A Day at Windy Hill Farm

"It's not the barn,

it's the horse that's in it."

Welcome to our first official posting. We are so excited to to be able to take our website a step further and share so many exciting things on our new blog. We sat down a month ago and went over things that we wanted to achieve at the beginning of the new year. One of them was giving our website a face lift, which we have achieved. The second was to start a blog. This is pretty modern stuff for a bunch of farmers like us to figure out, but we are hoping to have the hang of it very soon. Our goal is to post a blog at least once a week. The horse business is not just about riding, so we are going to cover a broad spectrum of things that we feel will help everyone have the most success with their horse or horses.

We have a great crew here at Windy Hill Farm. We would like to introduce them to everyone and show you what a day at a Windy Hill Farm can involve.

The day starts at 6:30 with feeding. Then around 7:30 we start riding. We ride 40 to 60 head of horses a day. We usually have seven riders riding at a time.

This is Jordan tacking Jazz.

We were very excited to wake up to warm weather on Monday. We took several trips to the woods. We wanted to be outside as much as possible. This is Adam crossing the creek with Marv.

Even the dogs didn't miss a trip to the woods.

We have two Andrews that work on the farm and they both clean stalls. We refer to this Andrew as "Big Andrew" because he is older. Big Andrew rides on Monday and Wednesday and takes care of the cleaning the barn the rest of the week. He is pictured riding Dudley.

This is "Little Andrew" he cleans stalls on Monday and Wednesday. The days that "Big Andrew" rides. Little Andrew prefers to ride things with wheels. He lives on the neighboring farm so he is able to ride his bike to work.

Here is Adam cracking the bull whip on Sage. We don't have people lined up asking if we can crack a bull whip standing on the horses back, nor do any customers go home and try it, but it is our way of testing what a horse will tolerate. One of our mottos at Windy Hill Farm is " It is not about the obstacle, it is about the horse saying "yes" to everything you ask it to do." We want our horses to trust the rider and be confident horses.

We also teach every horse to hobble that comes to the farm. This is a subject that most people do

not know much about, but is very important. I am sure that it will be something that we will cover in

a future post, because it has sparked a lot of interest.

This is Willis. He started out cleaning stalls for us and now rides full time. He is shown here on a new horse that we just got in. He rides most of our new stock as well as green horses. When a new horse arrives at the farm we spend a lot of time with it the first day. We want to evaluate it thoroughly and decide which direction to take it

This is a shot from Jordan's point of view. Jordan, Tiffany, and Kathy are the main people that take pictures for the website. So, it can be hard to catch them on the other side of the camera.

Ted on the faithful 1020 John Deere. We have had this tractor for over 20 years and it has made many rounds in the hay fields and spreading manure.

This is Kathy on Hilltop. She usually keeps about five very special projects that she polishes. She loves to work with woman like herself that have a passion for horses. It is a treat to get a horse that she has worked with.

Clarence on one of the two year olds. At this stage in the training we make sure that we split arena work with some kind of outdoor activities. It is nice to be able to open and shut a gate off of the horse, especially on muddy days like this.

Well, I hope you enjoy this posting and got a little more incite on our farm. We would enjoy hearing from you. The great thing about a blog is that you can leave us a comment on what you think or just to say Hi.

Until next time, Tiffany