A Whopping Year so far at TCTC

WE DID IT!

INVALUABLE, essential. supporters of TCTC, Antonio Gonzalez (L), and Santiago Plancarte (R) with Walt after a VERY LONG day catching up on TCTC Projects! These guys NEVER get enough kudos for their amazing contributions to TCTC’s daily load! Nothing stops them…they are here 6 days/week, rain/shine/snow, even when their lives are in turmoil and most people wouldn’t make it. They’ve “made” it for nearly 20 years!

LIFE  hit HARD and turned into Home Runs!  New People, Old People, Different People.  So many helping the horses, helping friends, helping us helping strangers, and EACH OTHER…through COVID, family trauma & losses; work, growth…months of monumental SUPPORT.

THANK YOU!  We could not be here for our horses, helping others, WITHOUT ALL OF YOU!  WITH YOU, we MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Here are some moments we’d like to SHARE…with more coming right up…

Everyone welcome, being themselves…offering QUALITY, RESILIENCE, RESPONSIBILITY,  RESPECT, MUTUALITY, EFFICIENCY, ENGENUITY, and most of all…their TIME, LOVE and FREEDOM to enjoy TCTC’s Mission…

 

Amanda Zeigler catches Eva’s “effervescent” moment enjoying the sun on a busy, unexpectedly sunny day (after record winter rainfall)

 

GEORGIE makes the rounds. TEDDY loves saying “HI!”

 

SHEDDING SEASON BEGINS EARLY in 2022!

Our new Assistant Barn Managers-in-Training, Eva and Olive, start the big job of keeping hair contained and out where wildlife can find it for nesting, after HOURS of grooming and sweeping/picking it up (because it STICKS to our mats in grooming areas when they’re damp from all the rain!) and it must NOT be in our barns, stalls or corrals, where it could cause choking if ingested by a curious or playful horse!

 

STAINING not quite finished…on the new Quarantine Area built by volunteers just in time for “Dreamer” who arrives, happy to be at her “forever home” after a 2400+ mile haul from back east.

 

TEDDY’s DONATED SADDLE…after careful evaluation to confirm it fit him just right, gets its stirrup skirts cut back and shortened straps for smaller riders, by artisan saddler and former bull riding champion, L.P. Streifel of Vancouver, WA, who was most generous in his time and labor on our program’s behalf.

 

SAFETY GEAR ON…for Benjamin to clear TCTC’s fence lines and trail system! Oregon’s native blackberries (yummy for all species!) and nettles THRIVE here, growing wild and engulfing everything within weeks! The maintained trails provide sanctuary to people, horses and clear passage for wildlife, walkers, riders or traversing, up, down, and across the stream at the bottom of the deep ravine’s slopes harboring massive, entrenched trees which provide sanctuary and numerous habitats and ecosystems for plants (including wildflowers like Trillium, which thrive only in old-growth forests); birds (including eagles, 4 species of owls and innumerable “tweeties”), animals, and astounding varieties of fungi, lichens and mosses…a virtual mecca of healthy, earthy overgrown biomass, flora and fauna…

 

TEAMING UP…Benjamin, joined by his sister, Elenore, clean TCTC’s stream bed and pond to replant lily pads and stock “Gambusia” mosquito fish who look like brown one-inch guppies or small minnows, breed well, and thrive eating duck weed and equine disease-carrying mosquito larvae to provide natural control, along with the fly predator wasps, bats and birds harbored here, who consume most of our insect pests.  (Gambusia are provided to TCTC by Clackamas Co. Vector Control.)

 

MYRIAD MUCK RAKES…turn an arduous “Poop Scoop Party” of pasture mucking into an easy collaborative event before horses are removed for fertilized spring grasses to sprout, mature, and grow to an optimum 6″ for horse grazing, especially with enough variety in size (thanks to WILCO’s 4-H Discount) for kids all sizes to participate! A sponsored “Make-Your-Own-Sundae” ice cream party follows this labor of love, performed knowing that they have helped keep TCTC’s pastures, and herd, healthy and safer for the horses!

 

SPECIAL DELIVERY…Ed Fritzler, TCTC’s neighboring farmer/mechanic/fabricator and farm equipment “guru” restores TCTC’s donated antique (70-year-old) manure spreader so it can be used to redistribute and repurpose TCTC’s “black gold” fertilizer into incredible soil for our, and several neighbors’, pastures and gardens through this fall and winter.

 

STAY TUNED…for the many more photos, videos, and stories to come next, illustrating more wonderful work our TCTC youth and families have performed for those seeking sanctuary and our resident senior therapy horses over spring and summer. They give tremendously, to everyone, each day spent here helping our equine family’s “Forever Home”…

 

 

RAINBOW BORN OVER LUCKY’S STALL Photo by: Clara Harris

 

 

 

 

 

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