There’s something to be said for watching horses graze. I’ve never been one to keep a pasture ornament in my backyard merely for the satisfaction of having one, because I love riding horses and working with them. But there is so much enjoyment to be gained from simply being around a horse. If you can sit on a fence rail at sunset and watch a field of grazing horses and not catch some of their peace and satisfaction, you just haven’t got the horse crazy bug like I have.
We went out to do chores last night, and turned all five of our horses out together in the yard to graze. Even though we keep the two blacks separate because they’re new and we don’t want them to get bitten by our boss mare Daisy, they graze together very peacefully and no one seems to mind each other. They got some grass time while we cleaned out water troughs and filled them, pitched hay, fed the feeder calves, and played with the farm kittens.
My two year old son wanted to ride, so I carried him over to Cricket and put him on her back for a little while. He grinned momentarily, then saw Daisy grazing nearby and wanted to ride her. So I set him on Daisy’s back for a minute. We went around to all of the horses, with the exception of Milo, who is too wary to be caught out in the open—he just might get put to work and miss out on grass time if he let a person get too close! My little guy used to be afraid of the horses, so I’m glad to see he’s warming up a little. He doesn’t ride with us yet, since he’s too small to carry a helmet on his little noggin. But in a couple of years, I hope he’ll be riding. Sitting on a grazing horse’s back with Mom holding him on is a good place to start.
In wintertime especially, I like listening to cows or horses eat their hay. I don’t know what it is, but a barn full of happy creatures munching their supper just does something for me. When I was a single school teacher I kept a horse at a barn and mucked stalls for his board. I didn’t really enjoy the stall work, but when everything was done at night and the lights were turned down, blankets on each horse, clean stalls and water dishes, and they were busy eating their hay, I could have stood there in the barn aisle and watched them for hours. It’s funny how horses will sift through their flakes of alfalfa and find all the leaves and tender pieces first, leaving the tougher stems for the last, just like grade school children.
When I was a teenager, I basically lived down at the barn. Mom would be yelling “supper!”, it would be dark, and I’d still be out playing with the horses. I would usually get scolded for taking so long, and told to hurry and wash up, supper was getting cold. These days, I still take too long, according to my husband. He said chores usually only take him about fifteen minutes, and wondered why it takes me at least twice that long? I haven’t admitted to him that the process includes watching the horses graze and listening to the feeder calves chomp their grain. That’s just how it goes, with me. And I think I’m passing it on to my kids, as well…
