I had a very good first meeting first board meeting with the ApHC this past week and was very impressed with the new CEO of the Appaloosa Horse Club.  We made lots of motions and addressed lots of issues.  The next projects I will be working on are the international committee and the breeders committee.  We will be developing a new system for international horses to become registered appaloosas as well as dealing with the frozen semen issues that might arise.  We have experience with this as you know because of our Swiss foals.

Spice decided that her big, grassy pasture she shares with Fanny just wasn’t quite luscious enough.  She wanted to be in the sparse, cropped-down, weedy smaller pasture that the foals normally spend their day in. Go figure.  I couldn’t repair the broken fence because she had knocked down a 16-foot section and the kids weren’t quite strong enough and tall enough to hold the boards in place while I worked. Very heavy!  So I thought a moment and instead of a temporary fix that might not hold if those big mommas put their shoulders into it, I just cleaned up the boards, opened the connecting gate and let them have a double-wide for the day. Tsk-tsk.

Bill finally got the cable that runs from the new barn to the bird barn buried under the ground. It was a project that needed doing but never seemed as urgent as other projects. The cable ran along the top of the grass and made us nervous every time we mowed! We’d have to move it around and be very careful not to run over it. Now it’s out of the way.

The hay came in last Saturday, and wouldn’t you know Bill was gone! That left Susan and several high-school helpers to load in 1600 (yes, that’s what we said!!) bales of hay. Twice during the day today Carl the Hay Guy stopped to talk to Susan privately saying that the bales were heavier than he had expected since the alfalfa part of the mixture had done so well since planting and that carried a lot of moisture.  He also said he had badly miscalculated the number of bales we’d get, upping the count first to 1300 and then to 1600 or 1700 bales.  Then they knew they’d never make it, they were keeping up with him for the first eight wagonloads and then fatigue started to kick in and the last eight wagons started to slowly pile up behind them.  With four wagons to go it started to rain and Susan began to pull those last four into the arena willy nilly to get them out of the rain as fast as possible.  The boys picked up all the loose hay and broken bales while Susan brought in the horses and fed them.  Boy Zippy was sure wound up with the trailers flying around and tractors whizzing by and horses being trotted into the barn.  I’m sure he was thinking what gives?!?  With all those trailers, how come I didn’t get collected today??