to a handful of mares, this seems like an amazing opportunity for him---especially since I'm past the stage in my life where I even WANT to be dragging horses around to shows and inspections.

In exchange, she gets breedings to Senter---which means that the better she does at promoting him and getting him known, the more her foals will be worth, so there's good motivation there. Plus the fact of having a stallion of Senter's caliber at her farm (without having to pay the big bucks to buy one) will help draw people to her program.

Of course this all depends on me visiting her facility, meeting her in person, and making sure we "click" in our ideas about how horses should be handled, but if it works out, it could be a HUGE win-win situation for both of us. The work she puts in could easily double Senter's value, as well as increasing the value of his foals.

So anyway, I'm going to her farm on Sunday to meet her and hopefully watch her do a training session so I can get an idea of her methods.

If all goes well, and it seems like the two of us will be able to work together in this partnership, then we'll start negotiating the details and sign a formal contract.

So, with luck, Senter might be going off to "school" very soon. My boy will be all grown up!

My Secret Obsession

I do it when I'm stressed. I do it when I'm working and need to take a break to clear my mind. Sometimes I do it before I go to bed at night. Sometimes I do it several times in a row.

It sooths me. I helps me put my tangled thoughts in order.

I'm talking, of course, about that simple yet insidious game that steals large chunks of my life in tiny, 5-minute increments:

Spider Solitaire.

When I first found it pre-installed on my computer, I tried it because I was bored with regular solitaire. I didn't know the rules, and I found it really frustrating. But for some reason, I kept trying until I figured out the rules. Then I kept trying until I figured out the strategies to help you win. Then I got pretty good at it.

Why, oh why, when I have such a busy life right now, do I waste my precious minutes on a silly computer solitaire game?

I think it's because the skills required to be good at Spider Solitaire are a simpler, purer form of the very same skills required to succeed at my task of trying to keep this farm afloat.

You start out with a random selection of opportunities, which you must combine and recombine to make the most orderly and successful arrangement possible. You are arbitrarily limited in what moves you can make, even when you can see other opportunities that are just out of reach. And you have to make some of your decisions based on incomplete data, because you can't see all the cards that are hidden and you don't know what new cards you'll be dealt.

And, as in life, sometimes things just don't work out so that you can win the game, and other times everything just falls into place.

Thinking Sideways

When---as is often the case---the path to our goals is obstructed by some delay or complication, Donna and I encourage each other to find ways to "think sideways" around the obstruction.

I spent today "thinking sideways."

I was writing emails all day long. Mostly, it was answering people who were inquiring about horses. For example:

One person decided against a horse she had been interested in, so I suggested another that she liked even better.

A fellow Icelandic sheep breeder wanted to decrease his sheep flock and get a couple of horses. I want to reduce my horse herd and add to my sheep flock. We exchanged emails discussing the possibility of a trade.

A horse trainer/breeder wrote to ask about breeding her mare to Senter, but our facilities are not really ready to host outside mares yet. So I suggested the idea of trading breedings for training at her facility.

A young rider was interested in one of my horses as a show prospect, but her favorite was out of her price range. We discussed payment options to help her afford the one she wanted.

I feel like I accomplished a lot today, even though I barely had time to get out of my chair. I think the most fun I had was discussing trading a horse to the sheep breeder. It was really entertaining to make out a whole list of possible options, using "sheep" as my base form of currency.

"It would be this many sheep to buy the horse. Add 1/2 sheep per month for board, or 1 sheep per month for board plus training. If you want her bred to my stallion, that'll cost you another sheep."

I don't know why, but I just had a lot of fun making out a price list in sheep.

Donald Trump and the Mechanical Lamb

Once upon a time, back in the summer of 2004, Ken and I bought Ingleside Farm. It was a beautiful old pre-Civil War house, but it was very run down.


Even though the inside of the house was filthy and in poor repair, we had big hopes of fixing it up and decorating it in the grand manner that it deserved. Both of us being avid readers, we were excited to see that just off the living room was a large, spacious room that could serve as our library. We imagined fixing it up in the classic Masterpiece Theater style of decorating, with floor to ceiling bookcases and a big fireplace at one end.

Once day, while browsing in a used-furniture shop in Charlottesville, I fell in love with a dark red leather couch that I knew would be just perfect for our future library. It was exactly the right size, exactly the right style, and even exactly the right color to go with the thick oriental rug we already had.

Even though the library wasn't fixed up yet---at the time, we hadn't even moved into the house yet---we splurged and bought the couch. When the shopkeeper saw what piece of furniture we had selected, she said, "Oh, if you're buying that one, I have to tell you where it came from."

"Really? Where?"

She smiled. "That couch used to be in the penthouse of Trump Towers in New York!"

I would have loved this couch no matter where it was from, but we thought it was hilarious that we were getting a famous person's couch.

I'm sure the couch thought it had gone to some kind of Furniture Hell, being demoted from its former palatial home to our bare, empty not-yet-a-library in our run-down, dilapidated house. There is a tiny smear of white paint on the leather of the couch back, which I'm guessing is the reason for the poor couch's dismissal.


We had a great time telling our friends and family that we had Donald Trump's couch in our library. They thought it was funny too.

My sister Donna sometimes sends me funny presents, little things to make me laugh. One Christmas, she sent me a fully jointed, talking Donald Trump doll to sit on my Trump couch. Perhaps the couch would feel more at home then!

He says things like:

"I have no choice but to tell you, you're fired!"

"Stay focused!"

"Remember, the buck starts here!"

Today, several years later, Donna just sent me another bunch of presents. Among them---because we are shepherds, and we are waiting for spring lambing time---was a mechanical toy lamb. When you pet its back, it wags its tail, bobs its head, wiggles up and down and bleats.

Clearly, this lamb needed to be put under the supervision of our talking Trump doll. What luck! The doll is fully jointed and the lamb is just the right size that The Donald can ride it!



So now they can sit on the Trump couch and carry on conversations with each other:

"Think big and live large."

"BAAAAA!"

"Do you really think you're a good leader? I don't."

"Maaaah, maaah, maaah!"

"Never give up under any circumstances. Never give up."

"Baaah?"

"Always enjoy what you're doing."

"Baaah."

"Go with your gut instinct."

"Baaa, baaa!"

"Always maintain your momentum."

"BAAAA!"


Clearly, it really doesn't take a lot to keep me entertained! :-)

On the Fence

I've been having a really hard time deciding whether or not to sell Callisto. Out of all my horses, she's probably my second favorite (after Char), and I've watched her grow up from a weanling, so I'm really attached to her.

Plus, she's grown up into a magnificent horse in the past couple of years, and I think she's going to be really high quality. Her movement is beautiful, her temperament mild, and she's already 15.3 hands at 2 1/2 years old, so she's going to have plenty of height.

The only drawback to keeping her as a broodmare is that she's gray, and some people don't like gray pintos. Considering the rest of her good qualities, that's a pretty minor drawback.

But if I keep Callisto, someone else has to go on the sales list. I'm thinking of maybe selling Scylla instead. Scylla is also a gorgeous horse with beautiful movement, I just haven't quite bonded with her as much as I have with Callisto. Scylla has the advantage that she's already pregnant, and she's already trained to ride and drive. Of course those things make her more salable as well.

The disadvantage of selling Scylla is that she's a matched team with Char, so if I sell her, I'm breaking up the team. Not that I'm ever likely to drive them as a team, but it's nice to know I could.

I'm really "on the fence" about this decision. I have several people inquiring about Callisto, and I'm not sure what to tell them. I went out today to take some video of Maggie for a prospective buyer, and decided to take some video of Callisto as well so that I could study her movement more closely, thinking maybe that would help me decide.

While I was filming, Callisto decided to give a demonstration of what "on the fence" really meant: She tried to jump out of our 5.5' tall round pen---and only made it halfway over. Amazingly, I caught it on video!

Despite what you might think, watching that video, she was not jumping out because she was scared or upset. She was just being willful and trying to avoid working.

You see, when she was a baby, she successfully jumped out of a couple of fences, so now she thinks she can jump anything---and she tries it whenever she thinks it will get her out of having to do something she doesn't want to do.

Obviously I need to do a bunch more training with her to break her of this naughty habit, but we were just trying to do a quick video of her moving in the round pen today---we didn't think it was going to end up being a rodeo!

In the video, you can see poor Ken, bravely waving the baggie whip in Callisto's face to try to head her off and turn her back from jumping. But she's not in the least scared of the baggie whip, so she ignores it and keeps going.

Notice that when she slides back down off the gate, she manages to unlatch it with her leg, and it starts to swing open. If Ken hadn't been there to close it, she would have gotten out and her plan to escape from doing work would have worked, at least temporarily.

I love our Priefert brand round pen. It's very high quality. But their "horse proof" latch is not at all horse proof. I've had at least half a dozen horses unlatch it and escape. Now if I'm leaving a horse in there for any length of time, I chain it shut, because I don't trust the latch.