A small update on what’s been going on.  I haven’t had much of a chance to post on the blog since there is so much day to day activities going on.

Gardens- Since we are still in the process of buying our larger property in Powder Springs, we decided not to plant this year.  I miss the tending of the growing plants and seeing every plant pop from seed and produce something I can eat fresh.  I can’t wait to have a larger planting area for next season.

Milton property- This place looks great!  It took a year, but the place is finally clear of all junk and fully operational.  I am proud of what we have accomplished out of here, but I am also ready to move and expand.

Powder Springs property- David and I are beyond ready to close on the larger farm!  Due to some difficulties, we are still waiting on a closing date.  Hopefully soon!

Horses- All the warm and furry bodies here are content, healthy and happy.  Check out the galleries section of our website to see events we have been to and pictures of all the horses.

Midnight’s Sleightly Cool – or Coolio as we call him here – is now available for live cover.  He’s a 3 year old Section B welsh pony stallion.  He is currently a palomino roan but we suspect he will end up as a grey.  Coolio has a wonderful personality and was super easy to break and has a great work ethic.  Please contact ashley@ponytailacres.org for further details.  Mare care also available.

Well we are up to 4 warm and fuzzy bodies here at Pony Tail Acres.  They are so ready for the weather to turn and warm up so they can get their blankets off!  :)  A mini-update on all of them.

Welcome Menai Lisa May to the Pony Tail Acres herd.  Lisa May comes to us as a broodmare for little Coolio man.  She is a 16 year old Section A Welsh pony mare……and she’s gray.  HA!  Maybe we should have named the farm Gray Acres?  Anyways, Lisa May is terribly shy and hasn’t been handled much in the past 6 years, but she has thrown some wonderful babies and we are anxious to see what kind of baby she throws in 2011.  For now she is a great pasture buddy for Goose.

Goose is growing and filling out his thin little (ok, huge) body.  After a bout with a sickness in early winter, he’s back to feeling like a 3 year old!  His job right now here at PTA is to grow, and I think he sticks right now at 16.1 hh.  We love Goose’s attitude and hope to get to do more light training with him as spring gives us some better weather.

Zoomer is bored.  He would love for it to be summer and to get worked for an hour a day.  He loves people and can’t wait to have everyone’s eyes, ears, and hands on him for hours a day.  Such a playful soul as well, he’s spent a large part of the winter torturing his jollyball.  I don’t think it holds air anymore.  I’m thinking about getting him the oversized horse soccerball I saw advertised on TV the other day.

Coolio has also spent the winter growing.  While he hasn’t gained much in height (not that he needs to being a pony breed), but rather he looks more and more like a grown up.  His neck is developing nicely with the thick stallion chunk and he’s getting a little more of a butt!  We can’t wait to see what kind of babies he throws for the 2011 season! (Especially with Lisa May  )

Will update the rest of the farm activities later on this week.

Ashley

So yes, I’m so far behind on pretty much everything right now.  Got to get the horse facility finished, the seedlings started soon, taxes done for last year, write on the blog, train the horses, whew!  Wish me luck and let me know if you can help  !

Things have been rather slow at PTA lately. We got about an inch of snow this past Thursday / Friday and we’ve just been waiting it out. Goose is finally feeling better and they’re both antsy to get out and work some! Hopefully the riding ring will have thawed out enough that in the next few days Ashley can hop on them and continue their training. We’re still waiting to hear back about the property we’re trying to acquire, but we’ll let everyone know when we know something more.

This week we finally have made an offer on a 38 acre piece of property. We’re currently waiting to hear back from the seller and are hoping to close somewhere around the beginning of March. Being that it’s currently the holidays and the weekend, I would imagine that we probably won’t hear anything until middle of next week, but we’ll keep everyone posted as to any news we can share!

If you’re reading this and it’s Monday night (or not long after), December 28th, you’ve may see a few posts on the blog missing. The Wordpress upgrade to version 2.9 failed horribly, and apparently I only backed up one table when I thought I had backed up the whole database. So right now I’m going through Google’s cache trying to restore as many of our posts as possible as quickly as possible. Sorry for the inconvenience!

For those of you who follow us on Facebook, you know that Ashley and I have finally reached the part of the business where we are farm shopping! These past 8 months have been quite an adventure – cleaning up Ashley’s parents’ house and barn, mending fences, learning the ins and outs of organic gardening, determining our own best practices and buying most of the equipment that we need. We should now have everything we need but the tractor and the bigger farm!

Recently we’ve looked at a few different facilities, each with their own unique charm. We’re currently planning to go see a 25 acre farm in Cumming tomorrow and a 16 acre farm up by Big Canoe on Friday. Out of all of the ones we’ve looked at – online and off – so far, the Cumming one seems the most promising. It’s close to my (David’s) day job, the price seems workable, it has multiple houses on it that we can rent out or let caretakers, trainers, etc. live in and it’s reasonably close to the Wills Park show facility and GA 400 to go to other shows.

So while we’re still searching for the perfect new home for Pony Tail Acres, if you happen to come across a farm that you think we might be interested in, feel free to shoot us a link to it. We’d love to check it out! Anyhow, back to the spreadsheet… trying to make the numbers work out for one of these places so we might be able to get into one at the beginning of 2010. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue our search for the perfect place!

Well first and foremost, I would like to welcome Midnight Sleightly Cool to Pony Tail Acres. ”Coolio” is a Section B Welsh pony stallion that will be standing at stud come spring. He’s still a youngster at 2 years old. He is owned by a trainer at Green Acres who “imported” him from Idaho. Poor little guy was really tired after such a long journey, so he spent a few days being lazy.

Coolio has been nothing but a dear so far but I’m sure he has some sort of trouble up his sleeve (err…hoof?). It is interesting to me how I have two 2 year olds on the property now when before I really wasn’t interested in having any so young. For the most part they are a joy to work with and just teach them all the things a show horse will need to know.

Goose did really try my patience yesterday though. Too many hours in the stall while it was raining with no turn-out and his grain rich diet lead to an overly excited Goose. Since he is normally so docile and easy to work with he “asked” to be worked hard. At the end of the session yesterday he came to the understanding that he must still listen to me while excited and concentrate on his work. Today he was an absolute gentleman. I was proud of him and very happy that he showed me his good brain.

The other gray boy Zoomer is such a darling. Over the past week he has sought to figure out how far he can push me before I will correct him. For example, while putting on his blanket, can he please nibble on my fingers? Of course not. But every intelligent horse will test a new person until he/she figures out the parameters. So Zoomer and I have an understanding and he has been working so well for me now. He’s the first one at the gate when I walk out to the barn looking for pets. He is also doing very well under saddle, giving to the bit and bending well. I’m impressed that he tries so hard even though he’s out of shape, he always gives 100%.

All is well at the barn. Hopefully David’s water heater will be complete soon and we will give them warm baths.

What a long day! I’ve..

Get up, eat breakfast, dress, put trash in the back of the pickup, clean up, move poles and jumps around, more clean up, lunch, test drive tractors, clean up more, work on the barn, cut down a tree, clean up more, clean up in the house, dinner, then computer work. Oi!