Dec. 26. Winddancer and Kiowa trotting through the snow !

We hope you all had a very lovely Holiday weekend !

On Saturday we went out to fix the fence on our West pasture. We were able to drive the truck on the North pasture, feeding the horses hay, then had to walk all along the fence. We built a campfire to warm up and I was glad I could dry my winter boot a bit, since it got stuck in the snow. After three hours of work, we went to open the gate for the horses and in this photo Winddancer and Kiowa are trotting happily into the new pasture. At some spots quite a bit of snow, but on top of the hills, they will get easily to the fall grass. They love to dig for grass, they actually still had some hay on the North pasture, but eagerly waited for us to open the gate. True wild horse instinct? They come near the house for water, mineral block and sometimes grain, so we'll still see them often. But when they are on the West pasture they are pretty much on their own, independent and free.

Dec. 19. Horses on a snowcovered meadow, what can be more beautifully tranquil ?

This image represents so many of our winter days in Alberta, Canada. Light snow, sunny, crisp air. Just lovely and very serene and tranquil to watch the horses on the snow covered meadow.

Dec. 12. Red Cloud, the Longhorns and the Rocky Mountains !

Our horse "Red Cloud" is named after the chief Red Cloud of the Lakota Sioux of the mid-nineteenth century. Our Red Cloud was born at the ranch 14 year ago. Although his Paint mom and Paint dad showed white coloring, he is an all straight bay horse. Beautiful tall and elegant, strong in his chest and well muscled. In this photo he is trotting back to the field with more grass to paw for from the corral, where he had a drink of water and licking on the salt block. He is in quite a round shape from all the fall grass, which is good, it helps to keep him warm during the chillier nights. Our Alberta snow is dry and light, the horses can easily paw for grass and love to do it. It sure is in their nature and an adult horse can usually easily do without hay, if the field is big enough. Of course, they still love their grain ever so often, which also gives them the extra nutrition and minerals.

Dec. 5. A string of lights make these December evenings sparkle !

A custom in Canada is to decorate the house with strings of lights in December. How lovely it is to drive on a snowy and chilly evening through Rocky and see lots of sparkling, then on the drive home to spot the lighted houses from a distance in the dark. Our ranch house is probably seen by more animals (deer munching on the hay, our horses and Longhorns on the pasture) than by people, since our country road only sees a couple of cars drive by a day.
We got more snow this weekend again and it accumulated already so much, that we went on top of some of the roofs to push it off. The boys had fun creating a fort, digging for all afternoon feeling cozy in their warm snow suits.
The horses came in from the bigger pasture to the stock water and mineral block a couple of time a day. The youngest ones are fascinated by our winter boots and mittens and sniffed on them for a while. They have such a thick winter coat now, very cute.
On Tuesday we sold six of our Longhorns. The loading into the trailer went well, especially the big, strong bull went in their very easy. We hope he'll like his new home and the new girls (cows) to date. For now, there are only eleven young ones left in the corral to be The cows out on the big field get a big load of hay once a day and have plenty of shelter from wind and blowing snow in the forest. The temperatures haven't been very cold yet, so the sunny afternoons are very pleasant.