Sunday~Horsin' Around!

It was another cold, damp April day but it didn't stop Sarah and Julia from spending a couple of hours in the barn.  At one point, I looked out the window and saw Sarah leading our oldest horse, Lizzy around the yard.  They would stop every few minutes and both she and Julia would start brushing her.  The horses are shedding their winter fur right now and the grass underneath Lizzy looked like a barber shop floor on a Saturday morning!  The weather has been so crazy this winter that I am a little concerned that the horses are losing their fur now.  They are predicting 12 inches of snow tonight just three hours away in Buffalo!  

I made a "dinner" for lunch since we decided to go to mass this evening.  I baked chicken in the oven.  Due to the cold weather, Cliff has had the wood stove burning since Friday night.  I put my pots of red potatoes and corn on the cob on the top of the wood stove to simmer.  I use the wood stove as a stove most of the winter.  I often think of myself as Ma Ingalls when I cook this way!!!  

After lunch, Cliff and the girls headed out to the barn.  I stayed in to do some research for the website.  Since I wasn't in the barn, I am going to let Sarah write what they did:

At the barn, we first fed the barn cats, chickens + chicks, our dog Scooby, and my goat Loniga. When I went to get my horse down from the pasture, I decided I wanted to lead her outside the barn. When I got her halter on I saw Alicia putting her horse Patches' halter on him. When I finally got outside Sassy started eating when I did not tell her to eat, so I told her "no" and kept on walking. When I let her eat, she started rubbing against my body. Normally, Sassy does that to my dad when he is in her stall. Sassy rubs my dad so he is forced to back up into the wall. Anyway, while she was eating I saw Alicia leading Patches up to the pasture. After like 3 seconds Patches bolted down to the barn with Alicia standing stunned in the pasture!  After that happened she kept on training him by bringing him back up to the pasture and back down without him bolting by putting tension on his bit. Meanwhile, I put Sassy back into her stall.  Julia asked me if I could put Lizzy's halter on for her so she could lead Lizzy.  But after 5 min of leading her Lizzy nudged Julia hard and that nudge hurt Julia's stomach.  While I was leading Sassy the 2nd time our neighbor's horse, Gem started neighing at Sassy. But since Sassy knows not to talk to strangers, she just looked, put her head down and started munching grass. After all the leading, and training we finally fed the horses and gave them our leftover corn cobs. We had 8 full cobs, and three horses. So we gave each horse 2 full ones and 1/2. The extra half I gave to Loniga. While I was feeding Loniga his corn cob, I saw a perfect hole in the hay I gave him. After that we went in our Dad's Kawaski Mule, with 2 hay bales. We drove in that pasture and dropped the hay off. While in the pasture I found a large rock.  Alicia immediately started woking on pulling it up. But we ran out of time and had to go. After we exited the pasture gate, we picked up some wood and stacked it on the porch so we could have wood for our wood stove inside.  When we got inside, we had hot cocoa!  And that is what we did in the barn today!

Yes, Sarah can write...let's hope her ELA's reveal the same!  With that summary of the day, I will end tonight.  Sweet Dreams!