Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Horse (and Goat) Country

The green, green hills of Saratoga horse country
Saratoga Springs is famous for horses, especially this week as the town gears up for the big race called The Travers Stakes this Saturday. That race will attract 30,000 to 40,000 really rowdy fans, making the town for us townies feel pretty crowded. Which it already is. So my husband and I headed out of town yesterday, to park the car on a country road and walk a mile or so under high blue skies among green hills and apple orchards and -- yes -- horse farms.


We saw many beautiful thoroughbred mares and foals. We would stand at the fence and mom would come right up for a pat, while baby kept a shy distance.



Maybe we should have picked one of these ripening apples to tempt the foals. But maybe green apples give horses stomach aches, too. Anyway, we didn't. The apples belonged to Stetkar's Orchard.


As we walked by one beautiful farm called River Run, we looked for a goat that usually stands on a cart in the middle of a pasture and found him instead on a bench near the fence.

Hello Billy, we said, how come you're not on your cart today?


Okay, said Billy, I'm on my way.


And up he went to stand on his cart. Isn't he a picture?

3 comments:

Lindsey said...

Haha what an awesome goat! Not only do I love birds, but also animals like goats, llamas, alpacas, and sheep.

That apple looks almost good enough to eat!

Jacqueline Donnelly said...

Thanks, Lindsey. That goat was awesome. As soon as I asked him about the cart, he seemed to say, oh, okay,why not? and walked right over to the cart and climbed on. I could hardly believe my eyes.

Lindsey said...

Haha that just makes my day. I think goats are smarter than most people think, your goat buddy knew just want you wanted!