Volunteering at a Rescued Horse Farm
Filling hay bags and shoveling manure - life doesn't get any better than this.
Mastering a task
A few weeks ago, I started volunteering at Claddagh Farm, one of the locations of This Old Horse, a fine organization that has developed numerous innovative ways of rescuing horses.
I have nothing to do with their innovative ways.
Here’s what I do: I show up when I say I’m going to show up and I come ready to work. That is all that I require of myself.
Stable hands, who are thirty years younger than I and are paid to be there, tell me what to do. Inexplicably, they don’t like filling hay bags and express surprise when I say I love doing it. Sure, my right eye watered like a garden hose as I couldn’t stop sneezing after the first day, but that was a minor lesson to learn, to blow one’s nose once in a while.
It has become my Stakhanovite mission to master this task.
All beginnings are hard. Untying and tying the drawstring on the bag was beyond me at first. Once shown how, I realized it’s similar to starting a knitting project — a series of slipknots but finished off at the end.
Each bag is different, though, and a few of the drawstrings have gotten into the manure. Naughty drawstrings! But have you smelled horse manure? It’s not offensive like other animals’ I could name but don’t want to shame.
The hay is delivered to the farm in large bales, not the small bales I tossed around as a youngster helping out on my uncle’s farm. These are bales only a tractor can pick up. “Flakes” of hay need to be peeled off. Then the hay has to be separated because you would not believe how tightly packed a bale of hay is, and tightly packed hay cannot be tugged out of the bag by the lovely guests of this farm.
By the way, I am learning that I prefer to use a pitchfork for all of these steps. Too much bending over otherwise. I am getting better at dunking the hay into the bag.
What?! How does she dunk hay into a bag? Good question. Farms are places where practical solutions become things of beauty. Only a picture can do justice to the practical solution to the problem of how to fill a hay bag. So here’s a photo of my new office and work space.
There are screws sticking up on the four corners, to keep the bag open while you dunk! It’s perfect.
So far my best is 12 bags in an hour. Watch out, Aleksei [Stakhanov].1
Why
Another good question. Short answer: animals, and striving to be a good sentient being to other sentient beings.
So far I’ve made two good friends at the farm. One is called Todd. The other is Mac.
Todd is obviously my hay-bag-stuffing buddy. But why am I highlighting Mac out of the fifty horses that reside at Claddagh? Short story.
At the end of my last shift, when I was the only one there, I decided to walk down the aisle between the two rows of paddocks or turnouts, in each of which are two or three horses, to see if anyone wanted to talk to me. I practiced my Listening to Horses skills and I asked them how they were doing. Some were still eating, some were having their post-breakfast snooze. Mac was the first one who clearly was curious about me. He stopped eating and listened. Then he raised his head over the fence and interacted with me for ten minutes. Scratches under the halter he particularly welcomed. He rested his chin on my arm and pressed into me a couple times. I didn’t want to leave. That’s how buddies are made.
I’ve used the phrase “so far” twice and that means I look forward to more shifts, making more buddies, and telling stories about them.
An invitation
If you happen to be in the area…
Pledges to A Good Spot
Please, consider pledging to this substack, A Good Spot, as it would be greatly encouraging and well, simply, AWESOME. (Pledging is not paying right away; a subscriber pledges to become a paid subscriber if and when I turn on paid subscriptions, which I don’t plan to do for a long while. When I do, every thin dime will go directly to rescued animals.)
And, if by the end of 2023 I have five (just 5!) people pledging support, I will donate $100 to one of the animal rescues I talk about (but I won’t turn on paid subscriptions to do that).
Here’s what someone who pledged has to say,
I have also learned how to muck a stall, but nothing too funny or interesting has happened while doing that…yet, plus I think I covered the manure angle with the drawstring detail. If you need to hear about manure, let me know.
This Old Horse bought Melodee Stables one mile from my house and turned it into Phoenix Farms. My kids used to ride at Meoldee.
I love your journey with the horses.
Please write more.
PS: I'm the wife of a farmer who makes those huge round bales!