New Year's Day 2012

It has become traditional for our horses to have a pint of Guinness on Christmas morning and another to welcome the New Year. By an unfortunate (?) oversight, they also had a pint on Boxing Day morning - far from complaining, the four of them were eagerly awaiting the arrival of their feed buckets the following morning! However, they had to wait until Denise arrived to play Barman on New Year's Day.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to one and all!!

Christmas Lunches 2011

Some of the happy eaters

Was that 9 or 10 Christmas puds??!

I am so very grateful to Jo Winfield, our secretary, for these contrbutions to the blog while I was away visiting my two sons and their families near Brisbane in Australia over Christmas (lucky me!!). I had a fantastic time out there.
The support from Jane, Gill, and Jo Corr in filling the gap of caring for the horses with John Newell was magnificent.

Both Wally & Denise were indisposed for the month of December when Wally underwent surgery to replace his aortic heart valve and a single heart by-pass. While I was away for 6 weeks from mid-November visiting friends and family in the southern hemisphere!
I'm happy to report that Wally is making an excellent recovery and we are all looking forward to a new season of carriage driving starting, weather permitting, in a few weeks time. I think we can expect Wally to be a bit moo...dy at times as his heart valve came from a cow!!

This year there were two “sittings”, and on each occasion Joy and Peter arranged the seating to ensure easy access for wheel-chair users. The restaurant and tables (and staff) were beautifully decorated, and the food was excellent. In all, about 60 had lunch, and Joy and Peter coped amazingly with “crises”, which started with the Secretary paying a last minute visit the night before the first sitting, and saying dramatically to Joy, “It's been cancelled!!”. She then apologised for her twisted sense of humour, and Joy remarked she was very relieved as she had just finished peeling 6 kg sprouts! And then when extra people arrived at intervals for the second sitting, tables were shifted and additional ones laid, extra chairs and meals found, all with the greatest good humour.

and a last thought . . .
For those of you who have not had the doubtful pleasure of meeting the Secretary, she is currently trying to persuade the Group Organiser to allow her to resign, volunteers welcome . . .

Group Organiser's and Chairman's response...."resignation not an option!!!" :-)

Our Oldest Passenger?

Eve was 93 when these photos were taken in August (thank you, Connie!). Eve spent many of her school holidays on the family farm in Surrey, where she helped with the farm work, starting each morning with catching the two reluctant cart-horses. Sadly Eve lived most of her life away from the horses which she loved; so it was to achieve a long-held ambition that she came for a drive. She has arthritis and very poor short-term memory, but this is one experience which she still remembers with great pleasure.

Carriage Driving Season Over

We had our last carriage driving for the 2011 season on Friday last week with our lovely ladies from The Grange in Poole.

On Monday this week, Keith, our farrier came removed the horses' shoes and trimmed their feet in preparation for the winter break.

Keith also assessed the lameness in Maggie, for which she has been confined to a stable for several weeks on an ample bed of shavings to give the laminitis a chance to heal. She has also had to be on a restricted diet and in order to restrict her grazing in the next few weeks the other three horses have the task of grazing down the small paddock that will be hers for daytime feed.

No complaints from these three, that's for sure!!

Maggie Lame Again!

A sad day for Maggie!

It was a sad day when we brought Maggie in for a drive last week only to discover that she was slightly lame. Wally called the vet immediately and on close inspection it was decided that it was almost certainly laminitis again.

This has yet to be confirmed next week with a possible X-ray and a visit from Keith, our farrier, who has a wealth of experience in his field.

For the time being she has come off the grass and is stabled on restricted diet of hay and twice daily "bute" (pain-killer) on a deep bed of shavings.

Margaret Newell Day, 2011

An Organiser's point of view.

They say, never volunteer! - well, I didn't, it just sort of came my way and I carried on, much as one automatically catches a ball thrown in one's direction. I am, of course, talking about Margaret Newell Day, 2011. My initial reaction when asked to do the organising at short notice was sheer panic, but with Wally and Denise refusing to allow me to back out, and massive help from others especially Liz, the Treasurer who travelled all the way from North Wales to be with us, all was well. They say the devil makes work for idle hands, and I'm afraid that from the moment Liz set foot in my house, the devil never stood a chance!

I wanted to do something a bit different, as the feed-back I had from last year's Margaret Newell Day made two very relevant points, the first being that with the Tombola, cake stall and book stall being in the cart-shed, they were not very obvious. The second was that there was nothing to “do”!

So! My first thought was to stand each stall outside a covered area (a stable, the tunnel, the cart-shed), with a large fascia “board” over the top to announce its presence, and a detailed chart at the side listing what that stall was all about. Being close to a covered area, if it rained the stall table could be pulled back into shelter. However, just to allow for all eventualities, I took large sheets of polythene to cover the tables and contents, and half a dozen umbrellas for hire to the visitors. Yes, yes, I know you all kept telling me that Margaret Newell Day is always fine, but I am one of Nature's natural pessimists . . . but next year I'll listen to you, because the weather was perfect.

The Open Day was from 10am until 4pm. Visitors were very slow to arrive, and were still thin on the ground at 11 am, when I started to panic. However, things then took off quite rapidly, and we had a yard full of delicious appetite-inducing barbecue smoke through which we could see people “Dunking the Dog”, looking for the Fiver, and the Treasure Hunt, leafing through books, buying cakes (Hey! Who pinched the gorgeous iced cakes I had my eye on?? - beautifully finished and decorated, it would have been a shame to eat them, but when did I ever have any shame where cakes are concerned??), buying tombola and raffle tickets, and visiting the Bargain Basement – and of course munching beefburgers and hot dogs washed down by lots of tea, coffee and cold drinks. The Mystery Objects caused quite a lot of interest, and as I anticipated, some were readily identifiable by the older generation (eg, the cobblers' last and the typists' correcting eraser) but a total mystery to the younger ones.

I tried to have something for everyone, and certainly the “Dunk” was popular with the children and some less able visitors, to the extent that when two youngsters got home, they put one of their soft toys on a low branch in their garden, and spent the rest of the afternoon knocking it off!

“Find the Fiver” was also popular. The first visitor to that stall picked the mug with the fiver in it! I thought, if he's psychic and going to spot all the best prizes, he'll have to go! However, his next tries were less successful. One of the day's highlights for me was the anticipation on the face of a young lady with wheels as she picked a mug, and then her joy when she found she had won a box of chocolates, which she said she would give to her Mum.

I have had a number of complimentary comments, one of which referred to the “lovely atmosphere”. That comment rebounds to the credit of those who work tirelessly day after day at the stables to put into practice the ethos defined by Wally – Ash Tree Stables is certainly a magical, peaceful place. I am not a “religious” person, but I hope you will not be offended if I say that it is almost as if the Stables are saying, “come unto me all ye who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”.

Thank you to all who helped, and to those who visited. I hope you all enjoyed the day as much as I did, and we all look forward to seeing you at next year's Margaret Newell Day – make a note in your diaries – it's Sunday 5th August. Unfortunately there is something else going on from 27th July to 12th August, but I don't have to tell you which is more important!

Jo
EHDC Secretary

Mid June - Lush Affair

Camping Village

Jane, from The Grange, gets a conducted tour of the camping facilities springing up like mushrooms in the fields we drive in.

This week Lush cosmetics firm has been on site erecting a vast array of tents end huge marquees in preparation for a week of corporate activity (the only way I can describe it just now) with some 600 business delegates from all over the world we understand! It is a huge affair, and it gives the horses a lot of interesting flapping canvas to brighten the drives we do in the fields, but they are quite unperturbed by all this activity.

The horses have had to give up their grazing area for campers, but we are fortunate to have alternative areas with plenty of grass, so they are very happy to go somewhere with fresh grazing!