Selena left for Quebec on Tuesday with Peanuts but life at Hawkridge Farm is NEVER quiet and this week seems to be particularly hectic – so….I am still not at Bromont, I am hoping to leave later today after our mare Be Bold Juliet is bred (everything happens when you want to go away).
Since Solo is not working this week I thought I would take a couple of photos of the little barn where Solo and Waldo are spending the summer. It’s a bit like “going to the cottage” for horses. The summer barn is on the far side of the property and has only six stalls. It is quite beautiful and sits with it’s six lush green paddocks on the curve of the river bank. There is a small road that leads in, but it probably only has five or six cars a day. All in all, it’s a calm, peaceful place, the noisiest things around are the frogs.
It’s so nice that all sorts of people move in. Last Saturday, Selena had brought the horses into the stalls around 5am before she left for Killusty horse trials. When I got over there to skip out and tidy up, it was about two hours later. I went into the stall of a lovely big grey called Darwin and started picking poop – as I got to the last corner, the poop got up and ran away!!! It was a little baby bunny, brown with a tiny white stripe along it’s head between it’s tiny little ears. I carefully took it out and let it go in the long grass. I guess he enjoyed the whole trip because on Tuesday morning, there he was in Darwin’s stall again, waiting for me. This time I kept him in Peanut’s empty stall until we turned the horses out at 10pm. After the horses went out, I left the doors open and yesterday morning he was gone again. I wonder if he will be back, I hope not, it’s only luck that my jack russells didn’t find him first.
We also share the “back barn” with beavers, deer, a fisher, dozens of turtles, snakes and hoppy green people, a big ratty thing that I don’t know what it is, a grey heron who flies up out the river reeds whenever you are riding a four year old and a selection of voracious insects. One of the four year olds came in with porcupine quills in his nose the other morning, I guess he will leave Mr. Porcupine alone from now on.
