January

The hot topic on campus these days is a cold one. That is to say that everyone is talking about the weather, which has been very cold. Tomorrow the high is supposed to be around 20 degrees Fahrenheit, much higher than it has been the past few days. The Nordic ski team has a Classic skiing sprint relay in the afternoon--fingers crossed we don't get too chilled! We'll be working hard.

About a month ago, Isabel and I were in Austin. The weather was much nicer there and we both got to ride several times over break.

Jones was good for me. We had a pretty high number of stops at fences but worked through it pretty well. Over the course of those several lessons I got back my feel for him, which was nice. I also worked in some of what I've been learning at Stoneleigh. Stoneleigh is where I learn effective riding. Then I can put it into practice in Austin. I still have a lot of stuff to work on but my seat is way better and I think more clearly in the saddle.

As I said, it's cold up at school. And once again, I miss Austin. I've been going through old photos on my hard drive and finding shots from over the summer. At this time in the Northeast, one doesn't get much sunlight, so it's nice to look at pictures shot in the heat and remember how it feels to be sunburnt and sweaty in short shorts and a tank top.

Rusty and Pepper's pasture is a great example of grazed-down Texas grassland. Pretty, but the grass doesn't grow back very fast.

That's almost enough wishful thinking for today, but I also do miss Jackson. Thinking about summer too much can be very dangerous, as I'm finding out now. It can distract you from whatever you're doing. In my case, homework. It's had to find the motivation to work hard when the prospect of spring and sun is so tantalizingly close.

Isabel has been thinking about trail running next summer when we're in Jackson. There are several trail running groups in the area, of course, and many of them cater to people of all experience levels. And there is nowhere else where I'd rather run. Last summer on one particular hike, she and I double-timed down the trail from Phelps Lake into Teton Village in an attempt to beat our parents, who were set to pick us up there. We did beat them, and the most fun we had was when we were running, despite the fact that we both had on backpacking boots and heavy packs.To prepare for that possibility, I'm planning to run track again this spring. Depending on how my shins feel during the season, I should be in good shape to trail run with Isabel in summer. Last time I ran on the track team, I did not have a good experience. But this time should be better.

At this point, I think most people are ready for the sun to come again. Sugaring is around the corner! After that, it'll be spring. Ben T. is going to be here in mid-February. The Nordic ski season won't last too much longer, and then the team will start helping at the farm. I haven't been able to get down there much lately; probably I've gone twice since winter break ended. That's a little crazy. Soon! This Sunday will be a good day for it.

Ben picking up sap along the Northfield main road sugaring route, my personal favorite

Summer Recap

Summer is almost over. In two days I am headed back to school for my junior year, which promises to be difficult. The days until the day school officially starts will be a whirlwind of packing, travel, volleyball camp, farm work, and meeting up with friends.

Like last summer, this break has been incredibly full. In the first few weeks, after going to Cape Ann, I went to Florida to visit family and went to the Carriage Museum. Instead of taking a driving lesson I just went for a hack around the property, which was a lot of fun and let me have the experience of cantering over bigger hills than I have in the past. It sounds a little silly but I've never really done that before.

After Florida, I came back to Austin for several weeks to ride and play volleyball before going to Washington, DC for my cousin's wedding on the 4th of July weekend.

When I came back from DC I had two weeks to prepare for my one show of the year, the first Summer Circuit. Jones was pretty good; we had a bit of trouble with him stopping out at fences, which cost us a lot of ribbons. However, the rounds when we had no stops were good and we did place in a few classes.Unfortunately, no one took any pictures of my rides.

Two or three days after the end of the show, Isabel and I were on a plane again, this time to Jackson Hole. Finally!

As you can see, there were a lot of moose in the yard! I also made my way out to Mormon Row one morning.

And now I'm back in Austin for a few days. Hope you enjoyed the photos. Also, I am planning to start a one-weekly post schedule when school starts so pictures don't pile up like this. 

Riding in a Cast

Spring break is almost over! This means that I've already finished my shift of farm sugaring, have already gone skiing, and am now back in Austin. Obviously, I have a few pictures to show for it.

Sugaring was incredibly fun. We had several good sap runs, some lovely weather, and best of all it was a week spent living with around 10 of my best friends. It was a very good time.

In Jackson, my dad and I skied for two days. The snow conditions weren't great--I've never seen the Bowl in such terrible shape--but a good part of the mountain was skiable and we had two very good days. The moguls were great!

And that brings us to yesterday, when I went riding in a cast. I didn't think I'd be allowed to ride, but  was proven wrong, on the condition that I make my best effort to not fall off. It was a pretty decent ride--my instructor noted that my hands are much better now than they were last time I rode Jones, and that I must have been doing a lot of flatwork. She was right; that's pretty much all we do at Stoneleigh. (Even if it gets a little frustrating, at least when I start being allowed to jump bigger I'll know that I must have REALLY good eq on the flat. Or something like that.) I think my leg also looks better on the flat. 

My mom took a bunch of pictures. Here are the best ones.

I'll be able to go riding again tomorrow, and might actually be able to take some pictures of my own. Also, I spent a good portion of last night oiling my saddle, so now it looks absolutely gorgeous. I'm always surprised by how well it takes oil. 

More pictures soon!

Break is Coming!

Spring break starts next week, and it can't come a moment too soon. I didn't ride this weekend because last Sunday, after a fairly good lesson on a horse called Moe, he spooked and started galloping and bucking down the arena. I stuck with him for a ways until he reached a jump standard, dropped his head, and swerved to the right to avoid it, at which point I kept going forward and into said jump standard. And I mean  straight into it. I got up right away because of all the adrenaline, but my wrist felt a little funky so I didn't get back on.Which was a good choice because it turned out that it was broken. I also got a minor concussion, but since I had a helmet on and didn't hit my head very hard, the symptoms went away quickly. My arm is now in a bright-red cast and my role in sugaring season on the farm has been reduced to hanging around the barn waiting for someone to ask me to do any small task.

Despite the major annoyances of having one hand to use, it has its perks. For one, I don't think anyone would allow me to muck out stalls--but they're still letting me supervise morning and evening chores. Well, probably. And I should be able to lead animals around now that I have a hard cast.

The day before I broke my wrist was the one day I got to go out and do normal sugaring chores. A large group of us went out to finish putting taps on trees on the Mount Hermon campus. There were so many people to help that my job became that of official photographer (or something like that).

It was a good day! Since then we've made around 100 gallons of syrup.

Riding at Stoneleigh

Sunday was my day for riding at Stoneleigh. Needless to say, after two weeks of being grounded, I was pretty excited. My advisor drove me and the other girl who sometimes rides with me to the barn. Our instructor put me on a horse called Bandit. He's a pretty small chestnut and seemed to be worried that the world was going to eat him, but he wasn't as jumpy as some horses I've ridden. When we started trotting round the ring I found that he's very stiff and it's hard to get him to bend. However our instructor did say that when I was warming up at the trot and the canter I did a good job keeping him quiet and relatively soft, and the jumps started off quite well.

He started getting a bit fast as we progressed through the little course. At the third fence we had to circle because it was a tight turn and I didn't get him well enough bent to get around it properly. That was the start of our woes. Then at the fourth fence, a diagonal, he got very quick and I didn't half-halt strongly enough. It should have worked out but someone on the other side of the fence accidentally kicked a standard. This horse, who thought the world wanted to eat him, wasn't having any of that so he went left and I continued forward. I wasn't hurt at all--I rolled onto my back and although the back of my head sort of cracked the ground I had a good helmet on. I got up quickly and our instructor said it was a good fall. After that we didn't have much time left in the lesson so Bandit and I just jumped the one he refused and finished the course.

Although I felt pretty ashamed about falling off, the rest of the lesson was actually pretty decent. Bandit never did want to bend to the inside but I kept him moving at a steady pace on the flat and as far as my equitation goes, it wasn't terrible. My advisor was there taking pictures; from what I could see on his camera's screen, my leg has improved a lot since I last saw photos of myself riding. If he sends them to me and gives me permission to post them here, I will.

After the lesson both my advisor and I went outside to take some pictures of the horses. It was really cold so I only got a couple of shots.

You may recognize this horse from one of my previous posts. He's probably the most photogenic horse at the barn, or at least he perks up his ears the most often.

Until next time!

Uruguay Photo Dump

Over the summer when  I was in Uruguay, I didn't take as many photos as I should have. It was a really cool experience which I now wish I had documented more fully. I did take a lot more than I have shown anyone, though. A few months ago I posted maybe three photos, which were the only ones I wanted to edit at the time. But today I went through and opened up a few more in Photoshop. Here they are.

Maldonado

At a museum in Punta del Este

Near Punta del Este

Waves

Estancia Finca Piedra

At a wildlife preserve on the way to Punta del Este

Draft Pulling

Two weekends ago was Family Weekend up here at school. My parents flew up for the long weekend. For Friday and Saturday we hung around campus; my parents had parent-teacher conferences and I was leaping on the opportunity to staff the farm stand. This was apparently a bad math weekend for me, because I kept having trouble making change. Several parents raised their eyebrows and one practically reprimanded me for being mathematically challenged. But honestly, who really cares about skeptical parents when you're hanging around the farm?

After all of our business on campus was finished, it was time to drive up to New Hampshire to hike. I'm actually going to make a different post about the hiking; this is about what we saw on the way up to Pinkham Notch, and how we almost missed dinner (served at 6:00 PM sharp, and don't even think about being late!).

As we drove away from school through Swanzey, Mass, we ran across a massive tack shop called the Cheshire Horse. Inside they had a flier about the 54th Annual Eastern Draft Horse Association Championship Round Up. My dad was really interested so away we went to find the fairgrounds where the last event of the weekend was taking place.

When we arrived, the final pulling competition was in full swing, and what a sight it was. There was a huge tractor at one end of the ring, attached to a metal sledge loaded with enormous cement blocks. The tractor pulled the sledge back after each team pulled. The arena was full of both horses and people. Teams of two horses were lined up at the larger end of the ring with a small open space in the middle. And all around were camp chairs with people in them, presumably drivers of these teams. It seemed like an incredibly dangerous setup to me, especially because sometimes the teams would be walking over to the sledge and almost run into one of the people hanging around on the sides.

The pulling was amazing. These horses were in the 3400 lb weight class, which I'm pretty sure included both of the horses. They would be ground driven to the sledge, turned around, and two handlers on either side would drop the yoke onto a hook on the sledge. The horses would then explode forward, urged on by their eager drivers (sometimes aided by hats flapped at the horses' rears).

The horses were originally pulling 8000 lbs. Then as teams were eliminated, it became 9000 lbs and then 9500 lbs. We had to leave before they added any more.

I thought the horses were really pretty, as well as kind of ferocious-looking when they were being driven.

Still, I'd rather be outside the pen petting them than in the ring driving them.

I'll be posting more photos of these guys later (I took over 1000) as well as photos from Stoneleigh-Burnham and Mount Washington.

The Horse Show

Last weekend I rode at the only horse show I've done all year. I'll say preemptively that we didn't bring home any ribbons. Jones kept refusing fences because I was either inadvertently holding onto his mouth or I looked down for the stride instead of riding it properly, or some other combination of little mistakes that made a difference. We actually did pretty well-- the lines and single fences that he didn't refuse were really good!

Even though we didn't win anything I still had a great time. I took a lot of photos, too.

All the photos I shot as stock are posted on my deviantART stock account, Ophelia-Stock. Feel free to take a look!

Florida Carriage Museum: Day One (Long Post)

This week I'm visiting my grandparents in Florida. We get a lot of down time when we visit here and although it's immensely relaxing, sometimes it's nice to really get out and do something. Lucky for us, the Florida Carriage Museum is just a half-hour's drive away.

Photo credit to my mom

The museum in itself is truly remarkable. They have all sorts of equine-pulled vehicles on display, complete with large model horses that match certain carriages. Some aren't lucky enough to have horses but oh well. They're just as cool. We didn't go in there this time around, because we've already been twice and admission is expensive. However, I don't think we've forgotten how awesome it is. It's also a resort which gives carriage rides with the four-in-hand (see picture above), hosts weddings, and basically operates the way you'd expect any other destination resort to operate.

Well, actually they don't really. The place hosts the Horse Shows in the Park, which are schooling shows for HITS, a big prestigious horse show thingy in Florida. A couple summers age we attended one, which was admittedly pretty unimpressive (AKA my horse and I could have ridden rounds to equal theirs, even with all our issues). It's a great show venue, though, and I think the people showing really enjoyed it.

Leaving the barn during my lesson

We went there today so I could take a driving lesson. They offer lessons for many styles of driving, and you have to begin with a single. Last year I took a lesson, as well, but most of the harnessing stuff slipped my mind pretty quickly along with how to turn. This summer I will hopefully be going further and learning to drive a double as well. My high school for next year has a farm program in which I should be able to drive the draft horses if I'm good enough. They go in pairs, so it's essential that I learn now.In my opinion, anyway.

The lesson was a lot of fun. I remembered most of it when we actually got started, so I think I have a good chance of learning to drive doubles during at least one of our two lessons next week. One of the great parts of taking lessons at the museum is that the scenery is absolutely stunning. The property is enormous and filled with large and beautifully kept pastures, most of which house only two or three horses, if that. And there are a lot of horses. After the lesson was over I convinced my mom, grandma, and sister to walk around part of the grounds so I could meet some of the horses and take pictures.

The first horse we met was called Hugo. He was at the top of the pasture when we first saw him but then  a golf cart drove by and he came galloping down to meet it. We, incidentally, were right there.

Galloping to meet us

Then we walked up by where the horse I had been driving, Tonto, was pastured. He's a Paint Horse-Draft cross. Very cute and chunky.

Tonto

The next pasture along the road was full of two Friesians. One of them had just been used in the four-in-hand so he was rolling right as we walked up.

Fuzzy Wuzzy...

Itchy itchy

The fields right across each had a little chestnut pony.

Bad shot of Pony #1

Equally mediocre shot of Pony #2

The next horses we came across were pretty far along the loop we took, but it was definitely worth it to get some of the shots I did. The first was of this stunning Gypsy Vanner (I think...) who was in a pasture by himself. He was moving around a lot and the pics of him are pretty blurry because I stupidly forgot to turn the camera setting from "Flash Off" to "Sports." Head-desk. Either way,  the horse really makes up for it by being lovely. Excuse me for including lots of pictures of him because I can't help it.

 Ok, admit it, you enjoy looking at this horse. Right?!

 Hugo made a comeback, now with his friend. Apparently they got moved to a different pasture.

 Almost done! There was another pasture of Vanners at the bottom of the hill. Their manes were all braided to keep them from getting dirty, and it looked very cute.

Two pictures to go! One of the last horses we saw appeared to be a Haflinger. Sweet face, no?

 And the last equids... a rare French donkey protecting what I believe is either a mini or a Falabella. I'm leaning towards Falabella, because the proportions don't appear particularly horse-like. Either way, very sweet! The donkey is there to protect the mini from predators, because donkeys are good at that and I can definitely see the mini needing it.

All done! At last, eh? I'll be repeating this twice next week, too, on Tuesday and Wednesday. Be aware. And I can't resist putting in this last photo, which is what a lot of you must be thinking/feeling at this moment with the gargantuan post.

OMGISHH PICTURE HEAVY