Moonlight Manor Horse Riding

11/01/2025

For the most part, the Greenbank Dome held!
First Saturday of lessons & we had rain, lol.

My teenage years were all outside of Melbourne. Our philosophy was, if you didn’t ride in the rain, you didn’t ride!

Guess we can change that to Brisbane now…..

09/01/2025

This is sooooooo true. People often ask me how to improve. Two key things. Overall reasonable fitness is one.
The second, ride, ride, ride. The miles are the key. There is a point in riding where things get a bit monotonous. It's because you've reached a point where, you can only learn enough as your stability will allow you & to take it to the next step, you have to develop better stability. There is only ONE way to achieve that.........

This may be too simplistic to be worth saying, but here goes---The best way to get used to the feeling of riding, to get in tune with the motions of a horse, is to ride as many hours as many days a week as you can manage to do.

For some, that’s impossible, for any number of reasons. Others have access and the time, but choose not to spend much time riding. That leaves the relative few who have access, time and desire. It will be no surprise when these riders improve.

“Fairness” and “equal opportunity” don’t have anything to do with this. Either someone can or she can’t. The better riders are usually the same riders who figure out how to get in lots and lots of riding time.

This is not a difficult concept to understand.

If you want to get better, spend more time looking between more ears.

08/01/2025

🤔🤔🤔

05/01/2025

Smurf?” or Blue da ba dee da ba di???

Natalie did call him Smurfette…..

14/12/2024

Apparently, it was pouring around Brisbane & even flash flooding & we barely got a drop!

People will have heard me say it’s the Greenbank Dome! It really is a thing. We’re either dry when everyone else is copping it OR we’ve got hail & lightning that hits trees & everywhere else is dry 🤣.

The Greenbank Dome is a real thing!

13/12/2024

The weather is extremely bi-polar at the moment! Either pouring with rain or sunny & HUMID!
Be ready to ride in whatever the weather throws at us!
Keep a spare set of clothes in the car & make sure you stay hydrated, electrolytes can be really helpful before, during & after your ride when it’s 37oC & feels like 99% humidity!

All of the horses are on daily electrolytes.

Can I just say…. I’m so sick of biting BUGS!!!!

08/12/2024

Awesome job to all of our show jump competitors today & braving the heat!
Thank you to all of our helpers too 🙏🙏🙏

04/12/2024

With our jump day now rescheduled to this Sunday & next, it did give me a chance to finish painting up some poles & build & paint some new dazzle boards! Nearly every week I’ve had something newer for everyone.

It’s amazing what you can put together with basic materials & paint ! While they’re very rudimentary, I’m pretty darned pleased with how they’re looking!

02/12/2024

Rocky…. You are exactly what you have gifted to my car….
Zoom in on the front left corner if you can’t see it…..
butthead!

02/12/2024

Should we try this??? I’m down!
What could possibly go wrong?!?! 🤣🤣🏇🏼🛶 https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1EyVTKvHCL/?mibextid=iexibG

30/11/2024

I made the disappointing call to cancel our show jump day last night….
Turns out it was the right call!

Competition is being rescheduled, text me if you want more info! It will probably be spread across 2 Sundays.

27/11/2024

Our riders getting ready for our in-house jump competition for this Sunday!
I hope the weather plays nice!

26/11/2024

I was back up on the shipping container on Monday.
There were more holes that were missed that we couldn’t see, water was working its way through some of the rusted points.
We now seem to have success!

And, it looks like I’m over my worry of shorter heights now….. could probably clean the gutters on the bottom story of the roof….. maybe not the top though…..

Farm life, where ya just gotta suck it up & get the job done!

24/11/2024

People often ask “how does my horse destroy their rug?!” This is a prime example. 9 / 10, it’s because a leg strap either fails, or breaks, or in this case, came undone. How does the buckle come undone? Usually if they’re just rubbing their backsides or legs on posts or trees because they’re just having a scratch.
The OTHER way this happens, is if leg straps aren’t threaded through each other correctly (called crossing the leg straps, but it’s not actually going from opposite sides) then a similar thing happens where it slides across the horse’s bottom exactly like this & the horse steps one leg out & then bye-bye rug!

Some people will tell you that they won’t rug horses in case of freak accidents (I do know of one recently ☹️☹️☹️) but out of 30 years & 1,000 horses, that’s the only time I’ve heard it first hand.

People will often hear me yell “check your straps!!” & this is why, to make sure they’re done up correctly. Although in this case, this horse gets really itchy, so, cleverly undid the buckle himself!

21/11/2024

Yesterday was dental day! Rain or not! Dr Emily was a machine getting through 15 horses!!!!

19/11/2024

Annnnnd today’s adventure….

The feed that we use had a recall on it & a second batch also ended up being recalled, which meant last week I had moved around 1000kg of feed. Some manually & some with the tractor.

Today the supplier had organised 1000kg of replacement delivered in one large bag……

We tried shifting it all with the tractor & the tines, but twice, we had the tractor up on 3 wheels as the weight was just too much for her. The young guy who came out with the feed, thankfully, grew up on tractors & was able to talk me through what to do. Not gonna lie, it was bloody terrifying!!! I can get that we were still a way off of rolling, but still, it is NOT A GOOD FEELING when your tractor is somewhat in the air on 3 wheels with nearly 1000kg worth of weight on it!!!!

We had to move some of it manually until we got it down enough for the old girl (no, not me 🤣) to be able to lift it.

I have NEVER worked with tines before, had to lift 500kg or so onto a pallet & then lift the pallet onto the ute.

We got ALL the feed sorted just before the rain came in……

It’s been a week already & it’s barely Tuesday!

18/11/2024

One thing about being on property, you just learn how to do SO MANY THINGS.
Yesterday saw us down at the river, something must have fallen on the pipe line for the horse water & kinked & damaged it, knocking off the buoy & pushing the foot valve into the mud. Fairly simple repair, does take a while to reprime the pump though when the leak is down the river end.

Today, saw ME (I have NO HEAD for heights!) on top of the new feedroom shipping container, getting extremely creative on patching holes. We had put a tarp over it, but water was still getting in. So, I pulled up my “big girl” pants 🤣 (I know, it’s not THAT high) & just did the job.
Used a combination of sealant, horse rug fabric, rubber, 3M tape, Gorilla waterproof tape & Gorilla rubber sealant spray. I have discovered for jobs like this, there is no such thing as too many tubes of roof & gutter sealant……
Fingers crossed it’s had enough time to set a bit, the tarp is back on & now it’s pouring…..

Did I ever mention, Sunday & Monday are my part day-offs…. 🤣🤣🤣🤣