We're Baaaaaaack!

The lovely house and barn at Shag Hill.

 February 1 is a day much anticipated at Blue Clover Eventing....it's the day that we officially roll out of Davidsonville MD at some ungodly hour of the morning with a flotilla of trailers to relocate to the eventing mecca that is Aiken! I won't even try to pretend that the days leading up to February 1 are fun or painless; but at the end of the day I think everyone agrees all of the freaking out and running around is completely justified and in fact, we have already signed ourselves back up for Aiken 2014.

Nothing like a truck stop sunrise

But let's not get too ahead of ourselves. We just barely unpacked the 13 horses and 2 dogs that we brought with us to join my dogless twin Holly Payne and forever Aiken accomplice. For whatever reason, Samantha keeps inviting us back to her amazing Shag Hill Farm located in Hatchaway Bridge Farms. Trisha and Kathy, head grooms and lifelines for Holly and I, picked up the routine as though we had never left last April! Horses were turned out frolicking in the sand and sun, well some were frolicking some knew they were being watched like hawks and frolicking would result in a loss of turn out privileges! In all seriousness, however, my horses are soooo happy in Aiken, which makes me very happy! And why would they not be? We have literally hundreds of acres to ride on, including our amazing field of dreams which Winston thoroughly enjoyed jumping on this afternoon. Our barn is over the top in creature comforts, and we have outside stalls so our ponies can have fun in the sun all day every day.

Winston's first jump school in Aiken.

 I've already done my most favorite trot down Fox Pond Road, I survived passing the miniature burros and spotted ponies and enjoyed the company of a fox hunter in town from Millbrook and we spent the entire time talking about my best friends chasing coyote in Arizona - proving the point that it is a small world after all! I've been cross country schooling - twice in fact - and had a whirlwind show for sales (which reminds me to put in a plug for all of our cool sales horses, check them out here). And it's been how many days since we got into town?! Just a few more days until we compete for the first time at Paradise, let the games begin!

 It is a lot of fun having new horses and people with us this year. Stacy has heard all about Aiken and we are really excited to get her new Magic Mike horse out into the real world while down here. And she deserves to have the time of her life, she and Trisha are amazing and had all of Blue Clover Eventing organized and packed for our most seamless mass exodus ever! Trisha will be making her 2013 debut at Sporting Days, then it is full speed ahead to the 1* at Virginia come May stay tuned for that adventure! Winston is already busy training for the 2* at Fair Hill this fall, he promises to turn right by then hahahaa. I have my fleet of beginner novice super stars ready and waiting to clean up at Paradise and Sporting Days, let me just warn the competition now! They are piloted by some ace students of mine, and we had a really positive cross country school at Sporting Days just yesterday. Each and every one of the exceed my expectations, and it is just too much fun when we have days like that! And you gotta have fun when you work as hard as we do. We do our best, you know pizza parties and wine while waiting for shippers at midnight; but at the end of the day we are some pretty lucky people and we know it. Can't wait for all of our other people to get down here and join in on the festivities!