Mule

Satin in the foreground, SNL in the background.

Two pictures above taken at Heavy's BBQ on Saturday night.

A few months ago, our family made the drive to Madison, GA to visit the Sowhatchett Mule Farm. When Merlin died at the beginning of the Summer there were rumblings of whether or not we should dive back into the equine world. We adopted Merlin when we took over the farm, and although we were happy to have a retirement age horse around, keeping us company, we had never really talked about what we would do once Merlin wasn't with us anymore. We couldn't foresee how we'd feel about the back pasture being empty. Once faced with an overgrown field, empty feed buckets, and no horse around the "horse crossing" sign it was clear that this was a hole that we should attempt to fill. My pop, brilliant and outside the box thinker that he is, went on an investigation of sorts. What did his snooping around dig up? Mules. An animal that I was only vaguely familiar with before their existence on this farm became a possibility, are kind of unbelievable animals. I won't go into all of the ins and outs of muledom, but the basics are: a mule is a cross between a male donkey and a female horse. A mule has the vigor and strength of the horse, but the sure footedness, patience, endurance, and smarts of the donkey. If you don't believe me just look into a little book called "The Natural Superiority of Mules". For centuries these animals were an extremely large part of the farming culture in this country, but were eventually phased out of modern farming, in the middle of the last century, with the invention of the tractor. They are still used today by the Amish, the Army, and a few other smaller alternative farms.

Getting to the point, our family fell in love with mules, and the Sowhatchett Mule Farm, and for the past few months we've been working on repairing all of our fences and our handling skills, so that we could provide a good home for our very own mules. On Saturday we took delivery of Satin (her full name is Chief White Cloud's Satin) and Saturday Night Live. Never there was a finer looking pair. I'm sure i'll have more pictures to post on my Flickr as the weeks go by. Who knew? Mules are amazing.