Yes, you read right! Finally after a very long wait my Christmas cactus decided to do me the favour to flower! Lucky me ;)

 

 

After taking care of the riding track (removing stones and levelling it) I took a nice ride down to the beach on Ösp. There I managed to persuade her to vade into the sea. She wasn't too keen on it, but gave in in the end. List loved to do that and even go for a swim. Maybe I can teach Fönix to do that. Anyway it was nice to be in the water with the horse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After this horrible winter we have to fix quite a lot of fences and started with the one at the big field today. We had to replace at least 2 gates, so best to do it properly straight away. Ingólfur dug down a huge driftwoodpole, which should withstand quite a some bad weather. At least we hope so... Well, now it's putting everything together the next days. Hope the weather will stay nice.

 

 

If we want to harvest potatoes in autumn we definitely have to prepare now and put the seed potatoes in the right spot to sprout. Luckily there is a bright place in Hjördís' room to do so and so they'll spent the time until planting there. 

 

 

Not us, but our horses. It was time to have a look at the teeth of Sæla and Fönix. We like to let them check at least once a year, but weren't sure if Sæla had gotten that treatment before. Well, good we had a look! There was a huge wolve tooth which had to be removed. Fönix had a somehow crooked bit and the dentist tried to balance it a bit better. That's nothing you do at once, but has to be corrected in small steps. 
We're lucky to have access to this dentist, who's taking good time per horse and especially trying to make it as comfortable for them as possible. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a wonderful day today! Beautiful weather and a bunch of riders going for a longer ride on a gravel road. Not only us but the horses, too, enjoyed the possibility to go for a bit longer than just inbetween the stable areas around Saltvík. Should do that more often...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good weather to go for a ride! The riding club paid for the track to be cleaned off snow (usually the community does so, but this winter has been that awful that there was no money left...) so it was possible to take a ride from stable area to stable area. The weather was great, too, so what more to ask? Just enjoy ;)

 

 

 

 

When taking a drive north of town today we made an unexpected discovery. On the meadows close to Héðinshöfði was a large group of Barnacle geese, which is very uncommon at this area and especially so early in the year. Usually they are migrating through Skagafjörður, sometimes we see them on our way to Akureyri in Kinn, but never saw them before north of town. Anyway it was great to watch them a bit. Hope they'll have a safe journey to Greenland.

 

 

Even though it's already April, the sun is rising higher on the sky winter isn't over at all. Had a violent storm yesterday and just so managed to go to the stables and take care of the horses. Today wasn't any better. Despite us trying really hard to go and feed there was no chance, we already got stuck in the next road and had to be towed out. Luckily it's not just us in the stable and so we got a ride with Gunni on his special car. 
The horses had to stay inside today, there was no use in mucking all the snow to let them out to just muck again to let them in about half an hour later completely covered in snow like we did yesterday. 
Now we hope for better times coming and less of those bloody snowstorms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Won't be the last time we'll have to do that after the big storm on December 10th 2019. This time it's the fence close to our stable as we will be putting horses there soon. Fortunately there weren't any broken fenceposts, just broken insulators, so rather easy to fix. On the way back Ingólfur just vanished suddenly. He "found" the creek through our pasture.