Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Equestrians







The kids learned to be very comfortable on horses and were riding by themselves (on mellow horses) pretty quickly. They can even ride bareback, a step I was never quite ready to take! Here are some photos of them riding separate and together. There was an area on the ranch with 3 small lakes about a 40 minute ride away that had the only producing apple tree this year that we rode to several times to stock up on fresh fruit which we ate in every conceivable form including an apple crumble cooked in our woodfired oven and apple fritters we improvised! Here is a photo of a cold ride we took there in the middle of the month! Shannon was lucky enough to go on a couple half day rides with clients and with ranch work. She also got to help round up the young steers which were getting pushed to the lower pasture to meet a cattle truck. Very fun!


Dave had an exciting day going to help our friend Horacio get a steer that had a broken leg and couldnt make it out to the cattle truck. They rode out with 2 others and herded the steer to a tree, lassoed it then Horacio slit its throat with his gaucho knife. Then they had to hoist it into the tree and butcher it, tie it on their horses and head back to the ranch 1 hr away. Dave´s horse freaked out about the meat being on its back so he switched to Horacio´s horse Pegasus (the name being a bad omen for a novice rider!). Pegasus then unbeknownst to anyone got a huge rock in his shoe and freaked out, taking off at a gallop uphill jumping over bushes until Dave could stop him! A little excitement in his life for sure!! That night had a gaucho asado in the barn of beef - a very welcome change from all the goat asados! We have nicknamed Cassidy the Barbarian Princess or carnivorous Cassidy for the way she chows down at Asados with a big chunk of meat in her hand!!

No comments: