The Katmah Experience

• When somebody says you’re too “Manitoba lifestyle”. Don’t get insulted. Just go with it.
• My hair is now blonde. Not much ginger left. My tan is also gone. Except for my face. Thank you working on a horse farm.
• Relating to the above- sunscreen, sunglasses, hat are good everyday items now that summer is getting started.
• Beetroot is in everything here. If you don’t like it when you arrive, chances are you will when you leave. Good thing I love it!
• Bending and lifting with your knees is a very valuable life lesson- especially when you’re spending 8 hours a day de-docking/weeding huge paddocks.
• Stretching is awesome. Don’t let anybody tell you differently.
• Working out really does give you more energy.
• Genetics play a part in whether you’re a morning person or not. Thank you mom, for enabling me to wake up at 5:45 am without an alarm. Not sure if that’s a curse or a blessing yet.
• Bacon is awesome here too. I know you all were wondering.
• Graham crackers don’t exist here- they actually have nothing even close. Trust me, I had a good conversation with a store clerk in a super market and she was very confused as to what I was looking for. Weird, right?
• Baby rabbits are possibly definitely the cutest thing ever.
• Learn how to drive standard before coming to a country where majority of the vehicles are standard. It might help you out a little bit.
• There are some huge spiders here, that lurk in thistles and hop onto your arm as you pick up said thistle. Not a fan. I kid you not it was the size of a small child’s fist.
• It is possible to live on under$250 a week and still save money- sort of.
• The ocean at sunset is amazing.
• I’ve learnt that I have a huge obsession with coconut. I looked in the cupboard the other day and realized that all three of my different granola bar boxes contained coconut. Plus I have coconut chocolate ice cream (fantastic). And coconut stir fry sauce. Yikes.

Per usual, the days are flying by and full of work work and more work. I spent two days this week helping Alan de-weed the paddocks. This process involved him weed wacking the large dock plants down, and another groom and I going around and picking up the weeds and piling them in our Mule (golf cart). We spent two days doing this job- it quite reminded me of work at the research farm- also had similar effects for my back. Nonetheless, I survived. Some might argue that this isn’t what we grooms should be doing at work, but I liked the change- even though it was hard on my body. A big topic of conversation right now at work is hay. We’re currently running on a very limited supply- and when you have about 25-30 horses to feed 3-4 times a day, that’s not good. This means that in the morning we feed half a slice of hay mixed with some haylege (god knows what it is- a very very rich type of hay that comes vacuum wrapped and is kinda damp when you open it and smells weird); at lunch we cut grass from different areas around the farm and feed that, and supper is the same as the morning feed. Night check gets only hay. Hopefully we can find some more hay soon- cause running a horse farm without it gets kinda complicated.

I haven’t ridden all week, as I’ve been trying to get my body back on track. I’m scheduled to ride tomorrow while Kyle is away at a show so we’ll see how that goes. I’ve started getting up extra early to add working out back into my schedule. So far it’s been going really good and I hope I can keep up with it. There has been some talk of changing our work schedule (currently the hours are 7am-5pm (never ends up being 5) with a 1.5 hour break for lunch from 12:30 (1pm more like) until 2)- either we would have a half an hour longer lunch and finish later- to allow time for the temp to cool off so the horses don’t get too warm in their rugs. The other option is to start at 6am and work straight until 1pm with no morning break and then break for the afternoon until 4 to feed and put rugs on. Or, keep it the same. No decisions have been made yet, I think we’re going to try out the different options and go from there. Either way, we’re still working long hours 6 days a week and getting paid the same amount ($250 a week (works out to under $5 an hour))- so I don’t really care what the time is.

Today has been full of de-cobwebbing. All the houses, and stables have to be dewebbed as we are having some pest control people come in to spray, which will apparently keep bugs/spiders away. We’ll see how well it works. They only took 6 horses to the Northland show this weekend, so three of us stayed home to manage the farm. Along with our pet rabbit, Mopsy.

Here are some pictures from a recent venture to the ocean side!