Well, another month is history here on the ranch.   More long days of work are done.  The hay is piling up on the hilltop, load by load, as Ben hauls it home.  The children are hard at the year's schoolwork, but still finding lots of time to soak up the Indian Summer sunshine outdoors. 

More horses are halter broke, a few more are sold.   We are gearing up to wean the colts next week.  We are also preparing for our first ever ONLINE AUCTION, starting on October 15th.  So if you are interested in trying out a King horse, sign up to bid!

We have more news from the Show pen!  Kings Breeze scored again in the AQHA shows in Rapid City in late September.  He won the Region 2 Sr. Reining Championship, passing up an NRHA money earning son of an NRHA Million Dollar Sire.  

It is exciting to know that we are producing horses of this calibre!   We are looking forward to getting some colts out of Kings Breeze when he is done with his show career.   For now, we are very pleased with the colts that were born here in the last two years!  We have two young maternal sisters to Kings Breeze who will hopefully follow him into the reining arena before becoming broodmares here on the ranch.  We have two stud colts out of two other maternal sisters to Kings Breeze this year, and they are both exceptional colts.   We have one filly this year sired by Kings Breeze's full brother, and we are looking forward to more of his babies in 2012.  We also have several paternal siblings to Kings Breeze that we have our eye on as future athletes and producers. 

But it is even more exciting to see our children working with these young horses.  To see a seven year old coax an uncertain yearling to follow him, to see a nine year old start riding his first filly, to see a three year old patiently lead a yearling round and round the barn: this is to know that we have shaped the future.

Tomorrow, September... 
Time to haul hay home.  Time to work on corrals and windbreak.  Time to savor the last days of summer.  Time to enjoy the cooler evenings and crisp, sweet scent of fall on the air.
Time to wean these colts!

"...SALT!"

Kings Black Widow did it again!  Sunday, May 15, she foaled a perfectly beautiful, perfectly put together, grullo filly.
 
  
 
 

Spring Is...
Meadowlarks singing...
Geese and cranes calling in the sky...
Robins in the bushes...
The call of the kildeer and the blackbird...
Soft, warm, damp, sweet, air...
Heifers calving...
Little black calves frisking at dusk...
Mud...
Horse hair caught between my teeth...
Tulips poking up...
Buds swelling on my roses...
Bits of green grass here and there on the brown prairie...
Snowbanks disappearing...
The first foal!

Well, the first month of this new year has already blown by.  It's been full of the usual winter's choring; feeding, keeping water open, pushing snow around.  Breakfasts a bit less hurried than other months of the year, when Ben actually sits still long enough to drink his morning coffee in the house until it grows light outside.  Icy mornings with bitter winds biting my face.  Sunsets over the snowy hills beyond the mares' pasture.  Trying to fasten a halter on a wondering colt with my freezing fingers. 

We had several "firsts" in this first month-----shipping out our first filly, watching the statistics of our first full month of our own website, getting our first foals halter broke, saving the first mare that fell through the ice in the springy draw, making our first plans for the 2011 breedings, and completing the paperwork for getting the horses registered with the Steel Dust Horse Association.  We also had our first loss of the year, when the second mare fell through the ice....  We were all heartsick over her death.  Her 2010 filly will stick around to take her place in the broodmare ranks in future years. 

I daresay the month now upon us will be filled with more of the same: mornings and evenings, chores and coffee, snow and sunshine.  More colts will learn their first lessons of trust and  respect.  Another will find his way to his new owner.  Hopefully by the end of February I will have all the papers back for last year's colts.  Then March, and we will know that spring is near.