The 2 Horses Wanda Will Never Sell

There are a lot of horses on this ranch. Many of them will be sold and a lot will be bought. There are two horses on Vaquera Ranch that will never lose their place here. Those horses are… Macho Man and Keno! They are treasured here . There are plenty of reasons for that.

Macho was Wanda’s first horse that she trained from a wild 3 year old stud. Of course he’s special here. He is now the top lesson horse for the natural horsemanship classes. A calm and nice gelding, with a beautiful buckskin coat, he will let kids do anything on him. You can ride him on the road side, on any trails, he will do what you want. Macho Man also has good papers, with famous race horse Dash For Cash as his grandfather. So, not counting the sentimental value in, he is one of the best horses we have.

Macho may work for just about anyone, but Wanda is the one he runs for.

Keno is our 2 year old Palomino stud horse. We bought him to show him for a few years, and once he’s retired he’ll be a great breeding sire! Apart from his excellent papers he has great temperament and has never shown any signs of aggression to humans. Naomi has  He is now in a pasture with the weaned foals and a mini donkey we bought to keep him company. This handsome horse will sire beautiful babies some day.

We have other good horses, but unless we someday need to live someplace that isn’t horse friendly, those horses will live here till old age.

Our Beloved Lake Is Going Dry Again

The lake may be filthy, yellow, and full of algae and weeds, but we love it! Except for a couple people here, swimming in the lake is the way to get out of the heat. Sure there are snapping turtles that snap your toes if you step on them, the occasional snake, and yes there are tiny fish that bite you as soon as you stay still for 5 seconds, but what’s the fun without a little adventure?

Sadly, like last year, the lake is drying up faster than we thought. When we first came, the water at least stretched to the edge of the forest. Then it shrunk in this blistering heat, every day it got lower and lower, till you could go on a little island in the middle of the lake. You could go around the whole lake without getting wet. There were dead frogs, fish and even turtles. It was quite sad watching it go down like that. But then that huge storm came and over night we couldn’t see the little mud island anymore. it rained more after that and now it’s even in the forest.

But once again it’s evaporating in the 100 degree weather. Hopefully rain will come soon so that our beloved lake will fill over the muddy, dried up ring around the lake. But not so high that we can’t find our boat!

Our Brilliant Choking Horse

We really have the smartest horses! One likes his butt scratched, another one plays with the snapping dogs, and the smartest one chokes on grains! When we bought Thor wonderful things were told about him. His riding abilities, his beautiful bay coat, his size. What we didn’t know was that this huge horse can’t swallow grain pellets without killing himself.

It was the normal feeding time. The grain scoop was rattled, and the feeder went into the paddock where Thor was being held. Into the bucket, back out of the paddock. Naturally, the horse dug right in, barely chewing. It was a couple minutes till anyone realized what was wrong. It wasn’t too normal seeing a horse foaming at the lips and hacking loudly. Chewed up pieces of the feed were flying everywhere. We had to make an emergency call to the vet for our brilliant new horse.

The vet said that it isn’t too uncommon when a horse chokes. She explained that he couldn’t eat the pellets, so we had to put him on sweet feed. And so we did. At least now when we buy a horse we always know to ask if the horses choke! Hopefully we won’t have another situation like this.

Mia Picked Up From Craig Johnson Today

Capoeira Fundraiser Event At Vaquera Ranch

Yesterday was the Capoeira Batizado event on our ranch! The Batizado is the day when everyone in the martial art gets a little higher in the cord color. About half of the family goes to this Brazilian martial art, and, like in kung-fu, you get higher with belts. But in the case with Capoeira you get into a higher rank with cords. All the people from the Maculele group gather somewhere to get their cords. Now an event like that is pretty big. This year it’s in Texas.

All the really high Capoeira instructors come all the way from Brazil. To pay for the flights and the whole event, there’s always some fundraiser going around. This year the party came to our house. It was pretty fun. Everyone bought drinks and chips and there was even a D.J. He played lots of classical music. The main course was pork. Rudi was slaughtered just the other day, and everyone commented on how sweet he was.

There were pony rides, games, and face painting. Sabrina painted everyone, and I must say the cupcake on my face looked pretty good. At the end of the day we raised about $200. It could have been more, but a lot of people couldn’t make it, what with holidays and all.

And dinner today was leftover Rudi from yesterday, and if we hadn’t cooked most of it yesterday, he would’ve lasted us a couple of weeks.

A Tragic Loss To The Ranch- Rudi’s Last Day

Rudi’s final day is here. After months of free range living, eating what he wants, tipping over water buckets everywhere, it’s finally his time to be slaughtered. He’s a little more than half a year old, and we had him since he was no bigger than a small chihuahua. Now, this very afternoon, he will be slaughtered and roasted. All that fat on him will be put to a use soon!

Why are we slaughtering Rudi today? Because tomorrow we are hosting a big fundraiser event for our Capoeira class. (Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art.) There’ll be lots of people coming, and while they are bringing sides, drinks, desserts, etc, we will be cooking the main course. Which, as you can guess, will be pork! Since the meat takes 24 hours to cook we have to shoot him today and start roasting him so that he’s ready for tomorrow.

Rudi was the very first pig we had, so there might be quite a drama when he’s shot. William, the man we just hired as manager, has a gun and has shot many food animals before. Now the only problem tomorrow will be whether anyone eats him or not.