February, 2005 Report

We are headed for a March that will rival January in activity.

The horses are doing well, holding their weight with the supplemental pasture forage. Having seen a small portion of unburned forest during a recent farm tour, it's more obvious than ever that the Preserve suffered very heavy damage from the two fires last year, the subsequent drought and then two hurricanes.

After three months of no rain we had three good soaking days over the weekend of Feb. 28 and things look greener already. Let's hope the rains continue.

We received our first shipment of scrap lumber from the Winding Bay Development and have been promised more. We have also been given permission to move a container from the farm to the Preserve and once we engineer the move and move our now three containers into final position we will be able to start building proper quarters for the security men.

The men have nearly completed a low stone wall across a big swamp, the wall will carry the support posts for the electric fence for the stallion area. Completion of the wall should coincide with arrival of the bulldozer to push the firebreak/outer fence line for the stallion area. In a few more weeks we should be very, very busy running fence and building quarters.

In the meantime the mares and Stallion Sirius continue to utilize the entire area provided for them. They spend time in the supplemental pasture (which is moved weekly), often travel through the meadow area that was a former illegal farmlet and have been seen at the far ends of the Preserve. Stallion Sirius took off for a week, was seen among the other stallions. We have no idea how he gets out (which he's done before) because when he returned he obviously wanted back in but would not cross the temporarily downed fence line until it was completely covered over with brush and invisible. He was given a royal welcome by Mare Acamar and her filly Mare Alnitak. Mare Bellatrix II attacked him and tried to bite a chunk out of his rump. He was ignored by the others. Then all was peaceful again.

 

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