s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

So Trixie, the red pony, only minds the fence when she feels like it.

A bit of background: the front paddock, with Takapu stream running through it, is not *actually* fenced. It’s fenced from the road, and from the neighbors’ property, but there’s nothing to keep any of the critters down there from wandering up the driveway and into the garden or the house or wherever. So Yvonne, who’s grazing three of the equines (Max, the big Clyde cross, and two of the ponies — Jason and Casey), has set up “temporary” fencing to keep the beasts in the paddock. The temporary fencing — which has been there for four years, mind — consists of some electric tape that isn’t actually electrified. Luckily, the horses for the most part will respect the boundary even if it’s really little more than a bit of string through some wire poles.

There are exceptions, though. Jason, when he’s decided the paddock has run out of suitable grass, will simply step over the fence (pretty good considering he’s all of 13hh). Trixie will flout the fence when she reckons she’s missing fun somewhere, as when Yvonne and the girls take their three out to ride or brush or whatever. Only Trixie doesn’t step over the fence, she just runs right through it, leaving white tape and wire posts scattered everywhere.

Since Yvonne and the girls (whose names are Joanne and Sarah, BTW) will be doing more riding now it’s summer, we’ve moved Trixie and Smurf (the white — excuse me, *gray* pony, the littlest of the lot) up to the Triangle paddock, where the fences are, if not exactly great, at least present a little more challenge than a bit of white tape, and where they can stare bemusedly over the fence at the alpaca to amuse themselves.

So at any given moment, two humans, two alpaca, two sheep, and two ponies, all sort of regarding each other with tolerant bemusement. (We haven’t yet gotten two of the cats to follow us all the way up at the same time yet.)

Do you know what’s really kind of silly ? The more I’m learning about pasture management (you *have* to have something eating your grass, or it all goes to weeds and gorse, and right now we are *way* understocked), the more I’m seeing that running a lot of different kinds of critters is a Good Thing. They all eat different things — for instance, sheep eat the ragwort that’s poison to the horses, cows eat grass that’s too long for the sheep, etc. Keeping just one kind of critter is *not* good, because then nothing eats the weeds that particular critter doesn’t like, so those weeds take over, and there gets to be a build-up of that critter’s parasites, and so on.

Do you know what that sort of thinking *leads* to ? It leads to me flipping through Lifestyle Farmer Magazine and thinking, “Hmm. We *could* get some Highland Cows !”

Gah.