Gracewood Farm Paso Fino Horses

Refreshing/updating Silky's ground work training while also teaching horsemanship techniques to a student. Silky is Gracewood's 14.2+ hh cream buckskin pleasure trail Paso Fino mare, experienced parade mount, and horsemanship lesson horse.

This is getting serious…

There's a kind of stress that comes with farming that's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't lived it. It's not just the physical work. It's the weight of being responsible for lives that depend entirely on you. Animals that can't advocate for themselves, can't go find food if you come up short, can't understand why their hay is gone. That responsibility sits on your chest every single day. And right now, it feels heavier than it has in a long time.

We recently shared a post about the drought gripping central NC. What we didn't fully emphasize is the scale of what we're all facing: this drought now covers more than 60% of the continental United States. This isn't a local inconvenience. This is a crisis unfolding in slow motion across the country.

In the last three weeks, we've received about 2 inches of rain, twice. The first came as a violent overnight storm, hard and fast, nearly an inch that ran off before the ground could drink it. Two days later, you'd never have known it rained. The second was a slow, steady rain that lasted most of a day and did more good, but even so, central NC sits more than 8 inches below normal rainfall for 2026. You can see it in the pastures. You can see it in the hay fields.

And that's where it gets real.

It's hay season. Our hay source just finished his first cut. Those same fields that gave us nearly 800 square bales and over 60 round bales last year? This year they produced fewer than 400 square bales and less than 20 round bales. Meanwhile, we're still feeding hay like it's February, because the grass simply isn't growing. So now the question haunting us isn't just will there be a second cut and it's what do we do if there isn't?

If the rain doesn't come in the next few weeks, second cut may not happen at all. That means turning to hay sources we don't have relationships with. And that matters more than most people realize.

The hay business runs on loyalty. Hay farmers take care of the people who show up year after year, because that loyalty is earned and trusted. When inventory is thin, and it will be thin everywhere, those loyal buyers come first. If you're a newcomer showing up in a drought year, that hay farmer knows exactly why you're there. He'll take care of his people first. And if he has anything left over for you, it won't be cheap.

This is the part that keeps farmers up at night: not just the drought itself, but the cascading consequences. The uncertainty. The variables we can't control no matter how hard we work, how early we rise, how carefully we plan. We do everything in our power to prepare. We try to be self-sufficient, to get ahead, to build margin into our operations for hard times. But a drought like this doesn't care about your preparations. It just comes.

So we watch the sky. We check the forecast, then check it again. We pray harder than we'd probably admit. And we'd welcome, genuinely and gratefully, the thing we usually grumble about: mud-soaked boots, wet animals, days too soggy to get anything done outside. We'd take all of it without complaint.

Because if things don't turn around by mid-July, getting through summer stops being the problem. The problem becomes: where do we find enough hay to keep our animals alive through winter?

This is more than stress. This is more than inconvenience. This is dire, and it's not just us. NC farmers aren't the only ones fighting this, which means the hay will be scarce everywhere, for everyone, all at once.

Pray for rain. Pray for the farmers growing it. Pray for the farmers who need it.

Shedding what no longer fits… and choosing forward motion. 2026 is calling and I’m finally ready to answer. #NewYearEnergy #genxwoman #2026Ready

For Christmas: orchard grass hay, 2nd cutting. Horses love it!

Memory: Mom, Marietta with 3 day dun c**t Regalo. Regalo just celebrated his 9th birthday 12/22/25!

A sad story today, but one that trail riders need to consider. With the advent of "multi-use" trails, more and more horses are endangered by mountain bikers who are not aware of the intense fear their equipment can induce. Horses are skittish prey animals; their brains cannot be expected to calmly accept a group of mountain bikes flying through the air around a blind curve toward them. Last week, a horseback rider in Massachusetts was severely injured and her horse had to be euthanized after a mountain bike spooked him. The woman on horseback was dragged, then had to crawl for 30 minutes to find help. Her left ankle and right knee are shattered. Her horse ran away with life-threatening injuries and was euthanized while his owner was still in the hospital. And the cyclist? He left the scene, refusing to identify himself and offering no help to horse or rider. He didn't even bother to call for emergency assistance.

If you ride trails, beware. Wear bright colors; I even have a large T-shirt that says in huge letters, "SLOW DOWN." Report any improper incident to authorities as soon as you can, even if you and your horse are not harmed--we need to build awareness of the equestrian danger of multi-use trails. Encourage trail leaders in your region to lobby for equestrian-only riding paths. Tell your mountain biking friends about these dangers and encourage them to stop for all horses and riders until given a cue by the rider to proceed.

Can horses be taught to accept mountain bikes on trails? To a certain extent, yes--at slow speeds, approaching from the side, easily visible from a distance. But even that level of training will require a lot of time and money; further, certain breeds will be more amenable to it than others. And from an ethical standpoint, maybe a prey animal should not be trained to ignore that flashing neon sign in his brain that says "RUN!" We wouldn't think it correct to train a dog to stand still in the center of a fire, would we?