Fjord Horse Crossing

 

On Wednesday of Easter week, Shane woke up our resident 17 yr old with a shake of the shoulder. “Want to come to Iowa with me and take a look at a team of horses?”

As we get older, we find the best approach with teenagers is to maintain an element of surprise and in general be willing  to do stuff that makes little sense on paper but would make a great Robert Service poem.

This might be because when you are on the verge of adulthood you have to make a choice. Do you leave fairyland and the stuff of ballads behind, or do you pack it up in a saddle roll and bring it along with you? It will make the journey more difficult, but the ride a more scenic one.

In general our 17 year old moves in the morning as o
ne afflicted unduly by gravitational forces. One might even say she makes molasses appear speedy; puts the “Shhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuunnnnnnn” in “Hes-i-tay”, moves with the alacrity of a boulder deposited 250 million years ago on the shore of the St. Croix. On this particular morning she behaved in a manner more quark-like. She was, dare I say, a prime example of what a human electron might look like: in bed one second, the next nano: dressed and buckled up in the passenger seat with two thermos’ of hot coffee a-clutching the road atlas. (Yes they do still print those.)

the next gen figures out a better way
 to put up the round pen singlehandedly

As some of our readers may remember, we used to farm with Norwegian Fjord Horses. They are an excellent choice for a small holding. Bred to navigate the tight terrain in the mountainous regions of Norway, and subsist on less than stellar pastureland, they can perform many varied tasks on a farm while eating less than half what a typical draft horse will put away. We’ve used them for market garden prep and cultivation, manure spreading, hay making, logging, pleasure riding/driving, and emotional support. Though it has been a good 11 or 12 years since a Fjord Horse has been at work on Little Flower Farm, the memory of our days with them is remarkably vivid. 

The smell of the harness, the way the brass hames’ fit into the groove of the leather collars, the sound of  jangling as they moved, the patient curiosity in their eyes as they looked back at the implement we were hitching the evener to. Even the grass looked greener when graced with their arc-ed necks bending toward the earth like the fjords of the Norwegian hillsides plunging down their rocky ledges.

“The eyes should be like the mountain lakes on a midsummer evening,- big and bright. A bold bearing of the neck like a lad from the mountains on his way to his beloved. Well defined withers like the contours of the mountains set against an evening sky. The temperament as lively as a waterfall in spring, and still good natured.”                           -description of the Fjordhorse breed from Vestlandet

round pen ready for the geldings

Our farm has seen other horses through the intervening years; a gorgeous chestnut Tenessee Walker, a spoiled Hafflinger, a spotted Shetland cart pony named Freya, and an American Old Lady Paint horse never to be forgotten as Winona the Willing and Faithful. But when we talk about the horses we “used to have” we always mean Maj and Marta; the mother/daughter team of Fjords that taught us how to work with draft animals on the farm.

Since learning more about equines, I now realize exactly why we got them so cheap in the first place, and why our mentor, Ken, quietly insisted that we spend our first winter with them having them “lug heavy loads around on the stone- boat”. By the time spring rolled around, our team of “used to be run-aways with the cart” had seasoned into well- muscled and cooperative working mares.

Still. We were always conscious of how much more we have to learn about these wonderful animals. We’ve long looked forward to the day when we could have another go at it. But with foals starting at $4-10K, it was never something we imagined could be on our near horizon.

When our road-trippers returned with news of two shaggy fjords who had been sitting for months at their foster home on a bale of free-choice alfalfa, walking nearly on their heels on mud-caked over-grown feet, and who before that had been similarly neglected for years, we were more convinced than ever that a Little Flower Farm draft team was even more of a worn out old impractical dream than before. We were going to walk away from it. “Scenic Route” can often be just a fancy name for “side- track”. Right? At 18 and 19 years old, with a history of laminitis, these guys were somebody else’s problem. Right?

But something didn’t sit right.

We began to ask ourselves questions like:

What if we shifted our attitude from “realistically what can these horses do for us?” to a “what could we offer these horses?” one?

Could we help rehabilitate them? Could we ease their suffering and benefit from just having equines around? Certainly Eliot Coleman and Parisian Market growers have long sung the praises of aged horse manure in the garden; fresh hot manure under soil in deep beds under glass for season extension. Just that day, our 9 year old had suddenly decided to stop riding.

“That’s fine, if you want to. But why, Jane?”

“I’m afraid.”

“You’re afraid when you get up there on the horse? Are you worried he will spook or buck?”

“No. I love riding. I’m afraid to pick up the feet.”

(A pre-requisite at our local SunBorn stables where the girls do chores in exchange for English riding lessons is to pick out all 4 feet, freeing the area around the “frog” of any pebbles or debris that could cause the horse pain in the training arena.) Having horses on the farm again would refresh her courage over time, through gradual familiarity and repetition, and help her resume one of her passions- one which is both athletic and therapeutic, bringing internal and external strength with it’s pursuit.

Then came Margie’s call.

“This is Margie Diaz from the Norwegian Fjord Horse Rescue Network. I got your email about your concerns regarding Frederik and Erling and they’re being on a round bale and needing immediate farrier work. What can you do for us?”

The NFHRN gifted us the team, and assumed the financial responsibility for the vet care and farrier work needed to bring their laminitis history/ tendency under control, provided we could give the boys a good home and all the daily attention they both deserved and required.

Now, for an understanding of something of the nature of the loveable Fjord Horse, read the following, and note that the emphasis was NOT MINE, but is exactly as I found it, the author’s own, that of Mrs. Carol Rivoire in The Fjordhorse Handbook published in Nova Scotia in 1998. My signed copy reads:

“The most important things to remember about the right hay for Fjordhorses are- No high-protein hay. No legume hay. No clover or alfalfa….In general, Fjords are, as we know, Very Easy Keepers! They tend to be too fat…Fjords, unlike other horses, will never leave some of their hay. THEY NEVER GET FULL!....PADLOCK THE FEEDROOM DOOR!- While on the subject of grain, I want you to be aware of the importance of locking the feedroom door. If you’re running a good barn, there should be absolutely no way, under any circumstances whatsoever, that your horses find their way into the grain bins. There’s no excuse. Examine your barn today…..If your Fjord finds his way into the grain bin….and he will, if you give him any opportunity…he WILL eat it all, and he will most likely develop a serious colic, and will very likely die. THIS IS TOTALLY PREVENTABLE!”

 

I always get a chuckle out of these passages when I read them. Yet I have never had the privilege of seeing with my own eyes, what can happen to Fjords on alfalfa. In their defense, the foster folks were initially trying to put weight on neglected horses…and then, “got too busy to mess around with them”. When Freddie emerged from the trailer my first impression of him was that he was more Stallion-like than gelding. We could barely wrap our arms around his massive neck to halter him. When viewed from behind, his back end created an ungraceful thud of an upside-down U, his legs jlibbered when he ponderously walked.

The magnificent girth of Frederik

“To be honest with you,” Dr. Laura shyly offered, “I had to reach way in there to even find his rectum and take his temp. Those are really some impressive cheeks.”

“Aw, let’s not call him fat, exactly,” I responded, stroking his forelock.

“I will.” Shane has found it saves time to be blunt.

“Maybe ‘THICK’ with 3 Cs?” offered the assistant vet tech. “Freddie boy!” she rounded on him, gazing down at his beautiful eyes, “You gotta put some ChUGGA in that UGGA!”

We put on lead vests and they took X-rays of their front feet to aid the farrier in his work balancing the foot, and to ascertain whether they would need special shoes, or special considerations as we exercised them more, and brought them into working condition on the farm.

 “Not too bad.” Dr. Laura said, showing us the slight indentation in the coffin bone. “They definitely have indication that a past Laminitic incident has occurred, and you can see that they will always have a tendency to founder without vigilance,  but with proper attention, regular farrier work, and if you keep on doing everything you’re doing here, they have a great future ahead of them. Freddie will never be a jumper, but he can be brought back into gentle farm-work along with Erling. Erling needs more muscling, but he could even be an eventing horse for any of your daughters who like to ride.”

The vet tech, a steely eyed nearly 30 yr old barrel racer with a Pomeranian that rides on the console between the front bucket seats of her truck when she’s on the circuit, finished 7 years of school to train to be an equine anesthesiologist. She looked around the farm and gave us one last shot in the arm: “I like what you’re doing here. I have no doubt whatsoever that Freddie and Earl here are going to do great here. I honestly wish we didn’t have to go to our next call. I could stay here all day.”

I grinned. I turned to look at Agatha the hen, marshalling the new batch of chicks. The goats were milling around the barn paddock wondering why their grain ration was delayed. The garden lay waiting, transplants in the greenhouse soon to be planted out in tidy rows. Suddenly it seemed as if she had dusted the whole place with magical unicorn sparkles. The farm went from “scene of much toil and struggle in a world war II bio-epic film” to “Rainbow Bright and Strawberry Shortcake’s Christmas Special”. Anything was possible, and all of it was splendiferous. You need moments like this as a human being. Especially as a married person. You need to come into the kitchen suddenly, and see your spouse with afternoon light shining on them, and even if you’ve wanted to drop-kick them out of the universe for the past many months, you need to see them turn their head into the light, just so, and catch a glimpse of what they really are: precious.

“Just don’t give that Freddie boy any treats.” She called back over her shoulder, breaking into my distractions.

“Don’t even spell treat around that boy.”

I suppose, some things could sparkle…a little less. 

(Sparkle with just one K.)

 

 

Kings in Spring

 

 Little Flower Farm's Barn 

I read somewhere that Johanna Spyri, famed authoress of “Heidi” and many other beloved children’s books, would even as a small child pause in her most rambunctious play to listen to the wind in the tops of the tall pines that dotted the hillside in the tidy Swiss village seven miles from Zurich where she grew up. Summer suns smiled upon her brothers and sisters enjoying potatoes roasted in open fires; feasts so fit for kings that the happy memory of them was immortalized in one of her books:

Germinating Flats in the living room

“Renz sat down next to her and then both watched the wind for a while as it blew merrily over the potatoes, lying there to cool, and carried away the gray steam rising from them…..with a potato in one hand, a piece of cheese in the other, the two children sat there on their wall and took a good bite first of one, then of the other. Above them in the alder-tree, the birds were singing, the sun sparkled over the pasture, and on the ground in front of them the bright bluebells nodded gaily to and fro in the wind.”

                   Renz and Margritli by Johanna Spyri, 1931

Living near to a piece of land and daily keeping an eye on it- brings you into kinship with people not just across the world, who are, especially in springtime, doing precisely the same thing, but across time as well. You find yourself understanding exactly someone who lived hundreds-perhaps thousands of years ago. Stumbling across a passage in a book written in a different country, in a foreign language, in a previous century, and yet it could have been taken word for word by dictation from your own lips speaking your own heart, for you have been there too, seen those things as well, and rejoiced deeply in them.

Seedlings awaiting transplanting

“Margritli,” then said Renz, biting off a piece here and another there, “would you rather be a king on his throne and have a golden crown on your head, or would you rather by sitting on the wall, in the shade of the alder, and eating roasted potatoes and hearing the birds sing?”

Yesterday we were coming back from the round pen where our resident 7 year old cow-girl and I had spent a leisurely chunk of the day messing around with the Fjords and grooming every square inch of their hairy shedding bodies. All this beneath the shade of a fanning Chinese Elm and the sound of it budding in the breeze and the birds embroidering the theme.

First came the metal toothed shedding tool with its three concentric rings, clawing soft tufts of their dun coat and littering the ground with a generous gifts for the birds to build their new nests with. It’s a delight to imagine how this must feel to a large hairy beast that has been neglected for years…indeed their lip flapping exhalations were all the proof we needed to be encouraged to rummage through the grooming tools’ box and soldier on.

 Next came the rubber nubby curry in the left hand, in small circles, and the firmer bristle brush to follow. Pausing to pick a burr or two or three from the forelock and the tail, and  those ones that are stubbornly twisted in the feathering around their feet, we grab the small super soft brush for the dirt caked on their cheekbones, and a larger supple soft brush for the final sheen all over. 

Freddie and Erling respond in kind by lifting each of their feet for us without much coaxing so that we can pick out all the caked manure and dirt impacted there. Throughout all this the birds continue to sing spring in and we keep a running commentary that is 1 part human speech, 1 part baby prattle to the horses with the doughy eyes, and 1 part horse language, non-verbal body signaling. It is amusing to see Rosie tell Fredrik to back up or get over, when, as a very drafty, nearly 15 hand obese horse, he outweighs her easily by at least 1200 lbs. He lowers his massive neck to breath in her ear as she bear hugs him and her braids disappear into the soft shaggy chest. On the way back to the barn she tells me:

Newly transplanted onions

“You don’t need much at all to be rich. All you need is to have is a farm like this. Don’t you think, Mama?” She is walking with the jaunty stride of a girl who has a future in barrel racing and is in love with a solid wall of a horse. We are walking side by side and my right ear is inclined toward her. A 45 year old brown head and a 7 year old golden one tilted to one side in a gentle revery as I murmur assent. I am thinking that wealth is having someone as small as her around to look up to. I’m remembering  “Hanni” Spyri’s childhood again.

Manuring the Garden

“Do you know,” she said, after some reflection, “a king can have whatever he wants, and so he can besides everything else, sit on the wall and eat roasted potatoes, if he wants to.”

“No he cannot. That would not be proper for him; he has to stay sitting on his throne,” asserted Renz. “But you see”- and in his eagerness Renz raised his fist high in the air and the brought it down on his knee-“ I would a thousand, thousand times rather be sitting here than be a king on his throne, for he has nothing at all more beautiful than what we have here.”

Spring has a way of making a farm look like a shining jewel. The grass is tremendously rich and a vibrant light green that is more accurately called emerald rather than “green.” The animals all rejoice in it like kids entering an amply stocked candy store because in spring, that is quite literally what a pasture is; the grass being high in sugar content. 

We have to strictly ration Freddie and Erling given their histories with laminitic incidents, so it is a special treat for them and a delight to watch them enjoy and hour or two in the afternoon vacuum up grass like octogenarians stuffing bread rolls and cookies into their purses at a buffet. Freddie and Erling are also entering their twilight years, and unabashedness is the privilege of age. The goats watch them from the paddock alongside, and imitate the fjords in their rolling antics. After watching  the horses and filling their bellies, they plop down into warm hairy wedges and a drowsy wave of little legs hoofing the air ensues. Even the pug dog and children revel in the spring grass with rolling. It’s so soft and succulent, and right now, dotted with tender little wild violets. The girls run bare-feet over it, spread quilts and cavort in the best the dress-up chest has to offer, while the pug dives neck first into the sward and rubs the length of his sausaged body all over the bluegrass and wildflowers.

 In Spyri’s story, the two children end their potato feast wondering if their farm is even more beautiful than heaven. They at first suspect it might be, since they have never seen anything lovelier, but end in frank humility, reasoning they can’t speak to it since they have yet to see heaven. It’s a fair wondering to stumble into, especially on the eve of the first of May on the farm. The yellow-bellied warblers are singing amongst new leaves, the wild rabbits dart behind winter’s wood pile. The ground chuck begins to make bold forays into the field and jiggles with her unique eloquence when surprised out from under her cover. This is the best thing about a small farm. It brings you into full experience of

Freddie's First Bath

something so analogous to beatitude. You begin to feel yourself tuned like strings on a violin, making ready to be the sort of creature that can sing a higher harmony…or at least, plant out the cabbages and kale with a grin.

Spring . Cue the Mini Nubians.

 

It is Sunday morning. Our 17 yr old is downstairs vigiliantly flipping bacon to the strains of Renata Tibaldi on the CD -player; keeping the dreams of both her parents alive. She hands me the Book of Names that I’ve had since 1996. It’s tattered and taped, and retaped. Today the spine is shalacked with grease and slides in my hand.

“What about Duscha?” she asks, as she lays six new skinny specimens of porcine perfection along the paper towelled plate to drain and dry. “It’s Russian for ‘the happy one’. Or Duschinka. Means the same thing.”

We are trying to figure on a name for the new baby doeling in the barn. She is one of a set of triplets, born just three nights ago- our first spring with Mini Nubians. The Doeling is marked out like a galaxy, with moon spots and multi colors everywhere. Admittedly, a “foreign” name would suit her. She’s more a Marlene Deitrich or Greta Garbo than a June Allyson or Jane Powell. In any case, the birth of her and her brothers came on the Eve of the first day of spring…the Feast of St. Joseph.

I am feeling anything but spring-like, having damned the first batch of bacon to blackest hellfire while attempting to make pancakes and put up a gallon and a half of maple syrup AND watch the bacon at the same time. Nothing tests a man like anticipating bacon, and then finding it burnt as pitch. I feel my husband’s pain as he swallows disappointment and salivation with an admirable will. My daughter’s second sally and a new pot of coffee later has us all celebrating the new season - and the sabath- in style.

2 years ago severe spondylosis of the spine and an old back injury heavily curtailed our animal husbandry on the farm. A subsequent return to graduate school with a sojourn in South Texas brought it to a temporary standstill. Having experienced the internal chaos of farmers living the suburban life without daily chores, we were eager to get up and running again when we returned to our River’s edge St. Croix valley farm last year. Chasing it was like chasing sanity. Chasing purpose. Connecting the dots of our family history, and remembering how to live again.

When, for 16 years, you mark seasons by when to tap the trees, when to start the seeds, when the goats kid out, when the chicks arrive, when the garden is tilled, when the transplanting begins (as the forsythia blooms), when the weeding time comes, and the thinning, when it’s time to start the broiler chickens or get in the feeder pigs, when the onions need to be cured, when the harvest comes, when the bulbs should be planted, the apple trees pruned, the wood cut and stacked, when to put the buck in with the does, and when to butcher the above mentioned pigs…you participate in the earth’s annual progress around the sun and its daily twist on its own axis with an open-eyed, hands twisted around the piece of mane of that lively pony that is life, all in.

                “Some people understand the privilege of stillness and can sit and breathe and look and hear                         and smell the world turning and let what’s next wait the while.”

                                                                            -Niall Williams “This Is Happiness”

Last summer’s return to farming took the slow approach for us, as we shored up lose ends and painted the peeling barn, put in a much -needed gate, and re-seeded poor spots in the pasture. An unexpected accident way-layed our hopes of re-stocking the barn. I nursed a broken fibula into the Fall, which I discovered 4 months too late. October arrived. The old nudge to be “out looking for a suitable buck” faintly revived in my daughter and I. “I wish the farm would come to life again” sighed my two littlest ones. It was all I needed to hear. Each season brings an opportunity to jump on or watch it fly by. I was tired of being a spectator on our own farm. But my new physical limitations were real, and I was faced with the possibility of having to give it up if we didn’t adapt and adjust.

Enter: Mini Nubians.

Judge if you want to. I was also one of those skeptical about any livestock with “Mini” in its name. Same amount of work, less dividend. Animals for people who are afraid of animals. That’s what I thought. Still, at 50-100 lbs lighter than full blooded Nubians, they were much more suited to my capacity as a middle aged woman with “the upper cervical of a 80 year old” as my doctor so delicately had put it. Less to yank on, if they needed corralling, shorter, easier to sort with a knee here or there at milking time. When I visited a 4 year old doe in milk up in nearby St. Croix Falls, and her beautiful moon-spotted doeling, so many of my initial prejudices tumbled down. The barreled body of the Mini was the perfect conformation for a well producing dairy animal. The milk was sweeter than that of a Nubian- which was already the sweetest among all the full dairy breeds. The udder was well attached, and easy to milk with long teats, and an open U stance that made for ideal accessibility. Best of all, they were less vocal and needy than my purebred Nubians had been, and they ate ½ as much. “Mini is mighty!” I found myself muttering; my own newly discovered riff on Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful”.

We drove away with Beaulah and her daughter, Fawn in the back of the van. Rosie stroked Beaulah’s goatee as we sped along Hiway 95 singing at the top of our lungs. For the next month and a half, frothy glasses of creamy goat’s milk and graham crackers were the littles’ snack of choice, before it was time to dry Beaulah up to give her time to rebuild strength for her spring kidding and new lactation.

 At Christmastime a starter herd was in the barn, eager for our customary carrots and kale on Christmas Eve in honor of the animals near the manger of the Christ Child over 2000 years ago in that place called “House of Bread” . The best way to celebrate Christmas is with the promise of the kiss on spring on your lips and in your heart. So we sat by the fire and watched the snow come down, all the while with goats snug in the barn, and two of them growing big with spring kids to come.

Now spring has come, and popcorn triplets drive Beaulah mad with their antics on the Southern side of the barn. They will not stay corralled but must be examining here, prancing over there, taking running leaps at the pile of raked leaves. They soak up the rays of the new sun on a record setting 78 degree day on a Minnesota March gift of an afternoon.

 
Beside them the garden is thawing out. The frost is coming out of the ground and seeping away down to the rivulets and streambeds that hurry toward the river in this unique watershed district. The frost has learned to do so from the trees whose blood first began to run in late February, when the sun began to court them, hoping to defraud them of their buds, until the trees, conspicuous, fan themselves with unfurled leaves to hide their blushes from the sun.

We are to and fro from the barn again now. The rhythm of chores setting in. Milk buckets swing with foaming milk. Strainers and jars clatter and clutter the kitchen counter. It’s a messy start to things again. Spring is always like this. Always muddy. Always messy.

It’s as if to say: “Whatever has happened, wherever you’ve been, I am here again, as I’ve always been in the promise of every labororious work of the last year, and the year before that, and the one before that; in every destroyed reality never meant to outlive itself in the same way. The thaw will come, the new shoots of garlic will push their way through last fall’s mulch. The kids will survive. They are taking clandestine sips of their mother’s milk while we worry over them in the house. The perennials are rubbing their drowsy still wick eyes, changing out of their muddy crusty gowns of last year, and soon to venture shyly out in new spring formals. Broken bones and hearts will heal, daffodils will unfurl their delicate flags of happiness again, while we learn to spell in the dirt and sand again the word that is “Resurrection.”

Meanwhile, while the waiting wears on us: it’s Minis to the rescue!

From the 4th stanza of Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Spring Song":

    Spring came on as she always does,

    Laid her hand on the yellow forsythia,-

    Little boys turned in their sleep and smiled,

    Dreaming of marbles, dreaming of agates;

    Little girls leapt from their beds to see

    Spring come by with her painted wagons,

    Coloured wagons creaking with wonder-.....

 

“I greatly thirst to lead the life that I glimpsed while walking in the streets of Nazareth, streets which had been trod by the feet of Our Lord, an unknown poor workman lost in abjection…”

St. Charles de Foucauld

Summer 2023

Little Flower Farm gardens 2023

Queen of Lime zinnia 

hens out for a summer's stroll

training and pruning tomatoes in the hoop-house

2023 cut flower garden

 

"Wind in the Willows" summer play at the farm