Horsemanship for Health

We choose not to use chemicals on our fields and manage the land as naturally as possible. Most of the time, it’s pretty low maintenance: we simply let the horses and ponies roam all over the five acres or so. We don’t section off areas with tape. We don’t have stables. We keep the hedges high on purpose. We want our small herd to have as much browsing and meandering space as possible.

Arabian horses and Dartmoor ponies are very compatible field companions. Both breeds evolved in harsh conditions; both travel long distances in search of food and water and both breeds have neat, tough feet that do well barefoot. As a herd, our group are, like their home, pretty low maintenance compared to many horses kept at traditional livery.

Dartmoor ponies are known as useful conservation grazers. They will eat bracken, gorse and scrubby dry grass. They will eat thistle heads, nettles and brambles. They will eat cars if you carelessly leave them in the field. The one thing – two things actually- our ponies will not eat are docks and burdock. The resident goats – who were taken in as live-in weeders – do not earn their keep. They do not want to eat docks or burdock; why should they when they have perfectly good goat muesli delivered to their bowls every morning.

So every year the docks and burdock have a wild coming out party in our fields and no one stops them. We watch them grow loud and unruly. Sometimes we chop their heads off when they get too big for their roots. Sometimes we dig them up (well, Jo does the digging with a ragwort fork and a lot of effort – I mean a lot) and the docks don’t care. They grow, they change colour and they create their own little ecosystem. They form a cunning camouflage corridor for our resident fox which uses them like a convenient alley.

The docks have gone! The fox’s cover has been exposed! These were my thoughts when I arrived at the fields this afternoon to see the whole space swiped clean. The rolling and harrowing added the finishing polish. It looked like less like a hunting hangout for wildlife with business to attend to and more like a empty village hall with a nice sign outside inviting people in for tea. ‘Recreational,’ was Lindsey’s word.

It sounds as if I miss the docks. I don’t. I know they will be back next year – probably sooner if we get more rain – I really like having them swiped, though. It is such a thrill to see the fields so clear and empty and filled with possibility. It feels like a fresh start. A new beginning.

The ponies came back to a new nude landscape. Tinker looked around and scanned the length of the field searching for something new to investigate. Eventually she settled on the tyre, which had been moved by the tractors and put her nose into it, knowing in that way that animals built for survival know, that the hole in the centre would be untouched. She glanced round for her companion who was already eyeing the haynet, knowing that the swiping meant not only less cover, but less to eat.

I watched them scan, settle and simply adapt to the new surroundings. I noticed how quickly they adjusted to change. How easy it is for them to know what to do in every moment.

As our landscape changes, how easy is it for us to adapt? How will we return to the new open space? With trepidation or with the knowledge that we will know what to do when we get there?