In anticipation of the coming summer, I got to thinking about a few of our horse rides of the past and thought I would share some photos.  Hopefully we will be putting more recent ones up soon.  The top photo is of Laura's quarter horse, Bandit. He's a good ole' boy, who really takes good care of her.  The second picture is several years old, but shows Ashley moving her mare, Cindy, through a crossing on the Elk Fork Trail.  

continuing on irrigation

Here are a few other pictures of irrigating, which is described more in the previous blog.  The first picture shows some of the activities of irrigating, including the chicken in the background (that yellow spot) finding food tidbits!!  The next picture is at the head gate of the canal - you can see the screened opening into our gated pipe system on the right of the picture and the dam set in place to keep the water from going on down the canal.  We use this system to irrigate about every 3-4 weeks during the summer growing season.  Our soil has quite a bit of clay content, so it holds the moisture well.  

Irrigation

We have about 6 acres of pastureland to raise hay for our four horses.  One of the biggest projects to get onto in the spring is setting out our irrigation pipe.  You can see this pipe (commonly called gated pipe) in the following photos.  The piping is made up of 30 foot lengths of 8-10 inch diameter polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe, with little openings every 30 inches along their sides.  Each of these openings has a gasket cover, which can be opened for various water flows.  We have almost 1/2 mile of gated pipe crossing the back and side of our hay field with additional pipe providing water for our treed areas.  The lengths of pipe are taken up in the fall and stored on the pipe trailer (note picture) after irrigation is over.  They are then put down in the spring before the hay crop has grown very high, so the crop doesn't get too damaged by the tractor pulling the pipe trailer along.  The pipe is taken up in the winter because we allow our horses into the field to graze, and their kicking at the pipe in cold temperatures could cause it to shatter - they're sort of costly to replace.  In the following pictures, I have used Dick as the model in the operations, but most of it is a team activity for sure!!  The first picture is of Dick opening the gates on a pipe along the back of the hay field.   The second picture is our "empty" pipe trailer parked near the tree area of the property.  The gated pipe for that area can be seen to the right of the trailer.   

Springtime Activities

So we get pretty busy this time of year - getting ready for the summer.  Ashley gets us involved in all the track events, where she is interested in distance running (1600 meter or 3200 meter events).  She does enjoy running and continues off and on during the summer months.

We also get the horses hooves trimmed and shod this time of year to enjoy some summer riding.  Here is a picture of our farrier working with our young mustang, Sage.  She is a little new to a lot of different people working with her, but seems to work with this man fairly well.  He yells at her in Cherokee and she knows the language enough to listen up!!  He does a good job with all our horses and has the patience to go easy on Sage.  We are looking forward to some good rides this summer!!

Spring Visitors

We are so excited about spring getting here.  Although we have done a lot of work around the place getting the pasture ready for this year's hay crop, we have been able to get out and get some photos.  Here are some of our spring time visitors.

Senior Prom

well, we have successfully survived the Senior Prom here and I thought I would post a few pictures.  Ashley went with a real nice guy and had a wonderful time.