The Last Foal

This past Thursday after a long wait our last foal of the season was born “Brewski“.  It was a very hard foaling and extremely long night with a foal that couldn't nurse, but after much perseverance daylight brought relief to this situation and all is well now. 

As the unexpected new circumstances in our lives present themselves it may actually be the last time I mid-wife a foaling, I’m not sure if I feel good or bad about this. I’ve spent many, many nights huddled with mares patiently awaiting new life to emerge, sitting and waiting, waiting and waiting for that magical process that is both nerve wracking and joyful at the same time to occur, some of those nights were good, some were bad, very, very bad, strange how tragedy stays in ones mind, but on the whole the good vastly outweighs the bad.

It all started why back in the early 80s I think, not by any particular love-affair with horses or birthing, no, I was working on a feed-lot in Sutton at the time, fattening heifers for market, 160 of them at a time would arrive and spend some months with me getting to there optimum weight, then one day the cattle trucks would appear and they were all gone, only emptiness was left. I grew tired of that, as soon as I got friendly with any of them they would be gone, there was no joy in it compared to my childhood on dairy farms were you got to know the animals very well, even giving them pet names !!, bonds were formed, life was shared. The feed-lot eventually got to me, so one day I just quit and decided to take the first agricultural job I could find, it just happened to be with horses, it has became a career that in general has been very good to me over the years.

After working with them for a while I did fall in love with them !, of all the different facets of work on a horse farm it always amazed me showing up in the morning to find a brand new foal in the barn. I inquired about the night job, but I didn't have experience, lived far away at the time so the answer was always no, until one day the Farm Manager who was a friend of mine talked me into going to Ireland to foal mares on a big Stud Farm. With limited practical knowledge but lots of theoretical knowledge off I went to the green isle and spent a wonderful five years during which with my partner we would foal 80+ mares a season. Upon returning to Canada I continued participating in the foaling on most of the farms I worked on and have been doing it here for the last 21 years, a rough calculation would be that I have been present to something between 500 to 700 births, watched that first breath of air taken, the first wobbly steps attempted, that quick transformation from a helpless newborn to a little horse able to gallop alongside it’s mother within just a few short hours of being born, ah, I loved it then !!!, but over the last few years the late nights and cold weather have gotten to me and I don't enjoy it as much. So if the plans go ahead for all the horses to be sold there will be no more foaling, no more wondrous feeling of new life arriving, and I think I am ready for that, it’s sad but live goes on and we move on with it , the future will bring new challenges and I will tackle them as they come.

 Just a few minutes old here

Brewski, at 9 hours of age

May, what a month !

May came in like a lion for us, tearing and gouging at out tranquil life, changes are upon us with little notice, I can’t get into all of it at the moment, but the main and most pressing change is that the part of the Farm that we live on is being sold and we have to vacate this beautiful house we have called home for the last six years.

I have lived on this Farm for 21 years, sharing the last eight of them with my wife, there have been amazing changes in the world in that time, computers, cell phones and the internet came, the cold war ended, the Soviet block despaired, the sun rose over 7,665 times and set, one could almost call it a lifetime the years I have spent here. Not being here anymore came as a shock and took a while to assimilate. 

But there is truth to the saying that every dark cloud has a silver lining, we decided it was time to own our own house, and with that in mind we started looking around with the hope of finding something in the country and not far from here so as to remain close to our jobs, family, friends and Bourbon (Evelyn’s horse), right away we realized that this was a tall order to fill, unfortunately we live in a pricy area of the provence, houses that fit our bill were way out of our price range and it soon became apparent that compromise would be necessary and we started looking at houses in town. 

Right away I became depressed, the modern subdivision to me is an abomination, developers and politicians in there greed pack as many houses per acer as they can, including two blades of grass per house as a backyard , fencing it in with monstrous walls that rival The Berlin Wall in there starkness , were has the human creativity gone ? our artistic flare ? , Joni Mitchell says it so well in her song  Big Yellow Taxi : 

“ they paved paradise and put up a parking lot “ 

and then they have the audacity to name there developments with heavenly appellations like “ The Green Glens by the Serenading Brook “ ( have to be carful and not name one, don’t want to get sued !! ) , which translates to “ Two Trees in a Drainage Ditch” and one is blessed by the sight of brick walls and tall wooden fences as far as the eye can see, horizontal skyscrapers is what they are. 

I am once again rambling , I’ll stop. 

We drove through our neighboring towns , Aurora, Newmarket , Pottageville, Schomberg , Lloydtown, Beeton , Tottenham , etc ... scanning the “ For Sale “ signs , without finding what we were looking for, then almost in Schomberg , but to pricy and then last weekend while driving through and old neighborhood of Newmarket we found it , a house with character , charm, and a large green backyard, we scrambled to get an agent, rushed an offer in just beating two others and got lucky, so now we are the proud owners of a HOME !!!

We have a couple more months of rural life before we take possession and become urbanities, and now that we have had time for all of this to sink in we are actually looking forward to it, life is an ever changing thing full of surprises !!, there are more changes ahead, but like this one we will tackle them as they come and with a bit of luck land on our feet. 

A nice spring ride !!!

Self portrait , getting a bit better at it ( staying on the road ! ) 

Today for a change it actually felt like spring , the sun was shinning the winds calm the roads dry just perfect for a ride !! and ride I did . I set out without any particular destination , at the end of the driveway I turned right and that set the tune for the day.  Right took me into Aurora , I looked around to see if any of my old club mates were around but found none, so I kept heading east all the way to Musselman Lake , at the usual store stop there was a gathering of about 30 riders so I pulled in also for a bite of nourishment , I felt like a lone goose landing on a pond full of geese , I was with my own but still an outsider . And as common with cyclist , one headed out and within seconds all followed , they went south I went north , the roads were full of cyclist and I did run into a friend and we rode together for a bit but he had to get home and me, well no hurry no destination , north I kept going finally arriving at Zephyr , by then I was getting tired and decided it was time to start heading home. I got adventurous and took new roads west, some dirt , having 25x700 on the bike gives me more confidence and that in turn opens up a lot of new explorations of the area within range of my biking day. 

The 9th Line heading north towards Mt Albert

One of many tractors working the land

I nice stop on a dirt road , just the sound of frogs croaking 

Spring flowers blooming in the ditches the smell of manure and freshly turned soil as tractors plow the land, birds pirched high singing there sarinades to prospective mates all signs that spring is here and life is once again renuewing itself in this enduring cycle of life. 

This year as oppose to last year I am seeing lots of geese pared off setting up nests, pleasing to pass by them on the road.

And as I cycled through the marsh on one of it's quiet roads towards me came a child on a small bike on what looked like his first ride without the training wheels , he waves at me and proudly says " hello " with a huge smile on his face, behind and even prouder father following , yes spring is here !!!

After about five hours out and 103 km I arrived back to the waving tails of the pups, weary legged and tired but pleased, I need to do more evening ridding during the week to prep for these long weekend rides.

Cycling reunion

Today Ed and I meet for our first post TdC ride !!! 

The day started out not very promising rainy and blustery but by mid day as we headed out it was sunny and warm getting up to 18 degrees. We knew the wind was going to get gusty up to 50km/h from the west so we rode out that way ending up in Tottenham for our usual TdC snack stop, then it was a fast ride east with the wind at our backs all the way to the Marsh , at times on the gravel road we were doing 45km/h just coasting !!!!. The last few km home were a challenging with hard cross winds going south and the few km we had to do westbound were right into it , but we made it home to some nice cool beers that Evelyn had purchased for us !!!

Ed trim and fit getting ready for his 3rd consecutive TdC ride , which will be a record as no one has done 3 in a row .

Check out that belly !!!, this was only my 2nd ride this month , I'm getting fat not fit !!!

And what would a TdC reunion be without a Tim Horton stop for some refuelling !!

Flying down the 5th Line , this section is gravel and we were just coasting at 45km/h with the wind at our backs !!!

Look of worry as my front wheel slips off onto the gravel just as I snap the picture .

We had a great ride, we took it easy as we both had ridden yesterday,  we totalled 87 km in 4.28 hours of riding time . This doubled my average ride for this year, when Ed said he was up for a 100 km ride I almost died as yesterdays 43 km almost did me in , it was my first ride back on Betsy so I was zooming along enjoying the fast ride until eventually I had to turn back and headed home into the wind, by the time I got home my legs were toast !! But I was careful today and survived just fine .

Interestingly this was only my 5th ride of the year for 256 km, last year by now I had been out 18 times for a total of 881 km , amazing how working towards a goal can motivate so much !!!, maybe I should sign up for Paris-Istambul !!! 

Heaven in the sun !!!

A little bit of heaven !!!

Usually I like to just write about one topic per post, but today will be a bit of a potpourri as I've not written in a while. 

I'll begin with Cuba, I just got back from a much needed vacation on it's lovely beaches together with Evelyn our daughter and grandson. Surprisingly, family vacations are very much a happening thing as there where many of them at our resort, it's nice to see this trend!

I liked Cuba, didn't get to see much of it as we were only there for a week, wanted to go to Havana but it was a 12 hour excursion so we passed on it, wanted to see Fidel too, but no luck there either !. 

I found the people friendly and helpful, as far as getting a real feel for the country it's not possible in such a short time, but oppose to Mexico where police with machine-guns hanging from there shoulders are common sight, here I only saw an occasional policeman and they just carried a small barely visible side arm , one gets a much more secure feeling in Cuba. 

The discussion of Democracy versus Communism I will leave for another post, it is one of my favourite subjects to delve into!. 

One of the highlights of the trip was a hike we took in the Varahicacos Ecological Reserve, we were lucky as the hotel was just a half hour walk away so one morning before it got to hot Evelyn and I headed out , once there, fee paid, map in hand we went in and found ourselves plunged into a natural wonderland full of cactus, exotic plants, salamanders, caves, termite mounds, bee hives and even skeletal remains it was a most amazing hike 

All kind of cactus plants and trees.

If I read the pamphlet correctly , foto on the left is a Curujeyes, it roots onto other plants and rocks. 

Termite mounds abounded, some on the ground some high up in trees.

Lots of caves, some quite challenging to get into.

Lots of bees, with hives in the rock or like this exposed on the walls, had to walk by very slowly !!!

This little guy was very friendly and would come right up to us  to  investigate.

2,000 year old aboriginal remains, discovered in 1985. 

The porous rook filters out the seawater creating freshwater lagoons 

300 year old Cactus tree, being slowly strangled by the roots of a Fiscus.

Another excursion was to the Dolphin Park to swim with the dolphins , ordinarily I don't like the idea of captive animals being exploited especially dolphins, but there's a bit of an inconsistency in believes here as I have spent half a decade working with captive animals that are extremely exploited , some day I will have to come to terms with that.

These dolphins at least were in a very large semi natural environment, en a natural estuary surrounded by mangrove trees and interacting with other sea creatures that could come into their pools. 

We had a great time swimming with them !!

We never made it to Havana but we did get a slight flavour of urban Cuba by visiting Veradero , even went for a buggy ride !!. 

I will definitely be going back to Cuba one day. 

  

Yesterday I spotted the first barn swallow of the season , she must have followed me back from Cuba !!!, it marvels me how these delicate little birds can make such a exhausting migratory journey every year, navigating their way over thousands of kilometres of a hostile over populated continent back to their birth place,  my barn.

I have no update on Wisdom, I've scoured the internet and nothing, in these cases one has to stick to the old adage " no news is good news !! " 

As I suspected neither BBC or CNN responded to my query to them. But as I was browsing for info I came upon BirdWatchingDaily.com and they had and article about Wisdom:

http://cs.birdwatchingdaily.com/BRDCS/blogs/field_of_view/archive/2011/03/21/wisdom-the-albatross-survives.aspx

This article led me to some great pictures of Wisdom and her chic taken by Connie Toops , they can be found here:

http://www.agpix.com/photographer/portfolio/A0081780_32_caption.html

"Paris to Istanbul" it conjures up images of history, mystery and intrigue, great adventures , dazzling scenery, delicious cuisine and a possible spectacular breathtaking bike tour !!!, 4,000 km in 50 days riding throw Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Turkey, Andy you have tweaked my interest with your intent to ride it in 2013, I wonder if I can get another leave of absence ????