Food.... Glorious Food.

“I am in the kitchen now. I stir the risotto and type. I am waiting on the capon negro to finish in the oven, a bird stuck on a contraption to hold it vertical and allow it to roast, basting in the steaming beer in the dish below it. The bird is covered with a rub of cumin, paprika, chile powder, cocoa, and a touch of brown sugar. The smells are phenomenal. On the cook top, the colors of the vegetables in the risotto are bright, and make for good contrast with the black beens simmering in the neighboring pot. The risotto sizzles with each addition of the warm broth, a mixture of the sautéed vegetables and chopped Black Mission figs, mixed in with the fat grained rice and vermouth, gradually becoming rich and thick before the final addition of the various cheeses. Tonight I will add parmesan and asiago.  A sensory feast before its even on the plate.    I drool, therefor, I am.” 

(last night while fixing dinner)  

I love to cook.

This was not always so. When Mark and I married some many moons ago, my knowledge and experience with cooking was limited to being able to microwave a hot dog and heat water. Mark taught me to make cornbread and how important the care of a good cast iron skillet is. I still cook cornbread in that same skillet, his grandmother’s, well seasoned, with multiple decades of its use.

Eventually I managed to learn to cook a simple breakfast. A Crock Pot held my hand as I used it to learn how to make a meal. There were many errors along the way, but I gradually learned improvisation and a good bottle of wine can get you over most with little notice. 

I had several folks along the way who taught me basic stuff like combinations of flavors and proportions of ingredients, and such and I became a bit more comfortable and adventurous  as I learned. My cook book collection is enormous and I can spend hours reading recipes, tasting them in my mind, imagining the merging of the flavors, but rarely follow them. I learned,too, that it was about the food, of course, but that it was also about the sharing, that made the meal and the preparing of it, become, something special. Food became an art project on multiple levels of satisfaction, in both the production and the consumption.

There was our friend Pat, a poor fellow who was going thru a painful divorce and who needed a diversion to his evenings. Pat was the first real “foodie” I had ever met, he loved food. I mean loved, FOOD. So for a while, every Wednesday night, he would come over and bring whatever fresh veggies or bag of shrimp he had. I would pull whatever I had out of the fridge and we would all engage in the process of creating and experimenting with the random stuff we had. It was he who introduced me to cooking risotto. The night we first cooked it, we all got into such a giggling fit that we were paralyzed and could barely stand, much less, stir the rice. I had to pull in help from my daughter to handle the chore. She, of course and rightfully, thought we had all lost it and were crazy. We finished that meal off with enormous bowls of ice cream. Pat remarked that mine was so huge it was bound to affect the climate. It was so good. 

Eventually Pat’s pain eased and we ceased the regularity of our Wednesday sessions and we moved on in new directions. Pat sadly died this year, and those memories of our time spent in my kitchen, chopping and tasting are now more precious. I, of course, remembered the incapacitating giggles again last night as I continually stirred the rice and added the broth.

In all this time coming down this path of learning to enjoy cooking, the most surprising thing I have come to realize is, that the teacher who really taught me the most, I had not even known I was taking lessons from. Her name was Francis.

Francis Clayton was a very tall and very round black woman who my parents hired when I was in 3rd grade to keep their house, cook, clean, run me around town, and do whatever. She was very good at all of this. She raised me, from our introduction in 3rd grade until my senior year of high school. Her influence on my character was immense. I preferred time with her to most anyone, and I spent endless hours in her kitchen, not helping, but just sitting and talking and, watching.

What had not occurred to me however, until recently, was that in my watching, I was learning. It just took years of struggling thru the formality of learning to follow recipes and such, to finally understand that she had already taught me the real basics of cooking. Comfort. She cooked from the soul, and she was abundant with her love, and her cooking always was soothing and sweet for the soul for those lucky enough to sample her fare. Her food deeply nourished on so many levels. There was nothing fancy about it. It was just simply, good.

Now whenever I cook a batch of collards, batter fresh bream from our pond, season the black eyed peas, drop corn meal covered green tomatoes or okra into hot grease, or mix some butter beans with corn kernels to make a salad with mayonnaise, or any of the more southern types of dishes I can see her still in my folks kitchen in town and up at our lake house, doing the same, and I mimic what she did and feel her spirit. 

We are what we eat, literally in both a physical and a spiritual sense. Food prepared with anger or out of obligation, or with a lack of concern for even basic esthetics goes down badly and sits like a rock, refusing digestion. Fast food is without any spirit and is the worst.  Food should be fun and makes folks happy.

I have been told many times by the folks who have shared a meal at our table, that my cooking makes them feel better. Unknown to them, that the ooh’s and ah’s  they give to me, is really high homage to this wonderful teacher, Francis, that graced my life and left her legacy to me, to share with them.

On Sunday I enjoyed a very nice brunch with the family at the downtown marina restaurant. It was a fine October day and we sat on the covered deck outside, which is perched high on the bluff overlooking the Alabama River, under tall oak trees, and saw the boats below us waiting patiently in their slips. Acorns dropped above our heads, landing on the clear fiberglass roof and like small bricks being hurled our way, and I felt like I was really in a version of my new favorite Iphone game “Angry Birds”. Then they would roll noisily and slowly down the grooves of the roof until they made it to the edge, then silence, and they were gone. We enjoyed omelet’s, silky cheese grits, along with other various breakfast fare, and eased it all down with a screwdriver or two. Nothing fancy, but good for the soul and the stomach.


I came home after this diversion, with thoughts of doing something outdoors that might be both gratifying and productive. A given glance around this farm gives an endless list of things which might fall into either of those categories. I juggled and few and then I looked at the area formerly known as the veggie garden, now an overgrown jungle of surrounding shrubs that have way over grown their “matures to something? feet high??”  nursery tags, the interior path ways filled with dry grasses, volunteer zinnias, and goldenrod, and raised boxes undetectable. I felt somewhat like Scarlet O’Hara standing in the post Yankee ravaged South, ruined garden of Tara, and I said to myself, “As god is my witness, I will grow collards in here again!” And thus began my afternoon of righteous labor with intent to take back that which nature had the full summer to run amuck with.

I stood at the gate and was significantly overwhelmed when I took in the whole scene of what lay before me and the knowing what the cost to my poor body would be. It would have been so nice to blink my eyes and have it be done, all tidy again. Nice fantasy but it wasn’t going to happen like that, I knew that, so I looked down and focused on what was within my reach and I began, that is, after I had hacked down the branches of the lady banksias rose to even get into the garden. The dogs all assumed their positions in  shady places and waited for me to work it all out.

Soon I was in my rhythm snatching the villainous weeds and stuffing them into my bucket. Once full, the bucket was dumped into the front end loader. This continued for unknown hours. The tractor made at least 4 trips to the compost pile to dump this mess and at long last the horses convinced me it was “quittin’ time” and I stopped my mission for the afternoon. Mission was not anywhere close to being accomplished but I had scared some of the weeds still left in there pretty bad, and they know I am coming back for them, soon. I did feel pretty darned gratified.

My dad used to employ this type of gardening, in his twisted way of relaxing, when we went up to our lake house and later at the beach place. Early in the morning, out he would go, a cigar stuck in his mouth, and with his University of Alabama coffee cup and machete in hand, armed for warfare. A few hours of hacking at the underbrush, sticker vines, and honey suckle, he would emerge from the newly tamed jungle, blood oozing from the scratches on his arms, bucket loads of sweat pouring off his skin, his cigar shorter, and coffee gone. He would smile and reach for a cold Heineken beer and feel the piety of beginning a day with such a determined effort. This was usually before 7 am or so, while we snoozed away, knowing that once again we would be safe from all of the encroaching vegetation, saved by my favorite super hero, dad. Of course this pattern perpetually repeated itself as the vegetation always grew back allowing the ritual to continue.

I did pause Sunday, as I worked, and looked around, and listened, enjoying the pleasure of being able to be outdoors again, and even though working hard, not dieing from the heat. It was pleasant, apart from a few nasty fire ants that got into my glove, to be working with the soil, making room for new plants. The scent of the herbs that I hit as I weeded filled my nose and made my mouth water. First, closest to the gate is the bed of chocolate mint, a small leaved mint that has a distinct sweet and yes, chocolate smell, like peppermint patties. Then the garlic chives mixed with this, followed by the thick scent of the basil stems I broke, and then the rosemary chimed in. It was an olfactory overload, but very nice.

Across the pond from the garden, the tall sweet gum trees were filled with the autumn arrivals, the fish crows. This time of year these birds come in large groups and sit at the very tops of the trees boisterously yakking back and forth with a nasal sort of honking and beeping. They are smaller than the regular crows we have here year round and they do not make the “caw” type sound of the larger birds. Theirs is a sound that now quintessential October background noise for me, like June bugs in June. These fish crows will hang around for a while and then be gone to parts unknown, hopefully to return to sing their songs next October, and for more after that.

My back “told me so” the next morning when I got up, about that weeding thing, but a few Tylenol later I was up and kicking. I rode my mare, Sunset, back to the creek, through the woods on the south border of the property. We sauntered along like I was on a Thelwell pony, with her grabbing bits of grass as we walked in the filtered sunlight, leaves crunching under her feet, and lazily made our way back to the creek. The creek was very low and the swamp maples were only hinting at turning colors but showed promise of doing so soon. The trails had done like my garden and were a bit thick to travel through in parts but it was a nice hack.

The perimeter trail ends on the north side into a field that doesn’t get cut regularly and tends to grow wild after a few years. When I came out of the shade of the woods I came into a field of golden sunflower/daisy like flowers blooming on very tall shafts. Goldenrod blooms laid out in a blanket of gold below it and sporadically placed were towers of a pink wild flower I don’t know the name of.

It was spectacular, and it was peaceful. It is nice sometimes to be able to be totally blown away at a simple field of wild flowers and not just be a viewer from a car window, but to be riding a nice horse through it, and just be, there, in a sweet moment suspended in time, and one of sheer unexpected beauty.

Today I will do battle with the willful garden again, and give those remaining weeds what for and the ol heave ho. Adios and farewell ye weeds. Collards are coming to take your place, and snow peas, and chard, and maybe some broccoli. It has been said that to be a gardener one must be an optimist, living for the reward of one’s efforts, and I eagerly await the fresh greens that will grow from this soil.

Jack stood at the bottom of the stairs at the back door, looking up, quivering, and he was scared. He remembered his gallant attempt to jump up the first step the other day and how he had missed terribly, and impaled his soft broad belly on the corner of that first step. This time, his quivering, which began with this anticipated fear of pain, turned into more. Jack started to have a seizure.

Jack’s body began to jump and shake out of control. His eyes looked at me now with a new and different fear, a pleading, help me, I do not understand fear. I picked him up and put him on the floor inside the house. He frantically tried to regain control of his involuntary twitches but couldn’t. I grabbed a jar of honey and put some of the golden sugar in his mouth and soon the spasms thankfully subsided.

I called the vet and got advice on what to do with him for the evening and was told to bring him in the next am for a blood sugar test to see what was going on with the diabetes we were dealing with.

My thoughts from this episode were running pretty darned gloomy. The past few weeks since Jack was diagnosed with this issue has been rough and extremely intensive, time and attention wise, watching his every move and mood, wondering where his levels were. I have been carefully feeding him small amounts of food several times and day and following feeding up with three insulin shots daily. None of this has been fun or amusing for either of us, and I hate looking into his eyes before I stick yet another needle into his skin. So my thoughts were groping with the realizaiion that this was the way to the end, Jack was not going to be here much longer.

Surprise. The blood test showed that Jack had seized not because the diabetes had worsened, but that his pancreas had caught back up and had begun producing insulin again and the higher dose of it in his blood stream had caused the attack. This is a great thing. Jack is a recovering diabetic. The vet lowered his dosage and was thrilled at the results. Me too.

That was yesterday and as I needed to man the gallery in town and didn’t have time to take him home, Jack got to go urban with me. Jack went downtown, a first for him. I got him out of the truck and put his leash on and started to walk to the corner to cross the street. Jack was very disturbed by the cars, and the noise, and the big things that moved very fast past him. There were strange smells and the ground was not grassy but hard and white. His little tail was tucked firmly between his cheeks and his head was low and his face would not come out from behind my heels. There was finally no choice but to pick him up and carry the sucker if I wanted to get to the gallery in the present millennium.

Once inside the gallery, he remained a bit worried until some folks came in after their lunch at the nearby restaurant carrying their leftovers. Jack could smell the garlic and savory flavors they carried and he followed these folks around the room as they admired the photographs and paintings, wiggling and doing his best to get a sample, but to no avail. I had told them he was diabetic and they withheld the yummy pasta in their boxes. I gave him a piece of cheese from my leftover sandwich and he was cool with that. I still had to carry him back to the truck when I left tho. The big city is just way too scary for this little country dog.

Ironically, we both nearly died on the way home. Driving down the road and coming up the last big hill before our turnoff, I looked ahead to see an oncoming car, in my lane, the driver, a woman, deeply absorbed in her cell phone in her hand. Time went into super sonic speed and my reaction was first to lay on the horn and the only other option in the short period of time before the impending impact was to drive off the road onto the shoulder to let her pass. I don't really think she knew or noticed. Jack didn't say and it admittedly took a while for my blood pressure and fury to subside at the stupidity of this person who was so nearly the cause of my demise. Of all the ways to die, that ranks right up there with the ridiculous. Of all the near touches with danger in my days, to die at the wheel because of some bimbo checking her email or dialing a number while going down the road, would have made me a ghost to be reckoned with in the after life.

Once safely back on the farm, the remains of the afternoon were sweet. Only two weeks ago we sweltered in 96 degree temps while riding our horses in the dressage clinic with Jeff Moore. At long last the weather gods have smiled and long sleeves and flannel are the garb of choice to wear. I actually got 4 horses ridden/worked the other day, didn't break a sweat at all, and had gobs of energy left over to do other farm projects, but didn't bother.

The tea olive shrubs at each end of the front porch are just beginning to bloom now, but already the tiny white flowers are filling all the air in the front yard with a heavenly smell that never fails to bring back my memories of Mrs. Holding's kindergarten school playground and getting to finger paint. The only colors we used at this time of year were orange and brown and the theme of course was Halloween. There was such a delicious joining of the tactile joy of getting to finger paint and the smell of these shrubs, combining with the anticipation of the upcoming trick or treating night to come. How many pumpkins and witches on broomsticks did I gleefully paint while inhaling the powerful scent of these shrubs I have no idea. The memory remains ingrained in my brain, and is as strong as the scent, and is just as sweet.

It has been almost a year since I began writing this blog thing. From the stats feature I have seen that I have readers in places all over the world and I wonder at what they must think about what my life and dribblings about it must seem like to them. I reread some of my previous posts today, and both laughed and cried, and am glad that I have had a place to put down in some form that which has transpired in my farm world in the past months. Just hope to keep staying out of the path of oncoming cell phone drivers for a few more so I ride more horses, paint more pictures, cook, garden, write, and continue to enjoy this world I share with my wonderful friends, family, and critters.

Walt Disney was quite right on one thing. "The world is a carousel of color, mystery, comedy, and fantasy." This is so true and the jingle to the opening of his tv show each week in my childhood reinforced this idea over and over. The natural world that Disney revealed to the audience was perfect, kind, and glorious.

The natural world is just so many, many things. It is beautiful, mysterious, charming, humorous, graceful, enchanting, mesmerizing, amazing, wonderful,etc. The superlatives and descriptions are endless to describe it. As I was to learn later as I grew up and was shown other views, it is also a cruel and very hard thing to comprehend sometimes. In its unbiased perfection, it is a set of checks and balances that we, as humans, judge and give labels to, and morally decide the good guy from the bad, the right from wrong. Nature does not view itself from this myopic view point and has no moral code. It is totally about life and it is about death, and all means go this end. It is about the survival of the best, and eating is at the core of our survival.

This morning began well enough, coffee drank, hat on, out the door I went to start the day. Two of the dogs came up to begin our walk to the barn, with their ritualistic yapping at my heels. Jack was not present and neither was white dog, Memphis. When I turned the corner of the carport I saw why. Jack was urgently gnawing on the remains of a hind leg of a young deer and he looked up at me with a somewhat guilty look. I took it from him in disgust and then saw where Memphis was.

Further down the drive towards the barn she stood pulling at pieces from the rest of the front end of this poor young fawn. Its delicate ears draped to the ground  and its beautiful head bent away from her pulls like a woman swooning from a romantic kiss.

I was instantly revolted and sickened by this horrific image, and angry too. Then I began to question both my horror, and more my anger. Why did I find humor in the time she had the dead squirrel and find myself so repulsed by this particular killing by my supposedly domesticated pet?

I live in the world, on this farm with these animals, that most folks read about and never experience first hand. One where death and life are close companions. It is a hard world to really emotionally grasp and I cant' help but be subjective. Exactly why is one animal's life, and its death, more important or different from another? Is it the fact that we relate more to the large eyes of the deer and care little for the furry tail rats? Is size the answer or is it of our emotional attachment to the species? And too, there is the primal thing about watching
a recently live animal being devoured, crunched on, chewed that is deeply disturbing.

I remember so clearly the film Disney did of Bambi and the movie's rude departure from the feel good stories I had viewed previously. The startlement in the death of Bambi's mother, shot by a hunter, leaving the poor fawn alone to fend for him self, really rocked my boat. This unfairness in the course of the natural world had never occurred to me. Until this point I was naively there with Bambi and Flower and Thumper rolling thru the flowers of life, having never thought anything but good was always to happen. Disney had ingrained this into our young psyches on previous works. The devastation, in the sheer concept of Bambi's mother' death , and finality of the pleasantness his young life to that point, was an unexpected eye opener.

Memphis did not happen to see the movie about Bambi and really doesn't discriminate about her prey choices based on some moral judgement call. They are all good to her. She was proud of her kill and the other dogs respected her prowess and gave her wide berth when they walked past, making sure their eyes were averted and they kept one ear was pointed in her direction lest she think they had intent to take it from her. Having filled her belly with enough to satisfy, she just laid there looking at her kill, admiring it, claiming it, owning it. The poor fawn's remains were twisted and ripped, but even then, it retained a soft beauty to the closed eyes and delicate curve of the domed head and neck.

I am an omnivore. I like meat. Does my moral compass shift away a bit at seeing this today? Yes a bit. I am glad to be spared the part where slaughter houses do the dirty work to bring my plastic packaged dead animals to my grocery store. On the other hand tho, should I feel any less guilty eating lettuce, ripping the leaves, and chewing them up? Eating is for survival. As humans we have just come up with ways to make food, whether animal or vegetable, pretty and appetizing. We manage to just sweep our little consciences under the carpet, unfold our napkins, and dig in. How different from Memphis are we? Not so much I think.

Regrettably, a long life was not to be for this fawn, who had most likely followed its mothers command to stay put somewhere hiding low in the grass. I have come across several fawns in similar situations and have nearly stepped on a few. Memphis probably had a very easy prey. I feel very sad for the fawn, and for the mother who will be looking for it later on today.

A Reluctant Fall Finally Arrives

Today was the first day in many that I have turned off all of the fans in the barn. After 5 long months of the incessant whirling of their plastic blades in their unsuccessful attempt to make it any cooler, it is now quiet, it is peaceful, and it is cool. Yesterday the first, of hopefully more, cold fronts descended from the arctic and brought much needed rain and finally, the cooler temps.

This summer has just been so extremely, friggin, hot here, and for so many other places, due to the global climate change or just bad luck.  The effects tho, of this extreme heat to one’s psyche when one works outside all day is stretching the limits of mental and physical abilities to withstand such torture, much less function. I know my mental ability was challenged just by being out there, and physically I felt beat up by it. It needed to go away.

That was where I was on Saturday, burnt toast. I had finished two very intense weeks with focus spent on horse stuff. First there was the stress of the Keuring, the taking the foal and mare to inspection and all that entailed. Then last week was a dressage clinic, which I hosted here at the farm, with Jeff Moore teaching. It was great and we all learned much as usual, but the most important thing we learned was, to never have the clinic in September again. October is a much better choice, but wasn’t available because of folks heading to the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky this time. We all spent 6 to 8 hours baking everyday by the side of the arena, and then too there was the time spent on the horse as well. It was brutal. It is not sane to be doing anything when the thermometer says 96 degrees and means it. Who says you have to be sane to ride a horse anyway?

So after all the trailers had headed out the driveway, tents and arena taken down, and instructor off to the airport, I went and hid in the house to cool my body and relax some. My mood was dark and deeply depressed. I simply could not take anymore of this weather. Greenland, as a new home, was looking pretty good. Mark said the weather forecast was promising a good change, but I thought he was only saying that in self defense to cheer my dour attitude. I was a doubter and just added more ice to my water and whatever.

Typical that when you are at the end of the rope, another comes along. Seasons change, over and over. Thank the gods, or whatever planetary alignment and rotation of the earth’s axis that makes these changes possible. Suicide rates would be much higher if they didn’t. I was close. So with this cooling rain, the earth and all its creatures, including moi, have all been given a much needed reprieve from the brutal stress, for the moment. I am thankful.

We sat on the front porch yesterday watching the rain, with light jackets on, dogs laying around us without panting. The trees visibly soaked up the moisture and filled their parched and brittle leaves back out and the grass went from crispy brown to green again as we sat there watching. It was a nice day with no particular thing to do, and now the weather had turned itself into a polite thing again. My stress level slowly melted to about a 2 year low, (except for the sublime time we spent in August at Snowbird Lodge), and my attitude soared in direct proportion.

Often when it rains and we are sitting on the porch, we get to see animals come out of the woods as tho they think of the rain as some sort of invisiblity cloak for them. Once there was an enormous flock of tom turkeys casually walking around the pasture. Frequently a Red Shoulder hawk hunts the fence line in the rain.  Yesterday tho, I noticed one of our furry friends from this spring sitting alertly looking towards the house. It was one of the red foxes that Marley had befriended back then and had been scarcely seen since then.

Mark went to get  some binoculars. While he was gone, the fox ducked under the fence and trotted closer, and over to the persimmon tree, which is loaded with orange fruit right now, and some of the riper ones lay on the ground. I hadn’t known foxes were fond of this particular fruit, grapes, yes, according to Aesop’s little story, but this one was seriously chowing down on his find. It was apparent too by his, or her, actions that this was not a first time at checking out what’s under that tree. There was a look of major happiness as the fox stuffed his mouth with these morsels and sat and chewed them, then looked for more. Once the supply was done, off he trotted to the gap under the fence, and back to the dark of the woods he went.

  

Well if fall has come reluctantly and late, then Halloween has come early in barn world. Everyday I walk in and am met with spider webs of all description. These aren’t evil spiders with intent to bite me. They rather prefer flying bugs, I know, but the strands are annoying and creepy as heck. I feel rather simpatico with Gulliver with his trouble with the Lilliputions, some of the strands are so tough that they stop my forward progress into the barn aisle until I can extricate myself from their pull. 

There are few things more disgusting than walking face first into the center of one of the types that has baby fine strands, so you don’t see it or the spider, and are left with a sticky, tickling, elastic web that will not come off, stuck right to your nose, in your mouth,  in your hair, and across your eyes. That, and there is the wondering of where, exactly the spider is...nice. NOT. Just wish they would build somewhere else besides my barn and my house.

Somewhere during the day yesterday, I noticed my cell phone which does primary duty as my camera, would not turn on, locked, and unresponsive to anything I did to try to trick it back in functioning mode. I am pretty sure now that it is a dead thing. Hope remains that my data, contacts, notes, and photos are not lost. I don’t really mind that today I am alone from it, an excuse to be a hermit again, but missed the potential use of as  a camera. So I took my flip video along and recorded a bit of Marley and Frank doing the thing they do going to the barn and will try to post it here and also some of the beautiful views from my path today. It was a very nice morning to be on the farm.

  

Fandango's Big Adventure

Last Monday morning’s start was a near disaster. There I was, enjoying the pleasant moments before I knew I had to get up, in the sweet drifting in and out of sleep where the lines between them are inseparable, when I was rudely interrupted by a dog barking outside, coming from our good-for-nothing, yellow lab, Memphis.

Memphis doesn’t bark unnecessarily. She is too lazy. When she does bark tho, she has a vocabulary indicating different events such as the UPS truck coming down the drive way, another is the “I found a snake” bark, and the horses are loose, and so on. That morning’s heralding was pretty close to the snake bark, an anxious, quick, and high pitched bark so I got up to see what the heck was going on, and to tell her to hush so I could get some more snooze time.

When I walked into the kitchen where I could look out the front window, I was astonished to see a plume of smoke coming from the pot of grease I had left on the cook top the night before after cooking chips. The fire was somehow still on below it, a low flame, but it had finally reached the near flash point and was now smoking and dangerously hot. The lid was still on it and another smaller lid on top of that, and the escaping smoke was pushing these lids up and so they were rattling. This rattling was what Memphis heard and was barking about. How and why it seemed to mean anything to her puzzles me but I am grateful. This ol’ dog earned her chow with this one. A few more minutes and we would have had a major grease fire going while we snoozed away unknowing. It would have been a really bad day. Good dog.

We were leaving that afternoon for the Dutch warmblood Keuring in Georgia. I was taking Fandango, aka, Frank, and his mom Joline, for the jury to evaluate the boy. I got Joline out and gave her a quick makeover, pulling mane and trimming loose hairs, giving a good washing and general tidying up, which she loved. Frank did not think much of the hose water hitting his legs so that plan got shelved but he looked ok anyway. Mark and I got them loaded into the trailer box stall, and off we went.

They both traveled well with no big stress, other than ours, over possible imagined “uh ohs”. The facility was lovely and the stalls were big and airy, and the two spent the night comfortably. Frank made buddies with a big gelding in the next stall, who happened to be a close relative thru Joline’s side of the family, and they endlessly played bite face thru the grill work separating them. Joline was grateful for the reprieve of his attention on her. After their breakfast I got Joline braided and brushed and then it was Frank’s turn.

Any foal at three months is a bit lacking in real mane and his stands like a Mohawk of fluff. I did what I could with it and got it presentable enough. Mark and I then went off to watch a bit of the other horses until our time to go. When we returned I found that Frank had found another new source of entertainment, pulling mommy’s braids out, the little brat. He would take each one in his mouth and pull them like a sucker, unfurling the buttons. What fun. So, I redid the ones that were undone, and continued to redo them every time he snatched another one, until time to go.

Frank was the first colt to be presented in his class. He sort of stood still for conformation evaluation and the jury made their marks on their papers, and said to let him go. Janko, the professional handler from Holland and owner of a large stud farm there was to have the honor of running with Joline with the colt loose beside her. I handed him Joline’s reins stepped back to watch.

Janko is called “Runs Like the Wind” in the Keuring world around here because he can keep pace with a horse at its near fastest pace, making them look their best, never holding them back, and making it look nauseatingly easy to be doing so. A quiet spirit, he can calm the most terrified animal, and somehow coax them into gaits and positions that show the jury the best of the animal.

So off they went trotting around the oval. There were gasps and “oh my’s” from the crowd. I could hear the judges muttering between themselves about how extraordinary this colt’s trot was. They asked for canter to be shown and Janko stepped up into a faster gear, Joline kept with him. Fandango led the way barely touching the ground, hovering about a good 12 inches off the sand, lifting him self with power and grace, sheer athleticism, and natural talent, snapping those legs up with a crisp retort and a broad reaching for the next stride.

It was stunning, to me, to the crowd, and to the judges. There was clapping and hollering. When the colt was led out of the ring there was a cry from one of his new fans, “Yea Fandango!”

All of the mares and foals were called back to the ring and I was trying hard to keep the colt standing in one spot in a final line up while we waited on the judges. Fandango (Frank) began trotting in place and I watched a judge open wide eyes and say what a fantastic piafe the colt had. Wow.

It was so nice to have other folks see what I get to see nearly daily and have the jury, and the crowd, really appreciate how special this spunky colt’s talent is. I am admittedly partial but it is based on 20 years of watching my babies hatch and grow, and now, with Fandango, I am seeing perhaps my best result in him. He could well be Joline’s last foal, but I hope not. Anyway, it was nice.

He ended up third in his class, a result of averaging of all the horses’ conformation and movement scores. There were some very nicely put together foals, perhaps older than he and so more developed who had higher scores there, but he had the highest movement score of all the horses presented for the day, regardless of age. It stunning, gratifying, and delicious.

After the classes the head of the judges came over to our stall and was smiling and said how excited he was about this colt and said, “This is an excellent sport horse prospect. He has amazing movement.” We talked some more and I was giddy with the further affirmation of this judge’s excitement over this colt. I over heard, too, another judge retelling the day to anonymous person on the other end of a cell phone about how spectacular this colt’s movement was.

We loaded out stars and set our trek back home. The big Orange ribbon of the First Premium foal sat bench seat behind me and gleamed. Mission accomplished. Go Frank. It was a very good trip.

photos are on this site.http://afreseklenk.photobiz.com/cart/photo_detail.cfm?photoID=1004518

You Horse People

“You horse people,” my lab coated doctor smirked after he had give me orders for rest for the next 3 weeks, and knowingly admonished me ahead of time for my probable noncompliance to his advice. “You are a hard headed group, who will not rest and follow doctors’ orders. If you want to heal fast… then let it rest.” With that, he took his chart and left the room. He had obviously had previous experience with people, like myself, who dabble with horses and have need of orthopedic services from time to time, as the job requires.

 As a younger person, the time off recommended by the dude in the white coat was scoffed at and as soon as I could muster the will, I was back on the horse, proverbial and literally. Today I have been off the horse for two weeks now, nearly unprecedented. This has been a time of my being  totally at the mercy of advil, and I hate being “stoved up” and sidelined.

I had gone to see the orthopod just to make sure, that my knee having gotten whacked by my personal bulldozer of a horse, hadn’t had ligament or tendon damage. Xrays were clean and stay mechanics were good, just major bruising and a bit of hip joint misalignment, which my chiropractor will hopefully address when I can get her. With age, I am finding, comes slower healing time and more of an appreciation of not being hurt to begin with.


Life just does not stop on a horse farm, though, simply because of an injury, or rain, or inconveniences. Horses like to be fed at reasonable  and regular times. Hay has got to be moved from one place to another, fences mended, and the list of stuff that simply must be done to keep the plates spinning and not crash to the floor is endless. So onward I have limped,  and just did it. We all do, we horse people, hard headed and persistent... and downright responsible for our herd.

Anyway, for me, time off a horse and not riding is time spent dealing with another horse, from the ground. This week is about the preparation for taking Fandango (Frank) and Joline to the Keuring, or the Dutch breed evaluation and inspection, in Georgia on Monday.  For the colt, this means learning to load into the trailer, learning to stand still to be washed and braided, getting the finals on being halter broke,  getting final inoculations to keep him safe from new germs, all of which has been compressed into a week's time. Sort of a crash course in growing up fast for him. He is doing super with all of this new treatment and his mother looks pretty fabulous despite her 20 years age. Fingers are crossed for a safe trip and a nice orange ribbon, a first premium, for it all. It will be interesting to see what others think of him. I know I am partial, but I think he is nearly perfect.

Frank has changed so much since that first couple of hours of shaky legs and finding mom's milk, now almost 4 months ago. Once mistaken for a blithe filly, he is now unmistakeably all and totally, male. His muscles have more than amply filled his frame and he is solid, round, and pumped. Frank is a tank. His lovely face is marked with a wide white stripe and is framed by his large dark eyes. His color is a rich dark golden carmel with some darker,almost black, color to the parts of his legs that are not white socks, and to his mane and tail have these darker areas too . His registration papers say he is a bay but the jury is still out on that to me. I have no clue.

Frank is beautiful non the less, and is such a treat to watch playing in the pasture. His favorite toys are plastic bottles, that formerly supplied my basic for martinis, empty now of their goods with a few pebbles thrown in to make noise, they are hung with hay rope to let him bite and kill that offending blue things. There is also a long black rope tied to a post and this poor victim spends many hours getting stomped, reared up and pounded upon, and of course, bitten and shaken til dead. Once these diversions have satisfied the boy, he snoozes in the hot sand of the riding arena, and waits until the next feeding time.

At feeding time the frenzy begins with Marley, the mighty tiny terrier, running to the fence to get a rise out of any of the horses. Frank obliges by lifting his neck into a tightly bowed arch, and picks his feet up and down in a staccato beat, feigning a kick at the noisy nuisance, and then takes off at fastest speed to the barn. Mom keeps a steady walk behind him, chilled, and content to let him think he is cool too.

My finger nails have never been the model of sophistication but with him around it is impossible to stay civilized. Nay, there are not even remotely clean, ever, if I have been to the barn. He is absolutely hysterical in his enjoyment of my scratching his belly. The neck area is fine, he leans into that pretty hard. When I lean on his back and give a good scratch tho on his belly, his face goes into a zone, eyes closed, upper lip curled, and then he takes his front legs and tries to get lower and lower, until his chest is near the ground... He crosses his legs and leaves the world. If I stop, he stands back up and casts his eye and ear back at me to say..."uh, come on, keep going". I usually do.

Once the Keuring is over I will be getting ready for hosting a dressage clinic here starting next Monday with my long time, teacher, coach, and friend, Jeff Moore. I have compartmentalized my to do list down to the things that must be done and those that can wait with no big deal. The weather tho is my issue right now. This is the first time we have ever done the biyearly clinic in September, as opposed to the regular October time, and it is still extremely hot and humid here, dangerous conditions to be working a horse. I am pissed off about this climate issue. I want cool. NOW. (was that really me whining about the cold back in January?)

The lump on my knee is down to the size of a small egg now and its surrounding bruising that migrated from the knee cap, down the leg to my ankle, has turned from the lovely shades of violet and bright magenta, to an even lovelier shade of deep purple surrounded by a post mortem green. But, I can get my riding boots on now, and I can walk with out a hitch in my get along. Good things.

So things continue on their uneven and uncharted course here on the farm, always moving with an endless flow from a force unseen. I go with it where it takes me. I am just a horse person.