Harvesting Happiness – Your Guide to Homemade, Hearty, and Healthy Living

Now that we’ve introduced ourselves, let’s take you on a tour of The Vollick Holler and tell you about our daily chores.

On weekdays, Adam wakes up around 5am to go for a bike ride or practice yoga. I sleep in a little later than he does and wake up at 6am. This gives us both a minute to ourselves before we wake Velvet, our 3 year old daughter, up at 6:30am. We used to let Velvet sleep in longer, but she was refusing to nap at Nature School, so we started waking her up earlier. It’s a schedule that works great for us and Miss Judy, her Nature School guide who we love!

After we fix ourselves a cup of coffee (Adam’s really into this mushroom coffee substitute right now), I head out to the barn to throw the horses some hay.

6:30 am: Velvet wakes up. One of us will tend to her needs and the other will go feed the animals.

In the spring, summer, and fall, the horses live outside 24/7 for the most part. In the wintertime, we bring them inside when the sun sets so we don’t have any slip and fall accidents out there when we’re all asleep. (How we manage the horses during the winter will definitely be a future blog post! Last winter was brutal.) I like to let the horses in their stalls every morning to eat, so I can do a wellness check on everyone. Before I let everyone in (they are good boys and walk right to their stalls when I open up the pasture gate) I throw hay in their stalls and refresh their water buckets. Another reason I like to bring them inside and separate them at mealtime is so I can be sure our 21 year old senior horse, Chuckie, is allowed to finish all of his food in peace. My spunky heart horse, Jonesy, and Velvet’s miniature horse, Play-Doh, love to bully Chuckie and steal his food so we keep them separated.