Moon and I are still around. Three weeks ago I married the amazing G, we had finished overhauling our entire yard to get it ready for our backyard wedding, a busy summer of growing grass and making roads and mowing. Lots of mowing.
The last three years have been insane. We built a house. We got engaged, perfected our yard, got married.
The last three weeks??
I've done nothing. I went pony camping with the girls and rode 40 miles in 3 days. Moon outdid himself. We took jumping lessons over the summer and I learned just how game and determined a pony he is. I shot a recurve bow off his back at a trot, without any issues.
He's been teaching the little girls to ride in my spare time. He's taught a four year old, a five year old and a twelve year old. And he loves it.
He's dappled like crazy.
It's time though.
After all these years, all the hard work and long hours and wearing myself to exhaustion on our property and our life, it's finally time.
This weekend, we're hooking the auger up to the tractor.
And we're drilling holes for fence posts.
Because it's time Moon comes home.
I wish I could bring him home over the winter, but we don't have any shelter, and I'll be lucky to get the fencing up in time, and we don't have any way to heat the water. But the goal, the dream, no, the REALITY, is that this April or May, he comes home.
I can't describe to you how I feel about it.
There was a time when I first got Moon, which is 5 years ago this Christmas, that I couldn't imagine actually having him at home. I wanted it, but the reality of it just wasn't real. I didn't know enough about horses, I still felt so green, so fresh, so raw.
Now after 5 years...he's like an extension of my being. I know what to feed him, how much to feed him, when to feed him. I make decision on his grain and supplements. I'm self assured when it comes to his vet care and his injuries and treating him. I'm beyond confident riding him. I take it all in stride. I feel like I know every bit of him.
And I'm ready to bring him home.
Not just to have him in my backyard. But to be able to ride like he's in my backyard. To be the sole decision maker in his life. The one who brings him supper every day. The one who sees him sleeping. Who decides when and if he'll be blanketed.
I suppose it's the last step, the final stage, of having Moon has my truest of true heart horse. Where I am his everything, and he is my everything.
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I can't describe what this weekend was like for me. Moon and I move as one. We think as one. It sounds ridiculous and I think I'm turning into one of those nutters, with their crystals and voodoo and trances and things.
It's not that.
His body. His reactions. His movements. They're so familiar in me, that they are instinctive in me. His personality is so perfectly tuned to mine, that our reactions are so similar. We love the same things, that when we are doing what we love, the rest of the world falls away and we have no other focus. I see what he sees, he feels what I feel.
It's hard to describe trusting a horse this much. 10 years ago, I had my skull cracked open by a horse, and I never felt the same around them. I was scared. And while I fell in love with two horses over the years that followed, it was Moon who changed my riding.
I don't have a desire to ride any other horses, because I can't ride them the way I ride Moon. I ride him without using my head, the one, rare time in a day that that happens. My thoughts drain away, and I simply move.
I need to bring him home. Our world is a tangled knot and it's time to untangle ourselves.
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This is what I'm wanting to build for a shelter, except I'd really like to section some of it off, or build a lean-to, that has space for Moon's food, tack and buckets.
I have a bunch of materials already kicking around, and I'm getting a couple of poles from Hil that are hopefully tall enough to make work. I'm thinking I'll use them for the front of the shed, and then maybe a couple of 4x4 poles for the back of the shed. Add in the plywood we already have and 2x4s, and hopefully we'll be alright! We even have some shingles left over too that might work for us...And tyvek!! Wonder if I could get some cheap siding online...
Then comes the fencing. We're going to enlarge the garden a LOT, and that should mean a lot more produce next fall. I want to leave space for a proper manure pile that we can rotate as well.
The fencing plan is to do 50' spacing of high tensile wire, with a combination of wood and t-posts. I'd like to build a small sacrificial paddock around the run-in shelter, with some of the bush fenced in as well. Then make two large paddocks for grass, with one of them divisible temporarily to help with getting a good rotation in.
For now, I think Moon will be watered by bucket, since we could probably hang two in the morning and two at night and be okay.
HOPEFULLY we won't have too much problem augering through the silt and can get those posts in really easy. That would rock. I'm going to be over the moon if we're able to get all the fencing installed before winter! Even if we have to wait until spring to work on the run-in shelter.
