Our horses remain in their fence as they are supposed to and we went to check them out today in beautiful winterweather. Hjördís accompanied us and visited her still nameless colt. 

Vordís definitely behaves like a queen, very proud and not "talking" to the common herd straight away. She wants to be asked politely and decides then, if she grants you and audience or not.

Today was a day of "no, not straight away" and after a few minutes "now I'm ready to greet you". 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...way home. Well, in fact not so long, but quite hard, when you have to walk through rather deep snow with 7 horses.
Yes, 7 horses, and all of them ours.

You probably ask how this could happen. Just after work we got a call, that our horses broke out off their fence, followed Bjarni's herd to their pasture and were waiting there to be brought home again. There was quite some snow and the fences rather low at some places and easy for horses to step over them. Bjarni's herd decided to take a stroll, walked over their fence and visited our horses. Of course you have to join a big party like that, don't you? I think at least our youngsters were pretty excited about all these guests and the mares had no choice than following them.

When we arrived with 4 halters, 2 handhorsegirths and a big bag of bread, our horses were happy to see us and marched towards us. Now it was just getting the mares, putting a girth on 2 of them, putting the other 2 to the girth and hope that the youngsters would follow. I was leading List and Ögn, Þrá and Vordís were attached and Fönix and the foals loose. Our caravan needed more or less all the width of the ridingtrack... Everything went well, Fönix was just once thinking about taking a different turn, but came running again after a few meters and Ögn's son tried to follow some riders we met on the track. 

It looked like the horses were quite happy to be back in their fence with their hay. Bjarni told us, that Vordís kept her little group together and took care, no other horse would mix into it. We heightened the fence where it was lowest and just hope the best for the next days.

No pictures taken as I forgot my cam at home.

We got a lot of visitors in our garden. A huge bunch of snow buntings came to feed on the birdseed we put outside. Always fun watching them swarming in, taking off in a rush just to swarm in after a few moments again. They are really agile and I was wondering how they communicate to other snow buntings about where to find food as the group was getting bigger and bigger.

 

Using the good, but cold weather, we visited Kiddi in Helluland to have a look how things are going in the countryside. Kiddi and his wife sold all their cows and stopped being dairyfarmers around the turn of the year. Now Kiddi has plenty of time to train his horses and is hardly found anywhere else than on horseback. At the moment his biggest pleasure is riding on ice and he made a lot of tracks on ice-bound meadows and a nearby lake.

When we arrived he was on Krummi, son of Þristur frá Feti and Slaufa frá Hellulandi, a young gelding just started under the saddle in autumn. We liked what we saw and think he's quite promising, showing both trott and tölt. Afterwards Kiddi showed us his stallion Dimmir, which has taken some steps forward from last year. I think the overall goal is to show him again in a breedingshow.

 

Krummi frá Hellulandi

 

Dimmir frá Hellulandi

After checking the fences and putting up a middlefence we finally were able to put the horses in the big field again.
They had to climb over some snowdrifts, but that was no problem. Looked like they were happy to have a bit more space again.

 

 

Well, yesterday evening a strong storm burst in and we just made it home from 8th grade Þorrablót at school. The night was rather troubled, things crashing around and the storm rapping on our eastern window.

In the morning it was our turn to go and feed the horses in Saltvík, but around 7 o'clock it was still very dark and stormy, so we decided to wait a bit, listen to the news and check out, if there would be school today or not. Finally we got to know, there would be no regular day at school today, so we were able to wait a bit longer and started our journey to Saltvík around 8.30, when it was getting a bit brighter and the storm started to go down.

I took a short video, which I attach at the end of this blogg. The drive was a quite an adventure, low visibility and strong sidewinds. We saw 2 cars, which were blown off the road, but the passengers and drivers were already in security, so we didn't stop but kept driving. 

The horses were all well, eventhough there was quite a snowpile in 2 boxes in our neighbours' stable. Hay was very apprechiated and everybody was content with staying inside.

After visiting at school we took a short drive around lunchtime. The sun came out and pretended there wasn't any storm, but the sea at Höfðagerðissandur was still rather rough and I got a very nice shot of rainbow sea spray.

 

Thursdayevening, going home from Þorrablót

 

The visibility on our way to the stable   Rainbow sea spray at Höfðagerðissandur around noon