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.

Fall is Here

It might be the slowly changing leaves around here, or it might be the chilly rains that have made each Friday night for the past two weeks more miserable than usual, but one thing is certain: fall is on the way. Or here. Technically fall started on the 22nd, so I guess it's here. Many of the trees are still greenish or mostly green, and we are still getting some warmer days. But the coming of fall means that I will be taking much more colorful photos than usual, which makes me incredibly happy. Taking pictures of animals in front of green stuff gets a little boring sometimes, and I'm not getting enough sleep to warrant shooting the sunrise.

The farm has been doing well; Liam is the new farm manager and we also have a farm intern now, who runs half-marathons and is pretty darn awesome himself. And of course, Rachel is still around, though I don't get to see her nearly as often as I'd like.

Raspberry season is still going strong, and despite a number of really awful vinegar flies the cold weather has meant that we can make jam without worrying too much about getting larvae in it (yuck!).

Picking raspberries is still not the most fun job, but hanging around with farm people is worth it.

There's more to tell, but this will do as an update for now. Expect more photos from the farm, but this time it won't be of raspberries. Tomorrow we pick up our first crates of apples from the orchards, and cidering season will be on its way!

It's that time of year again.

School time! Although it seems a little strange, I'm really quite excited to get down to work. Classes start tomorrow, so I don't have too long to wait. Volleyball tryouts are happening right now; I had a 7 AM to 9AM session this morning and will have another at 3:30 this afternoon. I still don't know if I'll make the varsity team or not, but I can work really hard and that's what I've been doing. In a few days I'll know.

I haven't been very good about taking photos over the past few days because of orientation activities and tryouts and setting up my room and seeing friends... however, I did work on the farm for three days and got some photos from there. And that's really the best place for it anyway, since it's so pretty there this time of year. There are so many flowers blooming, tomatoes and asparagus growing, calves sitting around and eating...

We still have Jordan, Ricky, and Pete, although they would normally have gone to live with another farmer at the end of last school year. They will be leaving at some point, but that point has not yet come and I'm perfectly content to keep them as long as possible. I got a few good photos of them the other day, too. Jordan is growing into a very handsome young bull, if I may say so. He still has the adorable white spots above his hooves, but you can't really see them here. 

The grass has gotten high where the calves haven't been eating in, which led to some interesting shots.

Ricky and Pete are also growing up to be quite photogenic.

This was just an experiment...

Here are the rest of the miscellaneous shots I took over the few days I was at the farm all day, every day.

Hope you enjoyed them! I certainly had fun shooting them. More to come soon, and maybe I'll get to use the fog in the mornings; I have A block off of class to work on the farm.