Tag: Haflinger horses

Another Manure Tale

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I spend about an hour a day shoveling manure out of eight horse stalls.  Wheeled to a mountainous pile in our barnyard,  it happily composts year round, becoming rich fertilizer in a matter of months through a crucible-like heating process of organic chemistry, bacteria and earthworms.  Nothing mankind has achieved quite matches the drama of useless and basically disgusting stuff transforming into the essential elements needed for productive growth and survival.  I’m in awe, every day, at being part of this process.  The horses, major contributors that they are, act underwhelmed by my enthusiasm.  I guess some miracles are relative, depending on one’s perspective, but if the horses understood that the grass they contentedly eat in the pasture, or the hay they munch on during the winter months, was grown thanks to their carefully recycled manure, they might be more impressed.

Their nonchalance about the daily mucking routine is understandable.  If they are outside, they probably don’t notice their beds are clean when they return to the stalls at night.  If they are inside during the heavy rain days, they feel duty-bound to be in my face as I move about their stall, toting my pitchfork and pushing a wheelbarrow.  I’m a source of constant amusement as they nose my jacket pockets for treats that I never carry, as they beg for scratches on their unreachable itchy spots, and as they attempt to overturn an almost full load, just to see balls of manure roll to all corners of the stall like breaking a rack of billiard balls in a game of pool.  Good thing I’m a patient person.

So my stallion discovered a way to make my life easier rather than complicating it.  He hauled a rubber tub into his stall from his paddock, by tossing it into the air with his teeth and throwing it, and it finally settled against one wall.  Then he began to consistently pile his manure, with precise aim, right in the tub.  I didn’t ask him to do this.  It had never occurred to me.  I hadn’t even thought it was possible for a horse to house train himself.  But there it is, proof that some horses prefer neat and tidy rather than the whirlwind eggbeater approach to manure distribution.  After a day of his manure pile plopping, it is actually too heavy for me to pick up and dump into the wheelbarrow all in one tub load, but it takes 1/4 of the time to clean his stall than the others, and he spares all this bedding.  What a guy.

Now, once I teach him to put the seat back down when he’s done, he’s welcome to move into the house…

Putting Things Back Together

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Twice in ten years,  two young Haflinger geldings on our farm have suffered injuries so severe that if a skilled veterinarian had not been available, neither would have survived.  In both cases, the injury was severing of the lower lip and we really have no idea how the injury occurred.

The first time was a yearling who was out in the field with his buddies, and when we went to fetch him in that evening, half of his lower lip was dangling completely loose, full of bloody grass and dirt.   I couldn’t imagine it could be successfully repaired, and feared he was doomed.  I called our horse vet,  who came out to the farm, silently surveyed the damage, moving the loose piece this way and that to gauge how it could come together.  He looked at me then and said  “this would be something I’d ordinarily do in the operating room at the clinic”.   But given the time of night, the willingness of the patient and the owner,  we set up surgery right in the barn aisle under bright lights, with calm music playing on the radio, and that lip was pieced together again.  It took many stitches and several weeks but it healed. It always had a little droop to it but this young horse survived thanks to the skilled needle and suture of a forgiving vet willing to work in less than ideal circumstances.

Lightening is not supposed to hit the same place twice, but it did this week.  The rainy weather kept the Haflingers in their stalls.  Out of boredom our two year old gelding had killed several water buckets by twisting them off their hooks, throwing them around and then playing them like bongos with this feet.

We walked in to find his stall was a bloody mess, from the walls, to the shavings, to his legs.  His lower lip was a mangle of pieces of loose flesh on one side, extending up to the corner of his mouth.  We  searched that stall high and low for signs of anything sharp that may have caused such a horrific injury, but there was nothing.  There was only an innocent appearing water bucket, still 1/3 full, hanging as usual on a blunt metal J hook that swivels on an O ring.  And an incriminating huge swath of blood extending on the wall down from that hook.  I suspect he was twisting the full bucket on its hook, trying to dislodge it in order to play with it and caught his lip between the bucket handle and the O ring, and the tightness of the pinch caused him to panic, pull back and his lower lip shredded as he did.  The bucket had its revenge at last.

There was no other explanation to be found.  I called our vet, again at night, and on the phone reminded him of the great feat of plastic surgery he had performed years ago in our barn.  He didn’t sound really nostalgic about the memory, as he suspected what was coming next.   He arrived with a full surgical suite packed in his truck and got to work setting up the lights, equipment, sterile fields and suture.  The greatest challenge was keeping the barn cats from hopping up on the table with sterile surgical instruments.

Our Haflinger patient was very cooperative once again, hanging his head low under sedation.  The vet sat on a vitamin bucket, cleaning the wound thoroughly so all the pieces could be sorted out and put back in place like a jigsaw puzzle.  He was able to pull together the deeper tissue with dissolvable sutures, and then started approximating the external lip edges.   By the time he was done, the shreds looked very much like a mouth again.

Two days later, my gelding is eating and drinking normally, just a bit puffy and droopy on one side of this mouth, but he is just fine thanks to a superb vet willing to work in a barn late on a cold and rainy night instead of a surgical suite with assistants and a more appropriate  environment (no barn cats strolling around underfoot).

Even in less than perfectly controlled circumstances, miracles can occur.  I am filled with unbounded gratitude.

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Over the last four days, Haiti has seen many miracles take place in the rubble thanks to people who are willing to do what they can to help even in the most dire circumstances.    There are times when the only way to preserve life and put things back together is to do what we can when we can, even if it is messy and imperfect.

Bless those individuals who are making the on-site effort to help the Haitians, even if that help feels inadequate at the time, and surely insufficient.  The willingness to try to restore what once was–it is what will make all the difference in the midst of suffering and sorrow.

Breaking Through the Ice

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Freezing rain needs to happen every two or three years just to remind Pacific Northwesterners that regular rain isn’t such a bad thing.  We webfoot Washingtonians tend to grouse about our continuously gray cloud-covered bleak dreary drizzly wet mildew-ridden existence. But that’s not us actually grumbling.  That’s just us choosing not to exhibit overwhelming joy.  They don’t call Bellingham, the town ten miles from our farm,  the “city of subdued excitement” for no good reason.

So when the temperatures drop in our moderate climate and things start to ice up, or the snowflakes start to fall, we celebrate the diversion from rain.  Our children are out building snowmen when there is a mere 1/2 inch of snow on the ground, leaving lawns bare and green with one large snowman in the middle.  Schools start to cancel at 2 inches.  We natives are pitifully terrible snowy road drivers compared to the highly experienced (and at times overconfident) midwestern and northeastern transplants in our midst.

But then this little meteorologic phenomenon known as freezing rain and the resultant silver thaw happens.  It warms up enough that it really isn’t snowing but it also really isn’t raining because the temperatures are still subfreezing at ground level, so it spills ice drops from the sky–noisy little splatters that land and stay beaded up on any surface.  Branches become botanical popsicles, sidewalks become bumpy rinks, roads become sheer black ice, windows encase with textured glass twice as thick as usual.

So in the midst of this frozen concoction coming from the sky, I put off farm chores tonight as long as possible, knowing it would take major navigation aids to simply make my way out the back steps, across the sidewalk and down the hill, then up the slick cement slope to open the big sliding barn doors.  Chains on my muck boots help, to a degree.  The barn doors thankfully hadn’t iced together as they have in the past when the northeast wind blows freezing rain into the tiny gap between them, so by breaking foot holds into the ice on the cement, I was able to roll back the doors just enough to sneak through before shutting them quickly behind me, blocking the arctic wind blast.  Then I turned around to face the barn aisle and drink in the warmth of seven stalls of hungry Haflinger horsie bodies, noisily greeting me by chastising me for my tardiness in feeding them dinner.

Wintertime chores are always more time-consuming but ice time chores are even more so.  Water buckets need to be filled individually because the hoses are frozen solid.  Hay bales stored in the hay barn must be hauled up the slick slope to the horse barn.  Frozen manure piles need to be hacked to pieces with a shovel rather than a pitchfork.   Who needs a bench press and fancy weight lifting equipment when you can lift five gallon buckets, sixty pound bales and twenty pounds of poop per shovel full?  Why invest in an elliptical exerciser to get the aerobic work out in?  This farm life is saving me money… I think.

Once inside each stall, I take a moment to run my ungloved hand over a fluffy golden winter coat, to untangle a mane knot or two, and to breathe in sweet Haflinger hay breath from a velvety nose.   It is the reason I slide downhill and I land on my face pushing loads of hay uphill to feed these beloved animals, no matter how hazardous the footing or miserable the weather.  It is why their stalls get picked up more often than our bedrooms, their stomachs are filled before ours, and I pay for hoof trims for the herd rather than manicures and pedicures for the people residing in the house.

The temperatures will rise tomorrow, the overwhelming ice covering will start to thaw and our farm will be happily back to drippy and overcast.  No matter what the weather,  the barn will always be a refuge of comfort, even when the work is hard and the effort is a challenge for this middle aged farmer.

It’s enough to melt even the most grumbly heart and the thickest coating of ice.

Dreams Do Still Come True…

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One of my golden ponies with 12 year old Elizabeth Dickson at the fair

This is a date that stands out on my calendar every year. Whenever November 27 comes around, I think back to a very skinny freckled eleven year old girl who wanted nothing more than to have her own horse. Every inch of my bedroom wall had posters of horses, all my shelves were filled with horse books and horse figurines and my bed piled with stuffed horses. Everything but the real thing out on the small acreage we lived on. We had a small shed, not a real barn, and no fences, and though I was earning money as best I could picking berries and babysitting, I was a long way away from the $150 it would take to buy a trained horse back in 1965. I dreamed horsey dreams, mostly about golden horses with long white manes, hoping for that day when it would become real for me.

When the  local radio station KGY’s Saturday morning horse news program announced their “Win a Horse” contest, I knew I had to try. The prize was a weanling colt, part Appaloosa, part Thoroughbred, and the contest was only open to youth ages 9 to 16 years old. All I had to do was write a 250 word or less essay on “Why I Should Have a Horse”. I worked and worked on my essay, crafting the right words and putting all my heart into it, hoping the judges would see me as a worthy potential owner. My family took me to visit the colt, a fuzzy engaging little bay fellow who was getting plenty of attention from all the children coming to visit him, and that visit made me even more determined. I mailed in my essay and waited.

On November 27, 1965, I got up early to listen to the program that was always featured on the radio at 8 AM on Saturday mornings. They said they had over 300 essays to choose from, and it was very difficult for them to decide who the colt should go to. I knew then I didn’t have a chance. They had several consolation prizes for 2nd through 4th place, so they read those essays, all written by teenagers and my heart was sinking by the minute. Then they said they were going to read the winning essay. The first sentence sounded very familiar to me, but it wasn’t until several sentences later that I realized they were reading my essay, not someone else’s. I leaped and shouted and woke up my whole family, including my dad, sick in bed with the flu, who opened one eye, looked at me, and said, “I guess I better get a fence up today, right?”

That little bay colt came home to live with me the next day. Over the next few months he and I learned together, as I checked out horse training books from the library, and tried every different technique in addition to joining 4H. By the time he was two, I was sitting on him, and by age three, I had earned enough to buy a saddle and was riding him on my own. Though he was not a golden-colored horse, he was my horse and I loved every inch of him.

When I went off to college, I found him a new home with someone who was able to care for him and he continued a happy life as I spent the next 13 years of my life living in the city. The horse dreams still swept me up as I spent hours in book stores poring over horse books and learning about various breeds. I knew I’d had my one special “gift” by winning my first horse, so the next horse I would have to earn on my own. I worked long hours, many nights and many holidays, earning what I could to eventually move from the city and own some land for a future horse and a future family.

Along the way, I found a farm boy also “stuck” in the city and together we worked on building our dream (his was NOT horses but he was gracious enough to honor my dream!). We bought our farm a full two years before we actually could afford to leave our city jobs behind to move there. In the meantime, I had opened a book in one of my many city bookstore visits, and there were my golden dream horses, running wild through green mountain meadows, their white manes and tails streaming out behind them. I bought that book in a heart beat, and began my search for the magical Haflinger. Within a month of our moving to the farm, on November 27, 1985, our first Haflinger joined us.

Twenty years separated my first horse from my second horse, but November 27 represents the date I was able to realize my dreams. As I was cleaning the barn this morning, after moving seven golden Haflingers out to their day time paddocks, I marveled at the privilege it is to work to raise these beautiful horses. They own me, heart and soul. I will do whatever I must to help this dream come true for others who have known that someday, there must be a golden horse in their future.

Rubber Bucket Belly Bumpers

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nuancemontage1

Haflingers do have a variety of creative techniques for attracting attention to themselves when someone walks in the barn, especially around feeding time. Over the years, we’ve had the gamut: the noisy neigher, the mane tosser, the foot stomper, the stall door striker, the play with your lips in the water and splash everything, and most irritating of all, the teeth raked across the woven wire front of the stall. Some Haflingers wait patiently for their turn for attention, without fussing or furor, sometimes nickering a low “huhuhuhuhuh” of greeting. That is truly blissful in comparison.

Most creative of all, however, was our mare, Nuance, who did not live up to her name in any way. She was the least “nuanced” Haflinger we’ve owned. Her chosen method of bringing attention to herself was to bump her belly up against her rubber water buckets that hang in the stall, making them bounce wildly about, spraying water everywhere, drenching her, and her stall in the process. She loved it. It was sport for her to see if she could tip the buckets to the point of emptying them and then knock them off their hooks so she could boot them around the stall, destroying a few in the process. Nothing made this mare happier. When she had occasion to share a big stall space with one of her half-siblings, she found that the bucket bouncing technique was very effective at keeping her brothers away, as they had no desire to be drenched and they didn’t find noisy bucket bumping very attractive. So her hay pile was hers alone–very clever thinking.

This is not unlike a wild chimpanzee that I knew at Gombe in Tanzania, named “Mike” by Jane Goodall, who found an ingenious way of rising to alpha male status by incorporating empty oil drums in his “displays” of aggression, pounding on them and rolling them down hills to take advantage of their noise and completely intimidating effect on the other male chimpanzees. Mike was on the small side, and a bit old to be alpha male, but assumed the position in spite of his limitations through use of his oil drum displays. So Nuance, my noise and water splashing mare,  became alpha over her peers.

We humans have our various ways of attracting attention too. Some of us talk too much, even if we have nothing much to say, some of us strut our physical beauty and toss our hair, while some of us are pushy to the point of obnoxiousness. And some of us are real bluffers, making a whole lot more noise and fuss than is warranted, but enjoying the chaos that ensues. Meanwhile we may leave a wake of destruction behind us–not unlike my mare with her soaked stall, and mangled buckets–all done to make sure someone notices.

I’ve learned I need to quit stomping and quit knocking the door in my impatience, quit hollering when a quiet greeting is far more welcome. And I need to quit soaking everyone else with my water–after all, it yields me nothing more than empty buckets, and eventually I get very thirsty and wish I hadn’t been so foolish. As my horses are trainable to have better manners, so am I.

And I really am trying.

mikeialpha

Haflinger and Fugue in D Minor

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wallychew

The skies have opened up and dumped buckets of rain in the northwest today. It was dark and black this morning with a cloud cover that allowed no sunrise, and the southeast winds started picking up early, gusting up to 50 miles an hour in some places in our county. So when I went out to the barn this morning, I informed my seven resident Haflingers that they were stuck indoors for the day, and none of them objected as long as they had a pile of hay to munch, a comfy clean bed of shavings and fresh water. Contentment reigneth as I closed up the doors and headed to work.

By the time I made it home from work tonight, got dinner started in the house and headed down to the barn through sheets of blowing horizontal rain, I was assaulted by seven excited voices that greeted my opening the barn door. The deep bass from our stallion Waldheer, the tenor from Wheaton, the alto of Noblesse, Belinda, and Weissach, and the high soprano nicker of our yearling BriarRose. But nothing compares with the shrill piccolo squeal that comes from Marlee–heard above all and frankly, ear piercing! I realized as I walked in the barn that their chorus was only the melody line for the constant din of rain drumming on the metal roof and the banging of the sliding doors as the wind buffeted them. It was truly a concert out there, and I’m sure the Haflingers had heard plenty of noise from the storm all day and enough was enough. They wanted some relief, like, ah, food, like– you know–right now, to take their minds off of it.

I moved quickly to fetch grain and vitamins to them in record time, throwing hay flakes in their stalls and freshening up their water. They settled into the rhythmic chewing that I always find as comforting as a lullaby as I cleaned and prepared their beds.

Five more days of rain and wind are predicted. This could be a long confinement for the Haflingers if the weather stays this soppy and nasty the whole time. They may even compose a complete symphony before it is over. Rehearsals scheduled at 6:30 AM and 6:30 PM with performances daily at stall cleaning time, attended by one grateful lady farmer.

I’ll be asking for an encore.

ponybarn2

Listening to What the Ears Have to Say

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tonyears


I have an appreciation for social cues, both human and animal–those often nonverbal signals that are communicated through subtle means–in people, perhaps it is a raised eyebrow, a rapid blink, a tensing of the lips, a fidgeting foot.  In horses, it can be harder to read but their nonverbal language is there for all to see.  The herdmates and the human handler, with careful observation and interpretation, should not be surprised about “what is going to happen next.”  It is not a mystery.

I don’t consider Haflingers particularly subtle in their communication with each other or with humans. They can tend to have a “bull in a china shop” approach to life; this is not a breed that evolved particularly plagued with the existence of many predators in the Austrian Alps, so the need to blend into the background was minimal. So Haflingers tend to be “out there”: unafraid, bold, meeting one’s gaze, sometimes challenging.

I’ve found over the years that the best way to interpret a Haflinger’s emotions is by watching their ears, and to a lesser extent, their lips and tails. They usually have “poker face” eyes, deceptive at times in their depth, calmness and serenity. I tend to get lost in the beauty of their eyes and not pay attention to what the rest of the horse is saying. Watching them interact with each other, almost everything is said with their ears. A horse with a friendly approach has ears
forward, receptive, eager. If the horse being approached is welcoming, the ears are relaxed, sometimes as forward. Two good friends grooming or grazing together have swiveling, loose ears, often pointing toward each other, almost like a unique conversation between the four ears themselves. So when a Haflinger is happy to approach, or be approached by humans, the ears always say so.

Ears that are swiveling back, tensing and tight, or pinning are another story altogether. It is the clear signal of “get outta my way!”, or “you are not sharing this pile of hay with me” or “you may think you are a cute colt, but if you climb on me one more time…” Those ears can signal impatience “you are not getting my grain fast enough”, or “I’ve been standing here tied for too long!” A simple change in ear position can cause a group of horses to part like the Red Sea.

I have a mare who was orphaned at 3 days of age, and spent her early weeks with intensive handling by people, and then allowed to socialize with a patient older gelding until she was old enough to be among other weanlings. When she came to our farm at 6 months of age, she had not learned all the usual equine social cues of a mare herd, and though very astute at reading human gestures and behavior, took awhile to learn appropriate responses. When turned out with the herd, she was completely clueless–she’d approach the dominant alpha mare incorrectly, without proper submission, get herself bitten and kicked and was the bottom of the social heap for years, a lonesome little filly with few friends and very few social skills.

She had never learned submission with people either, and had to have many remedial lessons on her training path. Once she was a mature working mare, her relationship with people markedly improved as there was structure to her work and predictability for her, and after having her own foals, she picked up cues and signals that helped her keep her foal safe, though she has always been one of our most relaxed “do whatever you need to do” mothers when we handle her foals as she simply never learned that she needed to be concerned.

Over the years, as the herd has changed, this mare has become the alpha mare, largely by default and seniority, so I don’t believe she really trusts her position as “real”. She can tend to bully, and react too quickly out of her own insecurity about her inherited position. She is very skilled with her ears but she is also a master at the tail “whip” and the tensed upper lip–no teeth, just a slight wrinkling of the lip. The herd scatters when they see her face change.

The irony of it all is that now that she’s “on top” of the herd hierarchy, she is more lonely than when she was at the bottom. She is a whole lot less happy as she has few grooming partners any more. I really feel for her as she has created this for herself, but she would rather have power than friends right now. It is the sad choice she’s made.

I certainly see people like this at times in the world. Some are not at all attuned to social cues, blundering their way into situations without understanding the consequences and “blurting without thinking”. It takes lots of kicks and bites for them to learn how to read other people and behave appropriately. Sometimes they turn to bullying because it is communication that everyone understands and responds to, primarily by “getting out of their way”. Perhaps they are very lonely, insecure, and need friends but their need for power overcomes their need for support. I see it every day in the people I know.  I see it in me.

So I will continue “watching the ears”–both Haflinger and human. And continue to refine my own way of communicating so that I’m not a mystery to those around me, and hoping no one scatters when they see me coming…

There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere…

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pile2

It’s manure spreading time at BriarCroft–time to recycle six months of accumulated Haflinger poop (plus shavings) back to the fields from where it originated. The fields soon will be too wet and mushy to run the manure spreader over without cutting deep ruts, so October is our window of opportunity to reduce the mountains of manure that have accumulated over the spring and summer so we can start “fresh” for the fall and winter. There is nothing quite so satisfying as making good use of what appears to the average citizen to be noxious organic material.

Au, contraire!

This poop is the best fertilizer in the world, because it is produced, with love and not much effort, by our Haflingers.

Scooping poop out of stalls is a therapeutic exercise in more ways than one and usually far more satisfying than pitching the figurative stuff
all day in other settings. There are a few Haflingers that are ‘pilers’—beautifully barn trained creatures that they are, leaving nice neat little collections tidily in one corner of the stall, one deposit on top of the other, so that when you are cleaning, you have only to remove 20 lbs. of manure in one forkful without having to do a thing to the rest of the stall except fluff the shavings. Then some Haflingers are of the ‘the more the merrier’ variety–leaving many small piles around the stall like so many Easter eggs to be found. It is more time consuming to clean, but satisfying as the stall looks so much better when you leave it than when you walked in. Lastly are the Haflinger ‘blenders’ whose stalls remind me somewhat of my children’s bedrooms on a very bad day. If you dare to open the door, you’ll find a whirlwind of everything mixed together, impossible to sort clean stuff from dirty stuff and the temptation is to just walk back out and close the door without even trying.

We pile our manure loads onto cement slab, and as the months go by there is greater challenge to accomplish the dumping of the load as the wheelbarrow must be pushed or pulled up the pile. Eventually one feels like Sisyphus attempting to roll the rock uphill only to have it roll back down again and have to start again. Manure piles do settle though, and shrink with the decomposition taking place, so it is possible to keep loading on top and not see a whole lot of change in the height of the hill over time. When the time comes for spreading, we start digging into the pile, revealing layers as if on an archaeological dig. The steam rises from the opened pile, and sometimes the heat is so great that I barely touch it comfortably with my bare hand. It steams in the manure spreader and as it flies out the back of the spreader onto the fields, it appears to be a great gaseous chemical concoction that we are throwing back to the grass (which of course it is!)

We are rewarded with the growing grass in the spring–indeed this is the ‘pony’ in this pile of poop–in fact many ponies! Brown smelly organic material returns back to the land to provide sweet green organic material for the next winter. It is a remarkably simple formula. We purchase no additional fertilizers, we buy little outside hay. The Haflingers provide for the fields, the fields provide for the Haflingers, then the Haflingers provide for the fields once again. Our mission, as we choose to accept it, is to get it back out to the fields, and when the grass is ready to harvest, bring it back in. Transformation of waste to nourishment all in one year’s time.  In this day and age, this is referred to as “sustainability”.  I call it good stewardship.

Can I say the same of the things I cast off as “worthless waste” in my own life? There are stinky, yucky, messy and ugly parts of myself that I wish I could throw away, flush and never see again.   Is it possible that I should be figuratively gathering it up, to haul off and pile up to decompose all on its own, in the fervent hope it will be somehow transformed into something useful?

Instead I tend to let the piles accumulate around me in my daily life.  Rather than shoveling into a transforming clean-up, I remain messy too much of the time.

So perhaps I better start looking for the “pony” buried deep in my own pile . I know he’s in there just waiting to be found.  I just have to get dirty and start digging…

DSCN3762

Putting On a New Coat

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photo of Noblesse by Krisula Steiger
photo of Noblesse by Krisula Steiger

This story, written in 2003, is now published in the Oct/Nov 2009 issue of Country Magazine. Photos by Lynden Christian student Krisula Steiger.

Generally late September is when we start to see our Haflinger horses growing in their longer coat for winter. Their color starts to deepen with the new hair as the sun bleached summer coat loosens and flies with the late summer breezes. The nights here, when the skies are cloudless, can get perilously close to freezing this time of year, though our first frost is generally not until well into October. The Haflingers, outside during the day, and inside their snug stalls at night, don’t worry too much about needing their extra hair quite yet, especially when the day time temperatures are still comfortably in the 70s. So they are not in a hurry to be furrier. Neither am I. But I enjoy watching this daily change in their coats, as if they were ripening at harvest time. Their copper colors are so rich against the green fields and trees, especially at sunset when the orange hue of their coat is enhanced by the sunlit color palette of fall leaves undergoing their own transformation in their dying.

In another six months, it will be a reverse process once again. This heavy hair will have served its purpose, dulled by the harsh weather it has been exposed to, and coming out in clumps and tufts, revealing that iridescent short hair summer coat that shines and shimmers metallic in comparison, although several shades lighter, sometimes with nuances of dapples peeking through. Metamorphosis from fur ball to copper penny.

It occurs to me our old barn buildings on our farm have also undergone a similar transformation, having received a new coat of paint this summer. As a dairy farm for its previous owners starting in the early 1900s until a few years before we purchased it in the late 80s, it has accumulated more than its share of sheds and buildings constructed over the years to serve one purpose or another: the big hay barn with mighty old growth beams and timbers in its framework (still hay storage), the attached milking parlor (converted by us to individual box stalls for our weanlings and yearlings) and milk house where the bulk tank once stood, the older separate milk house where the milk used to be stored in cans waiting for pick up by the milk truck (now garden shed and harness storage), the old smoke house for smoking meats (was our chicken coop, but now the dogs claim it), the old bunk house and root cellar (more storage), the old large chicken coop (now parking for our carts and carriage), and the garage (a Methodist church in its former life and moved 1/4 mile up the road to our farm some 70 years ago when the little community of Forest Grove that had formed around a saw mill, store, school and church disbanded after 30 years of prosperity when there were no more trees to cut down in the area). When we bought this farm, these buildings had not seen a coat of paint in many many years. They were weathering badly–we set to work right away in an effort to save them if we could, and got them repainted–“barn red” for the barn and cream white for the other buildings with red trim around the windows and roof lines.

That was over 10 years ago now and we’ve been trying to hold off on another round of painting but it was clear this summer that it needed to happen. Now that they have their fresh paint coats, these old buildings appear to have new life again, though it is only on the surface. We know there are roofs that need patching, wiring that needs to be redone, plumbing that needs repair, foundations that need shoring up, windows that are drafty and need replacing, doors that don’t shut properly anymore–the list goes on. That superficial coat of paint does not solve all those problems–it will help prolong the life of the buildings, to be sure, but in many ways, all we’ve done is cosmetic surgery. What we really need is a full time carpenter –which neither of us is and at this point can’t afford.

In my middle age, there are times when I wish fervently for that “new coat” for myself–i.e. fewer gray hairs, fewer pounds, fewer wrinkles and one less chin, less achy stronger muscles. I buy a new fall jacket and realize that all my deficiencies are simply covered for the time being. I may be warmer but I’m not one bit younger. That jacket will, I hope, protect me from the brisk northeast winds and the incessant drizzle of the region, but it will not stop the inevitable underneath. It will not change who I am and what I will become.

True change can only come from within, from deep inside our very foundations, requiring a transforming influence that comes from outside. For the Haflingers, it is the diminishing light and lower temperatures. For the buildings, it is the hammer and nail, and the capable hands that wield them. For me, it is knowing there is salvage for people too, not just for old barns and sheds. Our foundations are hoisted up and reinforced, and we’re cleaned, patched and saved despite who we have become. And unlike new paint, or a winter coat, it lasts forever.

Watercolor of our hay barn by Dick Laninga
Watercolor of our hay barn by Dick Laninga

Savoring the Sweetness

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Apples11(published a year ago in Country Magazine)

I’ve been picking up windfall apples to haul down to the barn for a special treat each night for the Haflingers. These are apples that we humans wouldn’t take a second glance at in all our satiety and fussiness, but the Haflingers certainly don’t mind a bruise, or a worm hole or slug trails over apple skin.

I’ve found over the years that our horses must be taught to eat apples–if they have no experience with them, they will bypass them lying in the field and not give them a second look. There simply is not enough odor to make them interesting or appealing–until they are cut in slices that is. Then they become irresistible and no apple is left alone from that point forward.

When I offer a whole apple to a young Haflinger who has never tasted one before, they will sniff it, perhaps roll it on my hand a bit with their lips, but I’ve yet to have one simply bite in and try. If I take the time to cut the apple up, they’ll pick up a section very gingerly, kind of hold it on their tongue and nod their head up and down trying to decide as they taste and test it if they should drop it or chew it, and finally, as they really bite in and the sweetness pours over their tongue, they get this look in their eye that is at once surprised and supremely pleased. The only parallel experience I’ve seen in humans is when you offer a five month old baby his first taste of ice cream on a spoon and at first he tightens his lips against its coldness, but once you slip a little into his mouth, his face screws up a bit and then his eyes get big and sparkly and his mouth rolls the taste around his tongue, savoring that sweet cold creaminess. His mouth immediately pops open for more.

It is the same with apples and horses. Once they have that first taste, they are our slaves forever in search of the next apple.

The Haflinger veteran apple eaters can see me coming with my sweat shirt front pocket stuffed with apples, a “pregnant” belly of fruit, as it were. They offer low nickers when I come up to their stalls and each horse has a different approach to their apple offering.

There is the “bite a little bit at a time” approach, which makes the apple last longer, and tends to be less messy in the long run. There is the “bite it in half” technique which leaves half the apple in your hand as they navigate the other half around their teeth, dripping and frothing sweet apple slobber. Lastly there is the greedy “take the whole thing at once” horse, which is the most challenging way to eat an apple, as it has to be moved back to the molars, and crunched, and then moved around the mouth to chew up the large pieces, and usually half the apple ends up falling to the ground, with all the foam that the juice and saliva create. No matter the technique used, the smell of an apple as it is being chewed by a horse is one of the best smells in the world. I can almost taste the sweetness too when I smell that smell.

What do we do when offered such a sublime gift from someone’s hand? If it is something we have never experienced before, we possibly walk right by, not recognizing that it is a gift at all, missing the whole point and joy of experiencing what is being offered. How many wonderful opportunities are right under our noses, but we fail to notice, and bypass them because they are unfamiliar?

Perhaps if the giver really cares enough to “teach” us to accept this gift of sweetness, by preparing it and making it irresistible to us, then we are overwhelmed with the magnitude of the generosity and are transformed by the simple act of receiving.

We must learn to take little bites, savoring each piece one at a time, making it last rather than greedily grab hold of the whole thing, struggling to control it, thereby losing some in the process. Either way, it is a gracious gift, and how we receive it makes all the difference.