Jason Shares His Thoughts on Farming

Melissa wrote once that her passion is horses; everything about them stirs something in her that nothing else can or probably ever will replace. As such, she has endlessly devoted herself to studying them and caring for them. Largely thanks to her we run a growing and successful farm business based on caring for aged and retired horses.

My passion in life is farming; literally everything about it makes me feel good about who I am and what I am doing on this earth. It has been so ever since I can remember following my grandfather literally through each season since I was a small child. I grew up among a large, kind and loving extended family. However, of everyone in the family, my granddad always seemed to be the one who had endless time for me, and he certainly had an outsized role in shaping the man I have become. If he had a favourite grandchild amongst his large brood…..and this was never a certain thing….that grandchild was probably me. Thanks to the endless hours I spent with him, I gained a depth of old rural knowledge uncommon in children of my generation even in the community where I grew up. One of the things I remember best about the years I spent working with him every day around the farm was his slow and persistent way of accomplishing large, seemingly endless tasks (of which there are a God’s plenty on any working farm). He never looked like he was working very hard or accomplishing very much, but he was ALWAYS working…and by days end he had usually out-accomplished all the rest of us while consuming what seemed like half the expenditure of labour we required in the process !

My grandfather was an excellent farmer who got his greatest joy out of doing the work itself, no matter what that work happened to be. Since I am definitely not my grandfather in this respect….I fully detest some tasks (!!), I have to find my salvation elsewhere !

What gives me equal parts comfort, joy and peace is working within the rhythm of the seasons to correct imbalances and in so doing to make everything living thing on the farm perform more vigourously than it did before. On this farm I very much like to see my horses, cows and pastures perform with vigour ! I once compared my role on the farm to that of a maestro conducting an orchestra and I think this is an apt comparison, although there aren’t very many maestros who have hands as dirty as mine at the end of the day ! Thankfully, maestro is a necessary job description on a farm too!

So in back of my answers to unasked reader questions there (unsurprisingly) lies a question for all you readers. Which part of the horse experience brings out your passion to the highest degree ? Is your passion highest while in the heat of competition, or does some other aspect of horse keeping, or indeed life generally, bring it out more ?

Bella the dog, Mina and Jo (World's Cutest Fainting Goats) and Billy were hanging out in the sun today

Buffy and Missy

Baby, Thomas, Homer and Trigger grazing in the morning sun

Cuff Links and Bella

Lucky was taking a nap while Chili grazed

MyLight flirting with Thomas (Trigger and Baby in the background)

Sebastian and Asterik; I love how Asterik is looking so clean (NOT!)

B-Rad's alert expression made him look so cute I had to take his picture

Faune and Winston

That's Missy hiding in the hay

Levendi