Thursday, December 3, 2009

Welcome Home Maude!



Yesterday we got to go and pick up Maude. For those of you that don’t know, Maude is my 3 year old mule. Although I have ridden her a few times she was not actually “broke,” so she has been with the Amish since November 1st for training. We were pretty excited to go get her back, especially BJ, I think he has mentioned her daily since she has been gone! The Amish village is pretty cool, they live just like we did 150 years ago, with no running water or electricity, they travel by horse and buggy and do all of their farming with teams of draft horses. The man who trained Maude has 14 kids! There is no way to contact them to let them know you are coming so when we got there, Maude was not there. One of the boys had ridden her to work at a saw mill about 5 miles from their house. We loaded up a replacement horse and another son took us to the sawmill to swap horses so the boy would have transportation home after work! When we got there Maude was tied in a barn and didn’t seem to recognize us. We loaded her in the trailer and took the amish boy back and headed home with Maude. When we turned her out with Rosie and Blaze, those two went crazy, running and bucking and Maude just wanted to eat… She hasn’t had anything but hay for the last 30 days! Rosie pretty much ignores Maude and Blaze is trying to bully her so he can have second in the pecking order. He did the exact same thing when we first got Maude and it didn’t work out so well for him then and I don’t expect that it will last too long this time either! Maude does seem much, much more calm! Hopefully we will get a day with decent weather so I can ride her and see how she does!
This is them acting like fools after we put Maude back in with them!

They gather their corn into these bundles, then go back out with a horse drawn wagon and pick them up.

This is an auction house where they bring their produce to sell to the public.

This is a typical Amish home, they are all built exactly the same, white with a green roof.

This is an Amish schoolhouse, notice the kids have their horses tied outside waiting for them!


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