For as long as I can remember I have had or been been involved with horses, even when I lived in London I had Driving Horses, stabled in the middle of the East End.
For two years I had an antique Horse Drawn Hearse, that I would hire out to Funeral Directors. The Horses we used where Friesians Stallions, jet black beautiful horses, that originate from Holland. Stallion is the preferred to Mares and Gelding as they stay black most of their working life, Mare and Geldings tend to be a dark bay.
When we moved onto the farm the Friesians came with us, but I was so busy that I never had the time to hire out the Horses and Hearse, so reluctantly I sold the outfit. I had various other antique horse drawn carriages they I exchanged for cattle.
It did not take me long to get more horses, once you have had them, they become an obsession. There is nothing like seeing horses in a field grazing.
At the moment we have nine horses, two of them being our riding horses, Arnie and Breeze. The others being bloodstock (race horses) two of those are Lady and Woody, our broodmares that can be seen foaling on the webcams. Lady is only a couple of weeks away from foaling. The others are mostly Ladies and Woodies foals.
If you see the horses in the fields Arnie is the big dark bay horse, he is a 17.3hh Dutch Warm Blood gelding, a bit of a giant, but really kind and gentle. In all the years we have had him, other than breaking doors and fencing rails when he leans against them, he has never done a thing wrong. Breeze is 14.2hh Palomino Arab mare, she again is very kind and gentle and as pretty as a picture, a real Barbie Doll Horse. She can be a bit skitsey and likes to get her own way. She and Arnie have been together for a long while, we will never part them. Whenever Arnie is doing something he should not do, she lets us know by calling out. Arnie is a bit of a Houdini, he gets out of anywhere, worse still he lets out all the other horses. That is just Arnie.
Breeze is the herd leader although most of the other horse are bigger than her, every now and then she will round them up and even baby sits the foals, but she can have her moments. Some year ago we had tenants in one of the cottages, Gemma the girl had a horse named Cedar that she stabled on the farm. They went away for a cycling holiday in France. On returning Gemma went in to the field that all the horses were in, to give her horse Cedar some treats after returning from holiday. We had an area near the gateway fenced off with a low voltage electric wire, so that it was easier to get a horse in if we needed to. Gemma was on the other side of the fence spoiling Cedar and ignoring and leaving breeze out of the goodies, Breeze wasn’t having any of that, she turned her hind legs on Gemma and kicked her on the buttocks so hard that Gemma went three foot in the air, over the wire and landed face down in the mud, believe me Gemma was a large girl. The only part that really hurt was her pride, although her boyfriend told us that she had two large bruises shaped like Breezes hoofs on her buttocks.