March was supposed to be the calm before the storm. April marks our first mares due, May is when we start breeding for 2022 foals and from there the intensity just keeps ramping up throughout the summer months. So usually March is when we take a deep breath, enjoy some nice weather and try to knock out a few projects to make the upcoming year flow more smoothly.
This year, we have the chance to spend some quality time investing in training for our horses and ourselves with a longtime teamster staying with us for a time. Lee has travelled across the country by horse-drawn wagon 4 times and has spent a lot of time logging in the woods. He knows about working horses and has been putting in some serious time with the horses. It's an amazing opportunity to learn and see how we can improve our own working horse practices. It does, however, make life quite a lot more hectic with constantly catching horses, switching out teams and making sure our horses and equipment are up to speed for what he needs. I'm sure as we settle into a routine some of the craziness will die down but at the moment my days finish with my head spinning!
As if full days of horse training weren't enough, we're also preparing to start working with the boys for the breeding season. It's been an ongoing goal to get our stallions collecting well enough to be able to ship semen to others who are interested in breeding to them. It's been a much slower process than we anticipated but I really think we're getting close. This week several exciting new items arrived for my breeding lab and I'm looking forward to putting them to use. If all goes well I hope to not only improve our collection training but also test out the ability to freeze semen on the boys and see if we can't store some genetics for the long run.
We're hanging in there. It's intimidating to think that things only get more crazy from here. But it's part of life on the farm and it means we've got exciting things happening every day.