Her Dream Come True

Guess what? Chicken squat, that's what. Eat while it's hot. What kind of joke is that? My dad used to say the thermostat for the wood boiler last night worked. We didn't burn ourselves out of house and home. Brought the room temperature up when I turned it on this morning. Oh, we're still way up to temp. Look at there. And I loaded it pretty early last night. Of course, it's not gotten real cold yet. The cold weather's coming starting at noon. We peak at 48 and then it just drops. Which is interesting because we're gonna go back and see Ernie. Not at noon. But at 4:00. It's gonna be like the height of cold.

We're gonna go look at a new horse, possibly. We're gonna go look at a horse that we might buy. So I'm really excited and we're on our way there now.

We're there. Hey, how's it going? Good to see you. This is Cindy. This is her farm. Beautiful farm.

Thank you.

And it's clean now. Clean-ish. Oh, I bet it would be Ruben. Yeah.

He would definitely be the boss of all the animals because Blaze is that small. And then he's a horse. And Blaze is the boss and he's that big.

How do you know you can just walk in there with a horse like that? With your kids and everything.

Yeah, yeah, I would watch his immediate, um, his immediate response to me. The first time he picks up his head and that kind of thing. I mean, if he came, if there was any of a twitch. First of all, if he was agitated before I got in the thing, he would already be, you know, at the door.

What do you guys think about this horse?

I like him.

You're the horse expert. Have you ever met a horse you didn't like? No. Will it be a while before y'all grow that one? Look how tall.

I know, very tall. We're getting her a horse that she's not going to outgrow too soon.

Ever.

We looked up—

who would outgrow that horse?

Well, she would outgrow the horse in ability.

Jack could ride that horse if she continues in advancing, that sort of thing.

That's the only reason she would outgrow it. Um, not outgrow it as far as like weight or height.

So how was the walk down here? What was that like?

Um, it was really good. He seems pretty chill.

Keeps that head down nice. I think. That's all I know about. Shore horses, you want to keep their heads down.

Horse mom, I'm just a videographer.

We're gonna go jump. Wow, she wasn't expecting that, was she? There, like a little tick.

There you go, nice job!

They're gonna have her jump one of these logs. Whoa, you weren't ready for that, huh?

He's so good. He really is, Poppy. He's so good, like he's I mean, he's not perfect, but he's good.

That's nice. This will fill it up fast. And if this works, we don't have to do nearly as much splitting, which could mean our winter firewood workload could be dropped 90%. I don't see why that's not gonna work. If that works, we just get this track loader and just scoop up our sawn lumber firewood and just dump it here. Deal with getting it out of the bottom of these cages. Happy Friday, fun day! I don't normally vlog on Friday. You like this? We won't be doing so much farm stuff. We're gonna take the boys mountain biking at 10. Gotta hurry, get back, be ready to leave by 3 to go look at this horse. I'm so happy that wood boiler's working. Happy day, sunshine!

Yeah.

They've almost hay bombed all this. We're leaving that, that's got to be graded. We got one more spot right up there and then we're gonna move them up the hill. Youth group's been, uh, over here separated from the bull. We only have to keep one separated from the bull. No, we got two. We got two heifers that need to be separated. I'm fine, huh? No grounds for complaint. One more hay, Bob. Happy today because I'm waiting on him. The other way around, pushing you, huh? Didn't we decide yesterday that's too— it's not ready? We'll let it be. And what we'll do is if we run out of hay, we'll just hit that early in the spring. I don't think we'll run out of hay. I think we have enough hay to park these guys early. Well, I like to park them by Christmas. I think we'll still be out here. I think Christmas. You turn this off? Yep. Got to bring the mastitis test just today. She's clogging the filter. She's always had this kind of one udder that acts a fool. Oh, I thought it was that one. I don't know if that's mastitis or just some sort of— what do you call it? Not flesh. Uh, Anyway, let me milk that one. Yeah, there it is. It's like snotty. Last two rounds with her, we didn't milk that one at all and it came around, but now it's bummy again. Look, look, like, looks like snot, right? Milk out that whole quarter, but it's also going to be clogging the filters. And if it's metastatic milk, we don't want to be drinking that. I mean, it won't hurt us, but she's eating. She doesn't have a temperature. Just always had problems with that one. And you know, that didn't happen until we weaned the calf, so might take the calf to be really on top of it, or she's just really, you know, maybe it's stress. Might clear up. She's calmed down a lot. We weaned her calf, what, a week and a half ago? Looks like it's pretty dried out. It's happening. I think we're gonna have freeze-dried food today. You know what else is probably happening? This is gonna filter nicely. Wow, okay, so far so good. We already had to change the filter, but this time yesterday it worked. It was that one quarter. The one quarter's— hey, bye-bye, I'm going. Bye. Go down the fort. You ready, boys? Ready. You've been driving a lot lately, just saying. Tim too. You got a bunch of backseat drivers now.

Yeah, stop going around some curves.

That's it.

What about your pants, bro? I took them off. Didn't you get cold last time? I mean, yeah, but that's where I got a sweater. All right, bit cold last time. He got a little disenchanted. Hopefully that doesn't happen this time. Let's see. Y'all holding up okay? Just says no. You started off strong. Yeah, but this is steep. Austin will probably walk as fast as I can ride this. Well, we followed a logging road and got off track. Now we're pushing through the woods, holding the GPS back to the trail. Just came up that craziness. Is this it? According to my GPS. Okay, I see a trail. All right, we're not lost. Well, how was it, Jonah? You got your wish of getting to ride On a non-trail. That was not riding, that was hike-a-bike. Yeah, that gave me PTSD. Yeah, me too. Our little shortcut that turned into a, uh, long cut. Austin comes prepared. Half gallon of water. Show us what y'all did when we were gone. Hold on one second, here we go. Cindy to Austin. First time we had Blaze on a cart. What's the takeaway?

It was really good. Blaze was pretty much good the whole time except for once when he freaked out. I got out and I petted him until he calmed down. And then he did real quick.

I was scared to death. I will not lie. And Lily says to me, she goes, Mom, if you get scared, don't scream. It's just gonna make it worse. I said, I'll try to remember that.

Yeah, but she jumped out of the cart.

I didn't jump out.

You stopped?

I did stop and she got out.

I did. I got out.

I was like, I, uh, it was a lot. It was probably all perfectly normal, but like the fact that I don't know anything about it, I was just like, I was just scared. I didn't want to die on a cart.

She was like, how do I get upstairs?

Quick hugs.

Give him a hug.

Give him a hug.

Quick hugs.

Bye.

Go hug her. That's kind of rude. They're in good hands, Ashley.

Yep, I got them.

Ashley and Waylon's got you.

We're here.

Oh my God, it's so big, it's so big.

Whoa, there's a lodge around this place. Is this a big deal, Lily? This is the equestrian— no, this is the Tryon Equestrian Center International. Equestrian—

is this like people from all over the world come here to ride?

Olympians?

Yes.

You're ready. You know, you got all bundled up and you've been in this Hot car.

I know, I'm so sweaty right now. I'm just wearing two shirts.

Is this a dream for you, Lily? Yes. Going to the equestrian center for an equestrian is like a homesteader going to Joel Salatin's Polyfest. They're gonna ride too, huh? Yeah. Lily wants to go around, walk around. Let's go see this place.

It's cute.

Miss Leslie.

Oh, hey. How do you think we get in, Papa? Well, I want to go look at the arena. Oh yeah, I see it.

We're walking in right now.

I'm gonna ride that. I'm gonna ride in that arena.

Is this like a baseball fan getting to go play in a major league baseball stadium?

Yeah, and you're not even that professional. There is a restaurant that you could eat too. Like, like, oh my god, like—

I can't wait. How do you think Ernie's gonna do in here?

He's gonna do incredible.

Yeah, the idea was to try this horse away from his farm, away from his familiarity, right?

and yeah, this is like a really good area to do it.

But the problem is there's no— there's no little jumps.

You can mow the jumps.

Oh, okay. All right. Where are we trying to go?

We're trying to get over there. You could just climb the fence.

No, I don't climb the fence. There's the gate. This the hobby horse one?

Yep. I'm gonna put that down, it's too hot. Oh, I can't do it in these tall boots.

There you go, there you go. All right, we're gonna go set up jumps.

Fun to be down here, huh?

Yeah. Have you ever done this before?

Riders have ridden on this very soil.

Who?

The best.

All the Olympic riders, you know any names?

The one that I really like is that— this is Hank Hook. Hank Cook. He's all on Instagram.

We are home. Jonah cooked. Fishy Friday. Salmon. Alaska salmon. Rice. Broccoli. Friday nights, usually kind of scant. Not from our farm necessarily, but good to have some fish in our diet. Hey, good job, Jonah. You're welcome. Cooking the meal, my man. Thanks for holding down the homestead. Friday night movie night. Beast Games, episode 2. Let's go. Happy day.