Wild Briar Farm

07/13/2024

How much weight can a horse carry?

In my experience, a horse can carry an infinite amount.

They can carry the weight of broken hearts, broken homes, and broken bodies. Countless tears sometimes comb their tangled manes. Moments when parents and friends cannot be there to help and hold a person, horses embrace and empower. They carry physical, mental, and emotional handicaps. They carry hopes and dreams; and they will carry the stress from your day when you can’t carry it anymore.

They carry graduations, they carry new careers, they carry moves away from everything familiar, they carry marriages, they carry divorces, they carry funerals, they carry babies before they are born, and sometimes they carry the mothers who cannot carry their own baby. They carry mistakes, they carry joy, they carry the good and they carry the bad. They carry drugs and addictions, but they also carry the celebrations.

They will carry you to success when all you have felt is failure. They will carry you, never knowing the weight of your burdens and triumphs.

If you let them, they will carry you through life, and life is hard, life is heavy. But a horse will make you feel weightless under it all.
Inserting my own pic from the original Mothers Day ride

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04/30/2024

They’re back! Every year, same time, same place. The best fly and mosquito control you can get!! 🪰🦟

The swallows are coming back. They weigh about 20 grams, but they covered more than 5000 km during the flight. They passed through the Sahara desert. They flew over the Mediterranean without having a break. They fought the rain and wind, and the scorching sun. They are extraordinary little beings. . And now they will live under the roofs of our homes and bear the offspring. Embrace their presence. Be kind to them. Respect them. One swallow can eat up to 850 flies and mosquitoes a day. One pair can kill about 1,700 flies and mosquitoes a day. There is no more effective and ecological insecticide ... Make them feel welcome here

01/18/2024

“Farm work doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t make you anything. It reveals you.

There’s gym strong and then there’s farm strong. They’re mutually exclusive.

The toughest women you’ll ever meet spend their days on a farm.

There are more uses for twine than you can possibly imagine. You can tie up a hole in a slow feeder, fashion a tail strap for a horse’s blanket, mend a broken fence and use it as a belt.

“Well that certainly didn’t go as planned,” is one thing you’ll say quite a bit.

Control is a mere illusion. The thought that you have any, at any given time, is utterly false.

Sometimes sleep is a luxury. So are lunch and dinner. And brushing your hair.

If you’ve never felt your obliques contract, then you’ve never tried stopping an overly full wheelbarrow of horse manure from tipping over sideways. Trust me, you’ll find muscles that you never knew existed on the human skeleton to prevent this from happening.

When one of the animals is ill, you’ll go to heroic lengths to minimize their discomfort.
When you lose one of them, even though you know that day is inevitable, you still feel sadness, angst and emotional pain from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. And it’s a heaviness that lingers even though you must regroup and press on.

You’ll cry a lot. But you’ll never live more fully. You’ll remain present no matter what because you must. There is no other option.

You’ll ask for so many miracles and hold out hope until the very last.

You will, at least once, face-plant in the manure pile.

You’ll find yourself saying things like, “we have maybe twenty minutes of daylight left to git ‘er done” whilst gazing up at a nonspecific place in the sky.

You’ll become weirdly obsessive about the weather.

You’ll go out in public wearing filthy clothes and smelling of dirt, sweat and p**p. People will look at you sideways and krinkle their noses but you won’t care.

Your entire day can derail within ten seconds of the rising sun.

You can wash your coveralls. They won’t look any cleaner, but they will smell much nicer.

Farm work is difficult in its simplicity.

You’ll always notice just how beautiful sunrises and sunsets really are.

Should you ever have the opportunity to work on a farm, take the chance! You will never do anything more satisfying in your entire life.

Well, that about sums it up, folks!” - unknown author

So true. All of it.
Cheers, Christina - Handley Acres Metal Creations

12/31/2023

Leading 1st field in Virginia! So happy to get updates from his new owner ❤️ Shannoman aka Shannon found his niche.

10/12/2023

Proud & happy to receive this update on my guy, Shannoman, aka Shaun, enjoying his new life in . He’s out in front in this pic. His new owner says they are beyond in love with him 🤩and I couldn’t ask for more than that.

07/26/2023

Congratulations to this pair taking home 1st place 🥇 at classic in Elmira. Go Cowboy!! 🤠🐴

06/07/2023

Hard to know what to do today 🤔Leave them in or turn them out. Poor air quality problems as the North wind continues to carry smoke our way. They’re not working 🐴🐎