4th of July Parade!

Wow, where did the weekend go?? We started Friday bright and early heading over to Weaverville for the 4th of July parade,  "The Boys" pulled the restored "Weaverville to Redding" stagecoach for the event. We brought Jarrett's boys over to see the parade, meet the horses and they even got to ride in stagecoach. They loved it! 

All of the boys!

A view from the stagecoach during the parade.

Hyram is taking the shotgun job very seriously!

Saturday we trimmed some feet then saddled up and did an 18 mile ride up to Jarrett's Cousin's house on South Fork Mountain. Jarrett rode Bailey, it was her second time out on the trail and she did great! Other than not really knowing much reining she acted like an old pro! And by the end of the ride she was even reining pretty well! We even had to ride on the highway for a mile or so and they were all great, even with the semi running his jake brake going by us. 

On top of the world! Wait, you aren't supposed to drop the reins on a horses second trail ride, are you?

Me, Glory, and Girly...  Girly was being lazy, she needs to get back in shape!! 

Sunday we were going to ride back to the valley but we still had about 4 tons of hay to unload, then Jason's truck just quit running and we had to tow him and his trailer, so we just trailered the horses back home.

12 tons of hay, stacked to the rafters, We are set for winter!! 

Our wonderful towing adventure, it was a slow ride pulling a 1 ton truck and 4 horse stock trailer up a mountain, but at least we had fun doing it! 

We finally got home at 11:30, and that was it for the weekend...   Next week we should be heading over to get our new wagon! We are very excited, so now I really have to get Holly going so the girls can pull it! 

Oh, and some final pics from last week that I didn't get up then:

What a pair!



My little Bassira is getting so big, and is still as cute as ever!! She is 2 years and 3 months, so still has some growing to do! I'll wait until she is 4 or 5 before I even think about riding her, we have plenty of horses to ride and there is no reason to ruin a good horse by riding her before then! Even though she is big enough physically you can still tell just by looking at her that she isn't ready, her joints aren't closed and she still has that baby look. She will start going on pack trips with us this year though just to tag along and learn the ropes by carrying the sleeping bags.

 

Fishing, Breaking horses, and Fires!

I thought weekends were for resting... Not ours, it was busy & exhausting, but fun! Friday we saddled up Zeta and took Jarrett's boys for rides, they love the horses!

 The 2 yr olds checking each other out!

 Friday night we went to the lake and did some fly fishing for Bluegill. While they were not horribly active it was a lot of fun and we fished until it was too dark to see.

Jarrett's first fish of the day, even holding it out that far dosn't help! 

 This was not the biggest of the day, but closer to it, even so those small guys are a heck of a lot of fun! This was only my second time fly fishing and Jarrett taught me the right way to do it, so I was having a blast!

 A view of the lake through the smoke, most of the time visibility was only about 1/2 mile. A fire could be close and you would never know it. They have closed the Yolla Bolly wilderness because they cannot even find all of the fires out there due to the smoke.   Saturday we got up and checked the fire maps and one showed the Lime fire had crested the ridge and started decending the mountain above Jarrett's cousins house, so we loaded up the chain saw and headed his way to see what was really going on. Up there the smoke was worse, you couldn't see much at all so we drove up to the top of the ridge and found no close fire. We are still not sure what the map was talking about, so we spent the rest of the day cleaning out his barn to prepare it for hay. 

Sunday we had Shasta come out and ride Bailey because she is going to ride her in the Barrels at the Ruth Rodeo in August. Shasta has ridden a lot, but never on this green of a horse! We talked her through it and they both did great!
 

 Jarrett started just lunging Bailey while Shasta sat quiet on her back, (Bailey has only been led with a rider on her back up to this point), after a few minutes Shasta started using the reins along as a supplement to what Jarrett was asking Bailey to do from the ground. Then Jarrett only held the line for saftey and Shasta had complete control.  Bailey never tensed up or offered any thought of a buck. 

 Reining is still sticky but coming along quickly.

Monday Shasta was trotting and loping her around the yard so they even took a ride to the top of the mountain and back, only about a 5 mile ride, but apparently Bailey was perfect, no spooks and she even led for part of the trip.  

 Jarrett made a black powder bag for Jason, so we had him model it for photos...  Let's just say we call it his Man Purse! 

The boys are hauling hay this week, It is a nasty chore but the horses will have lots of hay for the winter. 

The Best Show on Tracks

This weekend we went to Sacramento, we started in Woodland at the Best Ranch for "The Best Show on Tracks". This event has been 3 years in the plannings and was huge!  It was an exhibition of antique tractors and farming equipment, with the main focus on Holt, Best and Caterpillar( which Holt and Best co-founded) equipment. We have been interested in joining the Draft Horse and Mule Club which was meeting at this event so went with some friends to meet the club and see what they do. There were quite a few teams there and one of the attractions of the event was a hitch of 27 mules pulling an old harvester (links to pictures of them below). That was really impressive! For more about the event visit their website. (And if you watch the slide show you will see a picture of Crescent and Gibbous, my friends' team") (Oh and we forgot to bring my camera so had to pick up a cheap one at Wal-mart so the pictures are really awful!) Click on the pictures for a bigger view.

And here they are, Crescent is on the Right and Gibbous on the Left. They are Suffolk Punches which were bred specifically for working in the furrow. They are shorter in height, but still very strong. We had just finished harnessing them and they were just waiting to go to work. 


Hitching the Boys to a plow, the teams were doing demos of how the different horse drawn farming equipment worked. 


Getting ready to start plowing

Taking a break with another team, A 3 up of Shires also pulling a plow. It was about 102 degrees so the horses got to take frequent breaks. 

Stan taught Jarrett how to drive the Boys, it was his first time behind a team so he was really excited! He started with the boys on a Harrow, which breaks up the clods of dirt after it is plowed. It just drags on the ground and then you walk behind it.  Then he also go to drive them hitched to a wagon (same one as in the next picture). I don't have any of those pics yet, the new camera was full but I will put them up once I get them. 

And I got to drive a team of Shires for awhile. This is Max and Prince. I got to drive them for quite awhile, they were very good boys, it was a blast!

There are a ton of pictures from the event on their website, Here are a few of our favorites:

Stan & Jarrett hitching the boys to the wagon:  #1  #2

Max & Prince pulling a grader: #1  #2

A 4 up of Shires pulling a wagon: #1

The 27up of mules pulling the Harvester: #1 (use the navigation arrows above the picture to see more, there are a ton!)

And there are lots of other great pictures, just navigate through some of them from those links. 

We also found out that the people we got the Girls from are members of the Club and were there so I got to update them on how they are doing! And it also looks like we will be getting a covered wagon, which we are very excited about!  

Sunday we got to go fishing on the Sacramento River for Stripers. I caught 2 catfish...  Oh well, It was still a blast, and nice to be out on the water in that heat! Driving home late Sunday night, there was a ton of smoke from all of the fires, from the time we turned onto Hwy36 until we hit the house the sky was full of smoke, and we stopped and watched the Telephone Fire (Near the Hwy 36 & Hwy 3 Junction)  for awhile. This morning driving back to the coast there was thick smoke all the way past Bridgeville. There are about 900 acres on fire near Jarrett's place (no danger in coming down though), the Telephone fire that we watched is sitting on the ridge less than 1/4 mile from our friends' Ranch, they have not had to evacuate but crews are working hard on it to keep it from coming closer. 

And Serina is still holding out, I'm just going to ignore her for awhile... She is still developing a bag, and the baby makes her very uncomfortable at times pushing on stuff, but it isn't dropping into position yet, so who knows, she will have it when she has it... 

Lots of training...

We got in some training this weekend!

We started with Bailey, decided to lunge her with some weight to see how she would do since she had some trouble balancing weight last time we worked her. We started her with some feed bags with grain, no problems.

Then moved up to some truck tires. She did great with them, only gave a little buck at a lope, told her no, and she was perfect the rest of the time!


 

Black mooching scratches at dinnertime. He loves his shed, he can stick his head in the barn through the feed door and watch all that is going on...

Then we got Hannah out and worked with her:

She is practicing being patient while we visit with the neighbors.
 

Then we got to ground driving, she did great, though we had to remind her how to step over a log... (Like be somewhere near it first!) But that resolved quickly, so we hooked up the single tree and did some laps just pulling weight on it, which she acted like an old pro at (She has been hitched to a vehicle once).


So we went ahead and had her pull her first log! She was a champ! We had already driven her over the route 5 or 6 times since she had to step over limbs going in to the tree and duck under low branches where it needed pulled out from. Jarrett led her for her to pull her first one since it would be a little bit of tricky ground to pull over. He had to reassure her just a little as she first put her weight into it...


But once it got sliding she decided it was no big deal and walked right out.


 She is such a fast learner! 


 


 


Then we just drove her around the loop a few more times with no weight to teach her it isn't all hard work. We couldn't be more pleased with her.


 

I had to get some pics of Holly, she is developing a really pretty dappling pattern, unfortunately it isn't quite as clear in the pics (the sun was getting low so I didn't get it well) but she is turning an almost smutty palomino with dappling on her belly while staying her regular color up top...

And Serina... still holding out on us...  For those interested this is an excellent article about due dates in mares: http://www.equine-reproduction.com/articles/overdue.shtml  While average gestation in horses is approx 340 days, anywhere between 320 and over 400 days is normal. The longest recorded gestation resulting in a live foal is 445 days, so we are sill well within that range. Older mares tend to carry long (Serina is 23) and some people say colts will cook longer. She is getting bigger, but the baby has not dropped into position yet. Her muscles are starting to loosen a little and she is walking a little funny, she has a half developed udder with amber fluid, and that little baby just drives her nuts some days, but likes to hide when I try to feel. I still get a few kicks out of it every once in a while though. 

A Working weekend! Lots of pics!

We ran non-stop this weekend, Jarrett had an order for Custom Saddle Bags for a motorcycle that he had to fit to the bike on Sunday so we worked on those most of the weekend, but in between we still did some fun things!   Also, please check out the links on the side bar --->  We have some stores if you need to shop for gifts! For the Zazzle store, if you see any pictures you like on here that you would like on one of the many products they have let me know and I would be happy to put it up for you!

Friday Jarrett's cousin called to have him help cut down a few trees. They took down a total of 5 road hazard trees.

Starting tree #2 


Working on the undercut. 


And falling... 


Measuring to cut the logs into millable lengths .


Loading the logs into the truck. 


Tree #3 on the way down... 


And measuring this one... 


Deuling Chainsaws on the Last ones... 


Jarrett wins!

Saturday we finally got to trim Holly's feet, they couldn't hold out any longer. She had major issues about her feet and would run backwards halfway across the yard when we first started trying to pick up her feet, but after about half an hour she was standing very nicely. She also made huge progressions in ground tying, all in all it was an excellent training day for her. She definately has a lot of issues and is very nervous and flighty about things, any sudden movements are likely to get her to try and run, as is a simple pat on the shoulder. She is very very smart though and trusting us more every time we work with her. 


I think she was trying to figure out if she was really tied to the ground! 


Before, the picture actually makes them look better.... 


And After, I couldn't quite get it round yet because of the amount of flare she had on the sides but will do them again in about 2 weeks and I should be able to get them almost back to round.  


And the transformed, relaxed Holly... Much nicer than when we started!  I think she liked her pedicure.



And a pic of the Saddle Bags, click on it for a bigger view.

And Serina is still baking the baby... I'll let everyone know as soon as I know!!! We are starting to see a little more progression though, so hopefully soon!!!