Wild Horse Rescue Center in Florida

We’ve finally settled in at the ranch. They didn’t have a traditional RV hookup here so Joe manufactured what they didn’t have.  He took a 55 gallon drum and made a septic system – it actually tied into an old existing one. I love my husband!

 

He also made a “front yard” for Jadyn.

Not only do they have mustangs here at the ranch, but they have some at two different locations on land people are letting them use.

Every day these horses are brought food. In the pictures below the horses are trying to get the hay right off the truck. You can see the brand on the neck of one of them.

Joe and Jadyn are saying Hi to Tatonka and the horses in the next picture are following the truck to where the feed is put out for them.

At the other piece of land they have “sanctuary horses” which are horses that can never be ridden or used for anything. They have been abused so badly both physically and mentally that they cannot recover from it. So these horses are in the “sanctuary” to live out their lives peacefully.

Below Diane (founder of Wild Horse Rescue) is giving hay to these sanctuary horses AND to the pet cows they share the pasture with. Jadyn of course had to pet one of the HUGE cows and then she posed pretty for a picture. :)

It’s been pretty nice here because we get to meet all kinds of different people  that come to volunteer. The lady in the picture with Romeo is a farrier from Quebec. Diane, Romeo’s owner, is showing the farrier that he lets people pick up his feet.

Romeo is such a gorgeous stallion! Here he’s blowing off some energy and also saying Hi to one of the baby mustangs.

Here are the babies playing around.

Jadyn gets to help do things around here too. Below she’s helping one of the volunteers groom Little Thunder.

She also gets to help with McBob the donkey.

She also likes to sweep. Here she’s helping get ready for a Parelli Clinic put on for the volunteers.

And this is Sandy Vann the Parelli instructor and you might also recognize her from my posts from last year (around May). We stayed at her ranch for a little bit and helped out. I guess you could say that’s where we got our start on the ranch circuit. Her website is http://www.aceofheartsranch.com .

One of the cool things about being on the space coast is seeing launches. The picture below is the launch from February 24th. It was a pretty cool picture with the horse’s head in it too. :)

                                  

And these pictures were of a rocket launch. The way the sunset was hitting the clouds made them look really neat.

               

Here’s a picture of my handsome cowboy. :) And of him playing guitar with a friend.

And I am happy to say we finally made it to the beach – our favorite – Playalinda. We didn’t actually swim in the water since it was so cold. But we let our legs get wet. Ok. So a few times we weren’t paying attention and the waves would get us more wet than we wanted. It was still fun because after a while we couldn’t feel the cold. :o) We also flew a kite and played frisbee.

Yikes this is cold!

Jadyn running in the surf flying her kite.

My two girls gettin’ some sun (and Joe trying to figure out if his shelter is going to hold in the strong wind – it did.)

Joe and Jadyn hanging out in the shelter – in the background is the kite – he has it pegged to the ground.

We have a mustang awareness event next week with a Native American theme. We’ll be painting Romeo to look like a war pony. I’ll post more about it next week.

Wild Mustangs and Florida

Well, we are in Florida again. Since leaving here last year we’ve been to 18 states. It’s been a while since my last post because I was going to close down the blog, but it didn’t seem like the right time yet. So here I am……. :)

It is so good to see my other daughter again. And Jadyn was very happy to see her sister too.

                                  

Currently, we are at a place called Wild Horse Rescue helping to gentle the wild rescue mustangs they get to make them ready for adoption. Jadyn really loves it here. They have lots of dogs for her to play with, as well as guinea pigs, a bunny, a couple geese, a duck and a big ol’ hog. She’s back doing her favorite things: feeding horses, playing outside, being with daddy and playing with the little kids that come here.

Here’s Joe and Jadyn saying Hi to the horses and the donkey McBob. And the owner of the ranch Diane with some of her dogs.

This past Friday 20 baby wild horses arrived. Most were adopted out right away and the rest will be gentled and made people friendly. If you know anybody that wants a mustang please contact the website referenced above.

On our way to Florida we had an issue with the RV. Just before we were going to go over a big bridge it started to act like it was running out of gas – even though there was gas in the tank. So we pulled over and Joe got under the RV and wiggled and jiggled things and checked connections under the hood. Couldn’t see anything wrong so he started it back up and it was fine. He was sweating big time though since one of his worse nightmares would be to get stuck up on a bridge. So the next day we start driving and everything is running good, but as we start coming up out of this tunnel the RV does the same thing again.

                          

We barely made it out of the tunnel before the engine died leaving us blocking part of the lane. About 10 minutes later a worker comes by with his truck and runs a strap around the front of the RV and pulls us off the highway onto a side street. Joe does his checks again and finds nothing wrong and it starts up and runs fine. What he thinks the problem was was vapor lock since after he loosened the gas lines it ran again.

That was pretty stressful.

Anyway, before we left Texas we were briefly at a ranch called Everything Jesus (also called EJ Ranch). They have one of the cleanest raw milk dairy barns. They also grow their own food. If you ever get a chance to go to Texas, make this ranch one of your stops. They will serve you some incredibly tasty food – and raw milk, which is sooooo good for you.

They also have a beautiful pecan grove along the Guadalupe River and in this picture you can see a couple of their llamas roaming about (they are good at keeping coyotes away). And some of the pecans we gathered.

While we were still in Dripping Springs Texas (before leaving for EJ Ranch), we experienced not only beautiful sunsets, but the deep freeze. Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!  Our sewer hose froze and broke as Joe was trying to take it off.

All the water pipes in the area froze. Joe ended up having to siphon water from the big tank at the RV park and reverse the connections on our water pump to pump water into our holding tanks (he’s so smart!).  And Jadyn had fun playing in the snow.

Thankfully, we are enjoying the wonderful Florida sunshine and are miles away from the snow. :o)