19 october 2020

Today I spent half the day looking for the owner of a piece of land. It was a true adventure, driving and walking to different areas in town, making phone calls and searching through Facebook, speaking to a lot of people. It is so gratifying how helpful everyone is, providing me with answers, suggestions and advice.

The other half of the day was with the horses, on a relaxed eat-walk. This is such a wonderful life, doing what I love most, and working on prolonging and expanding. The times with the horses bring so much happiness.

And yes, in the evening I finally found the person I was looking for, and yes, they gave permission to use their field.

28 september 2020

September has been such a blissfull month. After the suffocating heat of July and August the temperatures dropped to a much better level, there were some rains and the sudden stormy winds brought high waves and wonderful skies. Our energy levels improved, making the work of finding olive groves for the horses to graze and fencing in the fields much lighter.

We’re learning how to go about finding owners of fields: sometimes a good looking olive grove is owned by four different people. In Pilion there’s always someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows the owner, and at the taverna in Argalasti they know almost everyone. And most people agree to have the horses on their fields. We’re getting good at this

There’s also energy again for activities with the horses. Our most favourite one still is taking them on walks. Four horses are free during these walks and it’s a great pleasure to see them galloping and kicking our of sheer joy. The longer we are with the horses, the more we love them and enjoy their company and energy. This is truly a beautiful life, however challenging it sometimes is.

9 aug 2020

We are exploring the area of Kalamos to find nutritious and accessible areas where the horses can graze. When we were in Milina after a while farmers came to ask us if we could bring the horses to their olive groves – it is a nice win-win situation when the horses eat what is under the trees and leave their manure behind. Now in Kalamos we are in the exploring phase. We discover lovely olive groves but now in lock-down time it turns out to be quite a challenge to find their owners.

It is surprising how varied the undergrowth is in the olive groves. The field in this short video must be absolutely stunning in springtime.

21 July 2020

We’ve never had them so close to home yet. A 20-acre field, partly surrounded by woodland so relatively easy to fence in, full of different grasses and herbs. I just made a morning walk with Lisa to see them. We found them halfway the field, moving (I was going to write ‘migrating’ but that’s stretching it )… moving towards the water barrels. We joined in with their movement, it was so relaxed and beautiful in the cool morning light

The search continues. This field will last two weeks at the most, then we need new ones. Close to Kalamos, the bigger the better, accessible by car to bring them water. And we’re looking for a place for the winter, where they can have a shelter, where we can store hay.

For now I’m immensely pleased with this field!

https://youtu.be/79H8_kanfnU