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| Dad and John attaching the plow |
How did I spend my spring vacation? Rock-picking, shoveling stone dust, painting, mowing the lawn, oh, and riding nearly every day!
With the beautiful weather still holding, we called my dad to come help us reconstruct the old ring. It's been years since the ring was in use, and Pete put a garden in it one year. So now it's full of uneven patches and old furrows. John wanted to start from scratch and begin anew so we'd have a flatter and larger area.
Dad arrived at 8:30 this morning. We spent the entire day plowing, discing, scraping, and rock-picking (that was my job). By 4:00 p.m., we had a relatively flat, even surface. The job required moving a fair amount of material from one end of the ring to the other in order to make for even footing. This also exposed a stretch of clay that will now need some sand mixed in to soften the footing. We gained a lot of extra square footage which will be nice. Now we need to come up with some sort of a drag in addition to fencing. For now, I'd settle for something at least at the barn end of the ring so he who shall not be named, doesn't try to beat it for home when he's left alone in the ring! He can be so bad when one horse leaves--same thing on the trail, Don't leave me behind!
Thankfully, John has experience with rings and footing. Together with my father's tractor and Pete's big bucket loader tractor, we ended up with a pretty decent surface. Once the sun was high in the sky, we all got nicely toasted and by day's end, I didn't even have the energy to ride. All Harley got was a quick grooming in the pasture and some ticks removed. Tomorrow we'll go for a nice long ride, after we show them the ring. That should get a jump out of Harley!
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| Dad putting the old 1956 Ford Jubilee through its paces! |
Yesterday, we took Rolex and Harley on a short trail ride on the Lollipop Loop, hoping to find the dropped crop John lost a few days ago. So much for bright red standing out! Unless a hiker found it and did what with it? Hmm...
So many spring wildflowers are blooming, I ooh and ahh at every turn. I had to dismount and take a picture of this lovely ladyslipper that some person built a little stone wall around. I thought it was so cute--a mini woodland garden!
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| Pink Ladyslipper |
Imel! hi you!
ReplyDeleteThanks for popping over.
Loved that FORD tractor!Too cool..and how wonderful of your dad to come by and help. I just got goose pimples with the neat family project of making an arena!
Sounds very successful and your plans for acclimation too!
Laughing at the hiker that needed the crop for-?_ reasons! I have a "quirt" I use now for the reasons of loosing nice crops.I love that I don't have to hold onto it too.
I tend to only use my normal crops for the brambles and m*a*y*b*e a tap or two for balking reasons. In the case of needing to take a standard crop, I like a dressage length. I buy a cheapie little crop for the rubber loop- take it off the cheapie and place it on the dressage handle..wala..no more lost crops!
Can't wait to see the new and improved riding ring!
Happy SPRING...we too have had nicer weather in Oregon..though it's raining now, it'll be gone soon enough!
KK