The Slower Road

Here in Lexington, it started raining on Sunday. It rained off and on all day and then steadily throughout the night. And it’s been raining all day today (Monday), and it’s supposed to continue raining through at least tomorrow, if not tomorrow night. Then, on Wednesday, we might get a little, um, snow.

I took these two photos back in February of this year, and you may have already seen them here on the blog. But the low spot where the KY Horse Park’s (normally dry) creekbed runs between several paddocks has a tendency to turn into a lake after heavy rain … and it looked just like this again earlier today.

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Everything here at the Horse Park that wasn’t already a wide, flowing creek or a lake by this morning was MUD. I can only imagine what it’ll all look like by tomorrow!

We sure do wish we could send some of this rain to our many CAA friends who haven’t had enough of it lately.

To any U.S. readers who are seeing this on Thursday: Happy Thanksgiving!

Today, of course, is about two things: giving thanks and food.

Here in Lexington, we’re blessed with a fabulous weekly farmers’ market, wonderful local farmers, and an abundance of local restaurants that serve delicious (and, often, locally sourced) food. If you like eating food when it’s in season and at its most delicious, it’s both easy and rewarding to eat and shop locally here in the Bluegrass.

One of our favorite local stores, where we can get all kinds of good food and good ingredients, both delicious and healthy, is the Good Foods Market & Cafe. Stella Parks, a (splendid) pastry chef and food blogger, wrote a great blog post on Good Foods, which you can read here.

In honor of the day, I’d like to take a moment to thank a few of our favorite local farmers and local businesses for the delicious, healthy food they offer:

Elmwood Stock Farm, for their fabulous vegetables, berries (including the world’s best strawberries), salsa, eggs, beef, chicken, turkey, lamb, and heritage-breed turkeys;

Henkle’s Herbs and Heirlooms for their wide variety of delicious heirloom tomatoes, and Velvet’s salsa fresca and homemade chicken salad;

Bleugrass Chevre for the best-ever goats’ milk cheese; and

Reed Valley Orchard for their stunning assortment of amazing apples, blackberries, and pears.

And there are others, too: producers of fresh, homemade pasta; irresistable chocolate truffles; delicious homemade scones; milk that’s better than any other you’ve tried; wonderful loaves of hearty, old-world-style breads; and more.

Our thanks to all of you!

… and Happy Eating!!

A couple of weeks ago, a group of people and their animals traveled all the way from Maine to spend several days at the Kentucky Horse Park, doing demos, interacting with Horse Park visitors, and even pulling the park’s trolley (um, that was the animals, not the people).

On one of their rehearsal days, I walked over to where they would be doing all their demonstrations and was lucky enough to see all eight pairs of oxen — sixteen total — hitched to the enormous set of logging wheels that had been delivered to the Horse Park back in September. That was quite a sight, I must say (but, sadly, I had walked out of the office without my camera).

I went back later in the week to see several of the teams hanging out with Horse Park visitors and doing some plowing demonstrations.

And what did I (and others) learn about oxen?

Oxen start their lives as “working cattle” — young steers (neutered males), which are handled and trained from their earliest days. When they’re four years old, these working cattle are considered oxen.

Oxen can be almost any breed (or cross) and size of cattle. The spotted ones you’ll see below are Ayrshire.

When they’re pulling a load (such as the cart or the sled shown below), the pole goes through the ring hanging from the bottom of the yoke, and a pin helps to hold the pole in place. 

I hope you enjoy the photos of these beautiful animals.

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