Horses for Future Horses For Future

This is part 2 of my conversation with Marla Foreman. Marla Foreman is a veterinarian, a horse trainer and a riding instructor. She’s also a good friend so it was fun for us to get together for a Horses for Future podcast. I particularly wanted to interview Marla because she grew up on a ranch in New Mexico. From there she moved to Washington state, but not to the temperate coastal area. She lived on the other side of the state where rain was scarce and the amount of land she had was a mere postage stamp compared to the acreage she grew up on in New Mexico. And now she’s living on the east coast near Boston.

So she’s learned how to manage horses in very different climates, and very different acreage. What she has learned is smart design. The goal is healthy horses and healthy pastures. Growing up in New Mexico she saw how well horses maintained themselves when they could move. How to you encourage movement on smaller acreage? And how do you design your farm so you are spending your time enjoying your horses and not just doing chores? The answer is smart design. Hopefully, you’ll get some ideas for your own farm so you can meet everyone’s needs well - yours, the horses, and the land you care for.

Horse people can make a difference in the climate change crisis. Together we’re learning how.

Marla Foreman is a veterinarian, a horse trainer and a riding instructor. She’s also a good friend so it was fun for us to get together for a Horses for Future podcast. I particularly wanted to interview Marla because she grew up on a ranch in New Mexico. From there she moved to Washington state, but not to the temperate coastal area. She lived on the other side of the state where rain was scarce and the amount of land she had was a mere postage stamp compared to the acreage she grew up on in New Mexico. And now she’s living on the east coast near Boston.

So she’s learned how to manage horses in very different climates and that’s what I wanted to ask her about - that and the O2 composter she had in Washington state. It turns out it doesn’t matter where you are living - the concepts that guide your decisions around pasture management and horse care are the same no matter how much or how little rain you get, or how many acres you have.

We begin in New Mexico and travel with Marla through years of experience managing horses. Included in the conversation is a discussion of O2 composters.

It’s been a summer filled with swallows for me. It’s also been a summer in which I experienced my own climate change disaster. Listen to the podcast to discover the connection.

This is part 3 of my conversation with Navona Gallegos. We are talking about compost. Unless you keep your horses out on pasture 24/7 12 months out of the year, you have a manure pile. So what can you do with all that manure to help build up beautiful, organic rich soil?

That’s what we’ll be talking about as we explore the Johnson-Su Bioreactor, O2 composters and some composting do’s and don’t’s.

This is Part 2 of my conversation with Navona Gallegos. We begin this episode with a discussion of what happens in the soil when the farmers in my area till their fields in preparation for planting this year’s corn crop. I’m not a farmer. I’m not trying to teach farmers how to farm. That would be like someone who has never ridden telling me how I should ride a horse. But there are things I can learn from this discussion that I will help me with the decisions I make for the land I care for. I hope it does the same for you.

This week I’m visiting with Navona Gallegos. Navona is a rider, an ecologist, and a farmer. She is passionate about soil - not dirt. We’ll discuss the difference in the podcast. She lives in New Mexico, so she’s in a very beautiful landscape but one that is completely different from what I am used to. So I was really looking forward to learning how she manages horses in a climate that is so very different from my own.

We began not with the soil but with horses. Navona grew up on a ranch so part of her childhood experience was riding out on the range. But she also fell in love with jumping. She competed in Europe so talk about contrast - ranch raised horse to show horses whose turnout is tiny paddock. That’s the starting point of a conversation that takes us from the high pressure world of show jumping to the role our horses play in connecting us back to the land.