Farm Report

"...a languorous pursuing,
hard retrieving, nauseous doing..."

the above line from Goethe came to mind trying to put together the next post on Osteons. More technical stuff. I'm in process of "retrieving", and trying to make sense before posting.

And so, thought this post segueys to the August 1 evaluation of where we are racing our horses.

I promised myself at the outset of the year that I'd avoid bitching about the weather. But, what's happening is severely testing that resolution. For much of the year there's been a near permanent dome of precipitation over KC that launches an inch or two every 4 to 7 days, take your pick. Occasionally I save the particularly disgusting ones from Accuweather such as those below:








The one just left is our latest, 2 inches expected over next two days.

With any sort of normal, or what used to pass for normal around here, weather we'd have been racing by May. Here it is August going into September and we have yet to hit a race track.

Believe I have over the last few days come to a fairly firm decision on how we will proceed. It's difficult. Going to the nearest track besides Iowa which ends soon, involves a 300 mile trip, giving up the farm, stalling the horses and still being subject to constant track closings due to weather, using our financial resources which are very limited at this point--I used to make $8-10,000/month stopping foreclosures. Over the last year we are without foreclosures to stop--and so on.

Our choice is between a dramatic move of the operation, to St. Louis, eg. and giving up this farm and what I have decided on, which is merely sticking the toe back in the water and proceeding one little step at a time. We will thus decline a move to a distant race track for now, and proceed in the next week to make brief trips just to get going again, see how it goes, and proceed from there.

Training--a hoof debacle:
Sat. 8/1 Off due to weather.
Sun. 8/1: Get to the farm and both horses have lost front shoes. Both reapplied but too late to do tack work. We do a riderless play workout in the mud intending tack work next day. Horses do a lot of full speed spurts over about 3 miles off and on work. Tough workout, as our riderless have been. Next morning...
Art comes to the feed bucket severely limping. He'd lost his newly applied shoe in the mud--they keep sending us thin instead of normal horseshoe nails--obviously severely bruised--bute, painstakingly reshod, booted--this horse has such small hoofs, and the one in question has given us constant problems over the months with abscesses, bruises, lost shoes, etc. Will find out tonight if the bruising is a 1 day thing or a week thing.