I got the ginger chicken started and moved on to the 45 minute simmering process.  Too long to hang out, but usually too short to ride.  But it was a fabulous fall day and we have horses (and riders!) that need to get foxhunting fit.  So hubby and I went out, ran a brush over the pretty-clean-already horses, picked hooves, tacked up and still had 39 minutes to ride.  (Ok, maybe we could actually eek out 45 minutes yet, it wasn’t going to spoil supper to have it simmer an extra few minutes)

Ok, this is a winter sunset, but work with me here, it was pretty tonight too.

So, off we went on a hack.  I should be clear that these horses live out at pasture and are moving around all the time.  They don’t require the same warmup that a stalled horse might.  We walked for two minutes and then picked up a nice working trot for about half a mile of field edges, a bit of gravel road, over a bridge and into the CRP for a nice long canter.  What a spectacular sunset, all the better when viewed from the back of a horse. We continued on our 2.5 mile loop, trotted toward home, walked the last bit, scrubbed their faces with the rubber scrubbie, gave them a thank you pat and cookie, turned them out and went in for supper.

So, their tails weren’t perfect today and we didn’t clean the tack at the end. No we didn’t have them inspection-clean.  Would we be this cavalier every day?  Um, not so much.  Was it infinitely better than watching Cash Cab while we waited for the chicken to cook?  You betcha.