Scarlett O'Hara Moments

Our wonderful vet from Tennessee Equine Hospital was at the farm today. He was looking around and commenting, as he often does, that when he thinks of the perfect life for a horse our set up is what he thinks of. It is always nice to hear these things from your vet!

As he continued looking around and enjoying the view he noticed a broken fence board. This is pretty out of character for us so he commented on it. The broken board was in a section of fenceline that separates a pasture with mares from a pasture with geldings. Jason feels like his second job is keeping this section of fenceline in good repair.

I told the vet that I had actually seen the board be popped off this morning and already let Jason know that we had another board to repair. I then told him that Jason loves to make declarations about things from time to time. I call them his "Scarlett O'Hara" moments. You know her line from Gone With The Wind, " God as my witness I shall never go hungry again!"

I've already told the story about one of Jason's Scarlett moments. As we went about our epic 4 year search for a new farm one of his declarations was "With God as my witness I will never pick up another rock again!" Well, we all know how that turned out.

I told the vet today about Jason's most recent Scarlett O'Hara moment. While Jason was repairing the 10,000th or so broken fence board in the section that runs between mares and geldings he made the declaration of "with God as my witness I will never have mares and geldings sharing a fenceline again." He said it with so much passion I couldn't help but start laughing which only annoyed him further. Jason finds it very annoying when I laugh when he is being really serious which in turn only makes me start laughing harder.

Jason: "Why are you laughing, this is NOT funny!"

Me: "Oh yes it is, it is VERY funny!"

I have to say that I am actually in agreement with him and his latest Scarlett O'Hara declaration. It can be fun at times to watch the mares and geldings flirt and watch the boys and girls groom each other over the fence but quite frankly it isn't worth it in our opinion! From a time, labor and money perspective none of it is cute enough to make us enjoy continually replacing fence boards.

At the new farm not only will their be no shared fencelines between mares and geldings, all however many thousands of feet of four board fence we end up with will have a strand of electric wire on the inside of it. No more mares and geldings breaking fence boards. All the horses like using the fence as a scratching post as well. There will be no more of that either, and no more leaning over the fence for any reason. At times, while he is replacing another broken board, Jason jokes that he is going to wire the hotwire directly into the main electrical service and any horse that dares to be up against the fence for any reason will be lit up by a blue arc.

It really is true, horses are born looking for ways to hurt themselves. I see this truth played out every day. The only part that amazes me is how often they do silly and stupid things and do not get hurt.

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Maisie

Stormy and Tiny

Buster, one of the pet cows

Thor and Lightening

Noble

I could take this picture every day; Gus, Romeo, Fonzi, Asterik, Silver and Chimano bursting out of the woods on one of their daily runs

Tony and Trigger

Clayton hanging out, Stormy eating leaves, Toledo grazing

Grand, Levendi, Hemi and Leo