3 horses, 5 chickens, 5 cats, 1 dog, 2 people, a big house with a pool and a generous splash of gin.
Life is good.

Back in Portugal, I had been coordinating with 3 separate farms for stays for after Ethiopia. The first said no after months of maybe, the second failed spectacularly (she’d agree to dates, then change them, the last time angrily so we finally let it go). The third was eventually settled for a month after I returned to Portugal.

When went to pick up our van from the previous farm, who’d been kind enough to store him for us, I talked with my friends there. They were of course curious where I was going next. The woman who came to train the horses there twice a week, and had given me my first riding lesson in 30 years, invited me to come and help out for a few weeks at her new farm near Romeira.

This was nice in all kinds of ways… The farm is small, private and well funded. We got along well and I really liked how she trained horses, which I’d seen at the previous farm. I knew I could learn a lot from her.

And since it was small and just the two of us most of the time, it was easy to coordinate jobs – and personalities! I knew that it would be challenging living in the same house and working together; being together, in each other’s space, practically 24/7; and I felt we’d be able to do it for three weeks, especially since the conditions were so nice!

We had a lot of fun! We looked up dishes to make with the seasonal vegetables, danced around the kitchen making them and laughed a lot over dinner. 

Monika loves to laugh. She’s constantly scrolling thru Instagram jokes and laughs more than any other person I know. It’s infectious. We also both like gin, which was a great social lubricant.

And I finally understood the appeal of the pastel de nata, the famous egg tart… they need cinnamon! Yum!

The pool was also a pleasant addition, though more esthetically, as it was a bit cold for swimming.

This lady was lot’s of fun to play with. She loved playing chase in the riding arena, and wow was she fast!

The barn was compact, well built, clean and well equipped. You can see 2 of the horses here on the left.

And off to the right, here’s the third.

On the far side of the barn, one of the first things that happened, was that a neighbor came and got all of the old horse manure left from the previous owner’s herd. Horse manure is valuable as compost, so it’s often sold by the truckload to local gardeners. This time, the pile was huge, not well placed, and would eventually rot the side of the barn if left there, so it was taken away by the tractor load. That’s a lot of poo. Heh.
This was the second time I’d seen manure piled next to a building and the damage it can do. Here it was minimal, as they’d caught it before the boards had gotten very wet, and suffice to say, piling something that degrading next to something standing does not equal longevity. Entropy wins every time.

While he was there he also took away the new pile, which you’ll see builds up quite quickly.

In taking out the small pile he also accidentally took out this fence post. And hup! Put it back in just as quickly. That’s the trailer full of poo in the back, and the full moon above!

Sometime later, another gentleman came to upgrade the riding arena with nice fencing. As you can see, the poo pile, just left of center, is already sizable.

Another neighbor came to deliver hay. The horses found this delivery quite compelling. And by now the poo pile even has it’s own fence.

All three of them were Arabians, bred by other co-owner of the farm, who worked in Switzerland. Pure-bred Arabians have a reputation for being hot-blooded: nervous and fast, and these were no exception. Above is a common reaction horses have when they’re startled… freezing and looking intently at whatever startled them. These ladies froze mid-chew, jerked up their heads to stare…

…and in the time that it took me to walk up to them they’ve barely moved, still on high alert.
It’s not so unusual for horses to do this every once in a while, but these guys did it several times a day. It was a bit nutty. As a high-strung person who has done a lot of meditating and exercising to stay sane(er), I felt for them. Life is not easy with all of that adrenaline constantly rushing through.

She’s almost starting to chew again, thawing, though they’re still largely on high-alert, tensed, ready to flee…

Until, finally, back to grazing. Shew!

The lead mare, was super grumpy. She had her ears back most of the time. I thought the heart on her nose was a fun contrast. And, like most grumpy beings, once you got to know her and understood how to be with her, she was great fun to be with. She was always clear about what she wanted. Easy.

One weekend, I went and visited Santarem. This is the broad Tejo River running through it, which the rescue dog, Tejo from the previous farm, was named after.

Not long after I did this…
Which cost 400€ to replace. Ouch!
I had backed the bicycles on their trailer into a space before, assumed that I now knew how to do it and so did it quickly. A bit too quickly. Clearly, I didn’t calculate the angle well. I discovered the hard way that the handle bars would go through the back window if I backed the bikes into the fence. S@%t!!
That sucked. It was a bit shocking. There was glass everywhere, and I had damaged my beautiful van, my home! Sorry, Caso!

I was super lucky fixing it though. Monika knew a great garage that was easy to work with. They located the window (which was hard to find) and replaced it, and even managed to get the tinting redone (which was too dark to be legal in Portugal) – all in 4 days! Wow. Except for the money, it was like it hadn’t happened! Though, you can be sure that I am much more careful backing up with the bike trailer on!

Most of my time here was spent pleasantly, working out side, feeding all of the animals, cleaning the stalls everyday (adding to the poo pile), gardening, hanging out with Monika and playing with the animals.

Monika gave me a few lessons on ground-work, namely how to lead horses properly in the style that she’s familiar. Getting these large, powerful animals to follow a human from point A to point B takes training on both sides. It’s not like with people, with whom you can make a verbal agreement; there has to be a set of physical signals that the human knows how to do, that the horse understands; and that takes practice. Remember that you can’t explain to the horse what you’re asking. You have to do it enough that the horse begins to understand what you want – and in our case do it in a way that the horse agrees to.
As I’ve pointed out before, this is often short-cutted by using force and pain, which makes things faster yet much less comfortable for everyone (horse and trainer alike). Using fear to get what I want requires me to be in the energy of fear as well, and it does not make for great relationships.
In any case, there are so many ways to train horse and handler to lead, especially since it is the most performed maneuver – as well as the base for all others, and I enjoyed adding to my tool box.

All in all a wonderful time and we agreed that I would return. We even started to consider me staying long term, helping out in exchange for riding and horse training lessons. If I could find an apartment nearby, this could be a great plan.

In the meantime, I was off to my next engagement in Coruche, about an hour south. See you there!