November already?

It has been busy around Pony UP.......winter preparations for the farm, water management (or avoidance?>)...and general life! Okalani has gone to a foster home, Lizzie is on a trial adoption and Joey had an adoption pending a lameness exam! We need to get some horses adopted so that we can make room for what we feel will be an awful winter for local horses. Already our inbox is full of requests for us to take horses, as well as the local humane society. We are full and our farms are at capacity......it makes us sad......so we make a waiting list and try to network for horses on the list. Hay prices are climbing, so is grain......gosh, so is everything! Still we are thankful for people who donate feed, tack items and money. Horses are expensive...if you have one, you know what we mean. We had a very successful fundraiser/auction and also had a lot of fun doing it! 9200 dollars was raised! We are thankful to our local horse community, local volunteers, local vendors and individuals who contributed to our auction items and services. We could not do it without all of you and we are humbled by your generosity and kindness. We had wonderful food , awesome auction items and fabulous friends........what more could we ask for? We bought hay this month and will buy more at mid month. I am a little anxious about rising hay prices and even the availability of hay for later this year or early next January, so I plan to warehouse some. We feed our own horses, the pony down the street and may lend some hay to a hungry horse as necessary. We have also scheduled dentals for five of our horses on November 19th...we will allow farm friends to share the farm call with us in order to help save money. Dentals are 150 dollars and no farm call fee. We are limited to 8 horses..... Today, Saturday, we had no rain and so we too advantage of the weather and moved sand into paddocks that needed more. So far, we are very sold on having sand in the paddocks. It drains well, doesn't pack in hooves and is easy to touch up with the tractor. We also cleaned the larger paddocks, stalls and barn area, plus cleaned water tanks. In early afternoon we went to the second barn and moved fencing around so that the geldings both have large pastures to go out in during the day. We were treated to a display of a tantrum by Iris (the blind horse) who had a fit because her friends "moved" to a different area. This is the first time we have seen her gallop, buck and strut around her paddock. So...we know she can gallop and her feet didn't seem to hurt her! Pony Up needs more room ...a bigger farm........it is hard to have two separate farms. Two farms means hay delivered two places, volunteers to two places......mud management......fencing, gravel, sand.......at two places. We recently had a board meeting and the board has decided that we need one farm.....one bigger farm. So we are looking...the parameters are that the farm has to be close......a minimum of five acres.....just have water already available......a barn would be nice..must be dry and have ample flat pasture. We have two places that we are interested in locally......and we just need to make it happen. We dream big... It may be a fundraising extravaganza...it may be that we sell everything we have that is not nailed down........but if we want to continue to help horses.....we have to grow.......in order to grow, we need more room...more room costs money. We appreciate your ideas and suggestions. Don't forget to turn your clocks back.........I will be glad to do it this time...it is so dark in the morning. I am already tired of it... spring where are you? Pony Up fortune for tomorrow: Set your sights on the nearest mountain top ..then put your climbing shoes on. .