Pony hero memories..and putting up hay.

I've got a bit behind lately - I'm going through a big flare up of the dreaded sarc.  It didn't stop me from enjoying the Olympics though.  Being British I'm well chuffed at all the medals team GB won.  NBC's coverage could have been better though.  I would have loved to watch more of the equestrian events.  How I wish I could watched the three day event.  That was always my favorite.

When I was growing up in England, equestrian events were frequently shown on TV and my hero's were my favorite riders and their horses.

My favorite horse/pony was Stroller, who was ridden by Marion Coakes (Mould).  He was only 14.1 hands.  His mum was a Connemara pony and his dad a thoroughbred.  Stroller was the only pony ever to compete in the Olympics.  He won silver in the 1968 Olympics.   I loved that pony.  Because of his small size, it was absolutely exciting to watch him jump against the clock.   They won over 60 international competitions.  He retired at age 21 and died when he was 36 of a heart attack.

Like most horse mad girls, I used to jump anything and a favorite thing to do was to set up jumps in the woods.  It was really fun to race through the woods jumping over the jumps made from branches and logs....(I bet that really ticked off the dog walkers and others).  I discovered it's a good idea, when building jumps in the woods, to look above the jump to see what's there...it's no fun hitting a low branches and can be very painful.

In about 1971 or '72 I attended the Royal International Horse Show in London with a back-stage pass.  I got to meet my heroes such as Harvey Smith and others.

Here's a picture of the cheeky little pony:


Here's a video of Marion and Stroller doing what they did best:
  


Meanwhile...back on the ranch;

Here's how Brad and William get the hay to our stack yard.
Brad stabs the bales with this tractor and then loads them on the trailer.


William drives the truck around while Brad stacks the hay on the trailer.


Then they both go to the stack yard and Brad unloads the bales.  Then they return for another load...and so on.  It goes pretty fast and there's no broken bales to mess with.  This hay wasn't rained on and is already sold.  I noticed they got the little baler out to put up some hay for the mustangs.