New friends on the other side of the fence

With new territory comes new friends, right???

Last year i wrote a post about How a Girl gets a Horse and i am HAPPY to say, my Fox Trim Classic is now 27 years old and alive and kicking!

And by kicking i mean: KICKING, showing of his manly hood, making lots and lots of noise and pretty much acting like a 5 year old, i just discovered myself, stallion!

A couple of months ago, my dad got 1.5 horse. Yes, 1.5 horse because one is really big and the other one is a really little little Shetland pony. And thus.... 1.5 horse...

My mom and dad have a nice old barn besides their house and we build some stalls. We also got them a pasture. Nothing fancy but nice, underneath the trees, and we thought it would be sufficient for them. The first 2 months those horses could not go outside... It rained and rained and rained.... But  finally after 2 months they did and oh, they were some happy horses.

All this time Classic would sneak peeks to my mom and dad's place to see what was going on. The problem was they were a little to far away for him to get to know them a little bit better plus i don't think he sees really well long distances (being old and all) so "making new friends" wasn't an option, yet...

But that all changed last week. Because of the weather and the location of  the pasture the grass is not growing as well as it should. And Classic has TONS and TONS of grass. His pasture is a bit bigger and no trees. (Yes some people call it spoiled)...

Soo, last week dad and i decided to move his 1.5 horse to Classics pasture, so half of the pasture could be used for them and the other half for Classic (Yes, there has to be a boss...). With of course a 10 foot barrier in between so Classic wouldn't jump in with Magic and Raisin (and yes Raisin would be the tiny one) and cause all sorts of trouble...

But making new friends is really really hard.

And i mean REALLY HARD! Because of the task we have given ourselves by starting our own large family farm and with me getting sick and going true chemo for almost 64 weeks there wasn't much time to make a lot of new friends. So seeing my super stud trying to make new friends is like, "Oh, I'm not the only one who has troubles doing this...".

In Holland i was blessed with good friends. Friends that have grown with me into the persons that we are now, friends who came later in life and which i experienced good, not so good and bad things with and friends that are friends for life.

BUT... I am here now. And they are there...

And telling your friends what you do in a new country with a different mentality with different customs and different views on life, just doesn't cut it all the time. Plus their lives go on too. They have new jobs, new adventures, get married, have cute little babies and i have no idea about what it is they are doing all day, every day... And that makes me miss them even more. Don't get me wrong, i don't want to go back to The Netherlands... i just wish they were here...

I think we, as in Classic and his new buddies and me, will be fine given time.

There are soo many nice, sweet, talented, good, friendly, smart, open minded people here, so it is only a matter of time before i meet some more of them. Because yes, i too have met some really fantastic people already, but friendships need to grow and i can't expect that all the friendships i had in Holland, build up over 28 years, are gonna be here at my doorsteps right NOW. Although i sure would want that! And i am a very impatient girl! So every second here in this beautiful country is another second in which i miss my friends back "home".

But i have good hope, and i have time... What more can a girl wish for...

And as far as my super stud goes... i checked him again just now. He's grazing happily on one side of the fence and Magic and Raisin on the other side looking at each other, sniffing the air and act dumb... I think they'll be all right!

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Trading Places

When I was 14 years old, life was so full of exciting things I almost didn’t know where to start...
Almost…

At that age I had already figured out that I wouldn’t be a good nun, boys where way to interesting to give up. I also knew that I did not want to be involved in anything that had to do with mathematics (go figure that 10 years later I got my masters in Agricultural Economics). I was defiantly not going to be a trucker, well not in Holland, the roads were just too small and there was too much traffic.  And that I loved speed except on my horse, whenever he decided to take off!

What I did figure out however was that I wanted to get my motorcycle drivers license. I thought driving a car was for sissies, so I would be much cooler to drive a huge motorcycle. Not a Harley, no one of those fast ones. Maybe yellow or flashy green???

Of course I would talk about this a lot and it wasn’t long before one of my friends told me, “Well, Leontien, if you really want to ride a motorcycle, why don’t I come over to your house with my 250 cc (HUGE BIKE) and you can try it out?”

I wasn’t really sure if I wanted him to know how incredibly awesome I would be so I made him a counter offer. “I would ride his bike if he would ride my horse. Trade places for a bit and see where we end up?"

So for weeks he bragged to all his friends that he would ride my horse and be really really good at it, make him (the particular horse) do all the tricks those little girls (being me, riding dressage) would do. And me telling all my girlfriends that I would take that motorcycle and speed off into the sunset.

Ah well, being young and innocent can be such a blessing…

Finally the day had come. My friend came over with his motorcycle and parked it right behind our house. I had to do a “take, double take” because that bike was BIG!!! But of course I couldn’t tell him that, instead we went to the barn and I showed him my horse, Flicka (yes after the movie, My Friend Flicka). His name was really Flipper, but I didn’t agree with the fact that my horse was named after a dolphin, so Flicka it was.

To this day I’m still not sure what my friend thought of my horse but we decided to ride the bike first then the horse.

In order to ride the bike properly we went to the little alley besides our hog barn. He explained all the handles, the pedals, the gas and yes the brake. He drove up and down the alley and came back smiling like crazy. Yes, he was going REALLY FAST! According to him I needed to “get a feeling for it” and so I rode with him on the back and yes it was EVEN FASTER!!! Maybe i wasn't the speed devil i thought i would be..?

I wasn’t even sure if I could do this…

But it was my turn, and i couldn't back out. He again, explained all the handles, pedals, brakes and gas and I got on. Oh my Gosh, I was really gonna do this…

I drove 10 meters (maybe 30 feet give or take) and got myself into a tractor tire rud (more like a gully), and the damn thing (the bike) was just too heavy for me, so next thing you know, because yes, I was also driving 1.5 miles an hour, the bike tips over!!! I fall on my side and the bike falls half on top of me and my friend has to run over (luckily not that far) to come and rescue me! I didn’t get hurt, well, not fiscally but my ego got a HUGE DENT! This was not how I imagined it to be, I was going to fly into the sunset, not get toppled over after 30 feet!

After I recovered from my embarrassment it was my friends turn to ride my horse. He was still chuckling over the fact I did so poorly and I’m sure if we had cell phones with Internet access it would have been sent to EVERYBODY!

So we saddle up Flicka and got him into the riding pen. I explain to my friend with what foot he needs to stand in the stirrup, how to use his reins and what to do to make Flicka go forward or stop. Did I mention I rode DRESSAGE??? He puts the left foot in the stirrup and with a little push from me, the literally falls onto the saddle…

Yes, boys are anatomically different build then girls…
So when you fall onto a saddle like that, something is going to hurt. BIG TIME!!! He didn’t only turn blue, no he turned GREEN! And he whimpered instead of screamed. Which made it even worse.

He got off Flicka, with again a little help from me and sat on the ground for at least 15 minutes. By then the color in his face had returned and I had put the horse in its stall.

We decide to tell everybody that “it just wasn’t our cup of tea…” and left it at that.

My appetite for being cool and riding a motorcycle went away that day. Now I’m just cool driving my car with the air conditioning on high…



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Oh Canada! Feeling like a girl…

Being in Canada was very different from everything I was used too! (And yes If you haven’t read “Oh Canada, part one, I would recommend you do that now…)

The first day I arrived I got a bit of a culture shock but Mavis, Chris and Wendy were so sweet that I didn’t feel completely as an alien, and yes the hundred horses and the beautiful landscape helped too! With me arriving there were 3 students on the farm and one girl’s was there a week, and she did not look happy, i thought.

Oh my, my heels...







Within another week she decided to go home. This was pretty eye opening to me, because I still had a hard time with the loneliness of the country and the lack of other people besides the family and us, but I was determined I wouldn’t fly half across the world and then wimp out because I felt home sick!

And of course there was Fox Trim Classic, the MOST BEAUTIFUL stallion in the world (how a girl get’s a horse), even prettier than the horse in the movie the “Black Stallion”, and Kate (the other student) and the family. Our days were pretty full and long. On breeding days we would start with “finding” the horses out in the pastures. Try to locate the head mare and lead them back. We had to do this on foot, and it was always a long, long walk to find them and a long but little shorter RUN back to keep up with all these mares and fillies. Yes, at that age I had really good stamina…

The Mares going back to their pasture






One of us would start helping Chris with the breeding and the other girl together with barn manager Barb, would start cleaning out the stalls, after we were done with chores and breeding we would ride the horses that needed training. This could be anywhere from 5 to 10 horses a day. And as a cherry on the cake I got to ride Fox Trim Classic. After two weeks I started to feel pretty happy being here; Great people, great animals, I got lot’s and lot’s of mail (hehe, the good old days) from home and in the evenings I had time to relax and think about my life (which is very good for the inner self).

Kate and I got along really well and on Saturdays we would get Chris’s truck and we would drive 20 miles to the closest town and eat at the local hamburger joint. NO, they did not have a Mac Donald’s so you can imagine how “big” that town was… Being from the Netherlands I still had the need to dress up every now and then, and with dress up I mean, put on my short skirt and my high heels…

Yes, THE truck....









Kate would tell me I was nuts, but I felt it was important to feel like a girl every now and then to keep centered. This was my center piece, 13 cm or 5.1 inches, heels! And yes it would take some time to get in that huge truck (being used to all the "little" cars in Holland), but if Kate would give me a push it would work out great! It didn’t help I just got my drivers license a couple of weeks before and the truck would be popping out of its gear, like, every 10 minutes… So besides getting in, driving it was equally as hard…

Getting out was the easy part… you just slide out… but you had to make sure your skirt doesn’t ride all the way up over your buttocks…

So we would drive to town, slide out of the truck with as much grace as possible, eat a burger and watch cute Canadian boys in their trucks drive up and down Main Street….

We tried to enter a bar once but I can’t remember clearly how that went so I assume we didn’t get far (being only 19 and all…).

Those boys diving up and down Main street were! And I honestly think, they had never seen a crazy Dutch girl with crazy high heels in their town, and all I can say I NEVER seen teenagers driving UP AND DOWN the street ALL EVENING for fun!?! I asked Kate what was up with that and she explained that that was what the teens would do because it beat sitting at home and they were not allowed to go out to a pub, club or bar, like we did in Holland. I have to say it was pretty funny to see the same faces checking you and the rest of the town out, turn around at the end of the street and drive by again. And this would happen every 10 minutes for hours!?! Kate and I could not stop laughing and we had a really good time.

I know... I know...

We didn’t stay for hours but long enough to enjoy and after a little push and pull I was back in Chris’s truck, we would drive our assigned route, up and down Main street, and headed back to the safety of the farm and watched Austin Powers on the VCR with Chris, which by the way I did NOT get the first 2 times watching…

Life was good in Canada

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The consequences of riding your horse

As a real farm girl having a horse, the whole idea is to actually ride your horse every now and then …

Oh yes, he's so handsome!

And whenever you’re done with work on the dairy, which really never gets done, but you just feel the need to ride your gorgeous stallion (see: How a girl gets a horse), you really don’t think about anything else anymore. You just hurry down from the farm, grab your; “ I’m standing in my pasture enjoying my nice green grass”, horse and you don’t make yourself go into the house, change into good durable underwear and comfortable riding pants, NO you just wear your G-string and jeans and jump on your horse and GO!

After one hour of hobbling around you think, "hmmm, my bottom really hurt’s…"

Chilling in his pasture

And after you get done, and you actually make it into the house, and you find out by looking at your refrigerator (and the little magnets with appointments) that you have to go to the dermatologist for a checkup the next morning, there isn’t really anything you can do anymore to prevent you from disaster…

So, I knew I got myself in an awkward situation and because of that I took my mom with me to the appointment for support.

The dermatologist had to check my ENTIRE body every three months for abnormal spots/molds and I knew I had to go to this appointment I just forgot it was the next day.

 And yes, he is 28 now!

Lucky all my little molds were fine but when she had to check my buttocks, she said, "well…. looks like it’s a bit irritated in this area!" I’m telling you I could just dissapear into the ground right there and then. And it didn’t help that my mom was sitting in the examine room with me and while I was trying to save my dignity by telling the doctor, “no, my husband and I don’t have a crazy sex life, I was just riding my horse yesterday in the wrong underwear”, she pretty much fell off her chair!

Saving my dignity wasn’t really an option anymore….

The nurse practitioner, the doctor AND my mom were all laughing very, very loud and just couldn’t stop laughing while I was trying to hide my red face.

Oh, so much fun!!!

So I decided right there and then I’ll NEVER go horse riding again wearing a G-string, I’ll NEVER forget to look at my little magnets at my refrigerator for appointments and by doing that I make sure I’ll NEVER have to explain why I have blisters on my bootie anymore!!!