There’s a book in the Little House on the Prairie series called The Long Winter, and I sympathise.
To be fair, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Long Winter was seven months of pretty much non-stop blizzards, near starvation and burning hay for warmth, so maybe I shouldn’t be moaning about seven weeks of rain – but it hasn’t been fun.
I don’t think January and February would be in many people’s top 10 months of the year for owning horses but this year they seem to have been particularly hideous. At least where I am, we had a good autumn; pretty dry and the grass held out, which was lucky given our hay yield, and until Christmas, we’d got off fairly lightly. Then it was as if January said “Hold my beer”, and it’s been miserable ever since.
I haven’t had it as bad as some; H&H’s Becky Murray hasn’t had a day without rain in Aberdeenshire since 28 December, whereas last Thursday in Kent there were definitely a few hours when it wasn’t entirely raining.
But I’m sick of it. It feels as if there has never been anything but wet, grey winter; remember that summer of 2018 when the average temperature was about 36C and the ground was cracking open, desperate for moisture? Me neither.
What I do remember is ploughing through a foot of mud, in wellies I paid over £100 for last February but had developed large splits by January, unable to see anything because the light from my headtorch reflects perfectly off the thickly falling sleet, trying to find the horses sheltering under the trees furthest from the gate.
I remember feeling the rain seeping through my coat, which I then have to hang up over a heater when I get home, stinking out the house, only to find when I put it on next morning that the cuffs are still nastily damp – not that it makes much difference because I know I’ll be drenched again within five minutes of going outside.
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There’s the challenge of trying to stay upright in calf-deep mud, trying to get the headcollar on my six-month-old colt who would rather try to eat it, or of trying to find somewhere in their field to put the three-year-olds’ hay that isn’t actually under water. I’ve never had to pay as much as I am at the moment for feed, hay and everything else they need, I’ve had huge vet bills, and I’m not sure my superstar mare is going to jump again.
And it doesn’t look like winter has any plans to leave imminently; I tend to check the BBC and Met Office forecasts and believe whichever is better but both seem far too keen on those nasty raindrop symbols. We may have actual sunshine on Saturday but don’t get complacent, it’s sleet and 2C by the early hours of Sunday.
But time goes on. March is only a couple of weeks away; there is light at the end of the tunnel, if not yet when we get to the yard of an evening. And really and truly, what it boils down to is that I’d rather have this; the wet, the mud, the darkness, the work – and the horses – than have none of it. If someone said they’d take over all my equine care for the next six weeks for free, and I could spend that time sitting inside instead, I’d say no thank you. This is what I am and what I do and I couldn’t imagine a life without horses in it. Just horses and less rain would be lovely.
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Eleanor is an experienced journalist who spent over eight years working for local and national newspapers before joining H&H as news editor in March 2016. Passionate about equine welfare and exposing the truth, Eleanor has reported on all aspects of the industry, from Brexit to anti-bullying campaigns, and from dressage rules to mules. Her sport of choice is showjumping, in which she competes her own horses, and she also enjoys reporting at local jumping shows through to international championships.
