The Changing Seasons – December 2018

As the sun sets on December and I sit down to write my Changing Seasons post, I realize that I don’t really have much to recap that I haven’t already written about on the blog.

It’s been a slower month. My highlights were the trip to Arizona and getting to ride on Christmas Day. In addition to that we’ve been fortunate to be able to visit with friends and neighbors this month and we have had some time off which has been a nice break from our typical work schedules.

It continues to rain. This has been one of the wettest years on record and now that we are in the midst of Winter lacking daylight and warmth the ground just cannot recover. The mud (as I’ve mentioned before) is a challenge. We have put about 15,000 pounds of screenings down in the high traffic areas of the dry lot to combat some of the problem. It is helping but with more endless days of rain in the forecast I’m not sure how well it will hold up. We continue to manage it and the farrier gave us a good report on each of the horse’s feet just this week so I remain hopeful that we can keep them healthy through this.

The wet grounds have also caused our trail systems to close to the horses. Understandably so. They tear things up when everything is so soft, so for the past month there have really not been places open to go ride. They may open for a day here or there but then the rain comes again. I felt very fortunate to get a trail ride in on Christmas day. Our riding arena is also incredibly soggy. These two factors have really limited my time in the saddle this month.

My hubby gets photo credit for this shot

I have managed to get out for a couple of photos shoots in between the rain drops. I’m looking forward to January when I will start a class on Tuesday evenings. Now that I have figured out how to turn the thing on and get it out of automatic mode I’m hungry for a bit more education.

So we look forward to January, not just a new month but a new year!