chirpity chirp
Whoa. Tired. First day at the farm. First off, it's amazing. Completely dreamy. It's way out in Plant City off of CR39, so naturally it's quite down-home. You turn into this place called Polo Plantation & immediately to your left are two huge polo fields. They stretch across the fronts of all six of the farms. You drive past five farms & then the sixth on the left is Jenny's. It's called Springhead Farms. She has twenty acres & they're simply gorgeous. There are paddocks all over the place. She probably has about fifteen in all, most for the horses & one for the two cows, one goat, one turkey & one feral pig to live in. Ten of the paddocks are pit front. When you go up the driveway, you turn left & you come to her main barn with the attached house. there are sixteen stalls in the main barn & there's a tack room to the side. If you walk through that barn, you come to the next five paddocks. There's a little clearing & then a walkway between the paddocks. The back paddocks are for the polo horses. So at the end of the walkway is second barn where she keeps a lot of the polo horses. It's going to be a showbarn in the near future. there are eighteen stalls back there. the whole property is really wooded and just beautiful.
I got there at 9:00 & immediately went to feed. I put feed in the first sixteen stalls & then brought the horses into their stalls. I had to halter all of them & it just got easier as it went. I was filthy the minute I got out of my car because her collie, Stanley jumped all over me with his lovely muddy paws. So, trekking through the mud didn't faze me too much. After we were finished feeding, we loaded more food into the Gator & headed to get the mail (half a mile down the road). Stanley ran with us the whole way & we were going like 20 mph. It's fast when you're on a Gator, okay?! So after that we went to the back barn & put feed in the other four occupied stalls. I started shoveling them out (yes, the poop.) while she brought them in. She didn't want me handling them because they were polo horses & they were still really young & unpredictable. One was actually an abused colt, so he bites & kicks. The only one back there she let me handle was Fancy. She's a retired polo horse because she has cataracts in one eye & she's only twelve. When I was done shoveling out the stables, I went up to help her move the jumps so she could mow. Then I headed back to the back barn to bring Fancy around to get a bath. Okay, get this. I drove the Gator, which is like a four-wheeler. I held her halter behind me. I just drove it up to the washslab & she trotted behind me. That is so cool. A lot of horses, especially Thoroughbreds, would spook. Okay, I just thought it was neat. So, I gave her a bath & brushed her tail & all, & then I left. It was so much fun just to be out there in the country & to be around the horses all day. Jenny said I could go back tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I'm going to or not. I probably will for a couple of hours because she said I could just play around with the horses. If Dave's there, I might ride him. Yay for horses! Hooplah. Oh yeah! Her lady Collie, Dixie, had seven babies last weekend, so I saw them today & they're so adorable! My goodness. The sweetest things.
I think I might lease a horse in the upcoming months. It's basically like when you work for her a lot & t hen in turn she lets you borrow one of her horses. It stays there & she still feeds it & everything, but no one can ride it except you. You can go out there whenever you want & bathe it or take care of it or ride it or train it or what have you! It sounds like a plan to me. So, we shall see.
Sorry. I was just so excited.
&how was YOUR day?