planBE

This has been a great week of returning to campus. New students, new classes, new programs, new shoes. After months of “summer camp” spent mostly playing around on horseback in the woods, it was an abrupt pivot to more intellectual pursuits. But I did miss the barn and my wonderful horse, so I was ecstatic to go back today for a short jaunt in the woods with Q and fellow boarder M. I think my horse literally rolled his eyes at me when I hugged his face and kissed his nose. But he was happy to go for a ride, and get lots of peppermints and carrots for his efforts (and patience). Tomorrow is a rest day (post osteopath treatment) and then it will be a nice long weekend of trailrides and searching for hidden fairy houses. Happy labour day weekend!

What a great ride yesterday! Q and I accompanied our past trail buddy who switched barns last spring and really struggled this summer with what appears to be seasonal headshaking. Bummer. I also tried something that seemed to work, but not sure if it's just coincidence. When his horse started violently headshaking (clearly in pain), I stopped and turned around to face him. The horse looked at me, stopped headshaking and I gave him a peppermint. In all, I gave him three peppermints during the ride (not when he was actually shaking), and it seemed to distract him? We also worked hard on keeping the pace low-key and the horses on the buckle. I did have to remind my friend to drop the reins several times, but I think his horse appreciated the lack of pressure. The headshaking seems to be light sensitivity, and perhaps some allergies as well. The horse wore a dark flymask to protect his eyes from the sun, and it seems to help. The symptoms disappear at night, and will likely disappe

It has been over twenty-five years since I did a solo trail ride bareback. Today was the day. Q was amazing, and gave me the confidence to ride on the buckle most of the way. When we came up to a road crossing, I got nervous because I could hear an unseen car climbing the road and was afraid it was the roadster sans muffler that had been gunning it up and down the road earlier. So I asked Q to trot, and he steadily complied with the smoothest transitions. Comfy and confident! The last time I had done this was with my first QH Rocky that I moved from Canada to Costa Rica (in the winter - bad idea) to live on the Pacific Ocean with me. We would go ride on the beach and in the ocean and bareback was the way to go. It was mostly walking around and I honestly don’t remember galloping bareback since my poney days as a teenager. Of course my new best friends bareback pad is amazing. It provides a little cushion, gives a stickiness to my seat with the suede-like top and adheres to Q

It was just gorgeous today with blue skies and a cool breeze. Temperatures were hovering in the low 20s and I had a trail plan to execute. I was hoping to top 20 kmh (fail), do my new favorite zig zag trail at a canter (fail), keep a zippy pace (success), and enjoy the fabulous weather (success). I tacked up fast (7 minutes) and left before anyone could volunteer to tag along. I wanted to enjoy my last day of “summer camp” doing my ride, no compromises. Q was soooo mellow. I was able to trot most of the way on the buckle, and even did my first canter on the buckle until I heard a voice up ahead shout a tentative “hello?”. I couldn’t see through the shadows but saw the two TBs walking towards me soon enough. A quick chat, and we were off again. We walked down the ravines but trotted and cantered up all four of them. I did find Q was a bit tired on some of them, but he recovered really fast. I think he will be up for a quiet recovery trail tomorrow and maybe Ill eve

It was a funny weather day. One minute black skies, next minute blue skies. I decided to abort my longer trail plans and stick close to home in case of thunder and lightening. Every time I would turn away from home the skies would darken. I did a pretty fast ride but am unimpressed by my stats, both average and max speed. I felt like my canter was pretty fast but it seems no faster than a good trot. Hmm. Im starting to think that I might have lost my mojo on my last fall and have returned to more conservative riding again. Hmmm. Well it was a humid day so we were both in a sweat when we returned. Q was happy to get a shower and some grazing. I was happy to end the day in my hammock. Tomorrow, a return to bareback in my new best friends pad.

Sometimes you literally stumble on something. Like the abundant grape crop impeding my husband from cutting the grass. Or the verjus I was offered to flavor my water at a recent outing in a farm-to-table and locavore restaurant. Because local means no lemon or lime. Verjus? Turns out, this is a thing. Its an old as time recipe, made from not quite ripe grapes, apples or crabapples, that reduces them to a tart juice to be used in recipes, water, to make jam. Compared to a lemon, but more like tamarind, its a flavour enhancer. Called verjus in France, verjuice in England, and sour grapes in Persian cooking. The longest part of processing is the labour intensive removal of grapes to stem. Then I parboiled, blendered, filtered to remove skins and bits, boiled down to make jam or used in recipes. The jam is downright delicious, and although the sugar content (2 cups white sugar to 5 cups of verjus) was low Im still planning on making another recipe sugar free with some of those blackber

My husbands budding green thumb has prompted our withering backyard grape vine to provide us its most abundant harvest yet. Buckets of grapes from a single vine! The grape varietal is unknown, but hardy, small fruit, tart, green, and with a slight blush when mature. We picked them all last night as they are starting to be eaten by birds, squirrels, and falling to the ground. Now the questions what do we do with them? We have tried jam (delicious), persian-type stews, verjus. They are too tart to eat, and we dont have the equipment to make wine. Im thinking of making more jam but sweetening with apples instead of sugar, freezing some for stews this winter, and making some verjus to replace lemon in my water. Any other ideas?

The last of the section installments, #5 is one of the most beautiful sections of our trail system that is unfortunately isolated on the west side of a very busy country road with lots of traffic including a lot of tractor-trailers, buses, and motorcycle groups. Averaging 100 km/h and with poor visibility at the trail crossings, it requires some significant courage to venture here. Heading out to meet with C in the big field. It was a glorious day! We did a good distance, but kept the speed very conservative. But once here, its is glorious. Section 5 has an abundance of trail types, with lots of winding single track up and down hills with the occasional rocky path. There is also a great jump path with several log jumps in a winding path with an option to abort. And there are some great galloping (or cantering) trails with excellent firm footing. There is a lovely path that opens up into a gorgeous field filled with wildflowers, and a cute fo

What a pleasure to spend the morning picking berries with my mom. The blueberries were not yet ripe, but the blackberries were starting to ripen. It was hard to see them from the trails but once we went through the thorny bushes they started to appear. Pickings were still a bit slim, and many of the fruits were a bit small. But we will go out two more times over the next two weeks and hope for more abundance. These babies were hiding behind some bushes My mom is 81 years young and still a firecracker. Although she stopped riding a few years ago, she still volunteers twice a week at the local horse rescue doing chores ... even stacking hay!!! Here is a picture of us on our palominos dressed up for the western pleasure pairs class. It was a hoot of a time, with tons of trail riding and the occasional shows. On trail, we enjoyed the nickname of the golden ghosts as we trotted and cantered through the forest. Mom & I on Mare & Son Things changed a while ago, and bot

My fun-loving barn friends and I pulled off a prank today between thunderstorms and darkening skies. We pulled out a garden gnome, strapped it on to Cs back, fixed it up with a sign and some duck tape with the saying “Ride like the WIND” (our barn motto), and ran out between showers on horseback to plant it in the pixie hollow. Two partners in crime, with their riders, prepping for their speedy trip. The  pixie hollow also got an upgrade from the girls at summer camp, with mounds of moss hiding the houses like hobbits. And there is a new pixie treehouse. Pixie Hollow 2.0 The houses now have hobbit-like shelters made of moss. Seems to me like the gnome looks right at home here. Fingers crossed he doesn’t do any bad voodoo magic on passerbys. Or that he doesn’t get stolen/borrowed? We made it back to the barn dry as a bone, before the rain started again. Free of our bounty, we seemed to hit 15 mph at a trot on the return trip according to my new Horse Glob