The Great Migration
Well folks, it was alluded a while back that my clan of companions and I were only stopping in Southern New Hampshire for a time longer before we were to launch off into the next chapter of life - the time is now, and the launch has begun!
POD pickup day!
The menagerie and I are headed to the Carolinas, taking a jump dreamed of for a few decades now.
On Tuesday - the coldest day of the winter so far, with wind chill putting us in the negatives - my POD was locked and loaded onto a flatbed and taken off to Boston to ship south. It was the sort of day that made me instantly regret walking outside, which I did anyway to greet the POD pickup person. By the time I was back inside, my toes hadn’t been heard from in weeks, and my face was considering an annexation.
The next order of business, of course, are Factor and Cruz.
Let me pause here to say that I am…fiercely independent about my capabilities as a person. While it has certainly been my life’s challenge to learn to accept help from and rely on others, I am not one to shy away from a challenge when it’s something I involve myself with.
Lyrical cat, supervising the packing process
For example, shipping two horses? No problem. Shipping two horses almost 900 miles? With my other animals? With the additional stress of packing and ensuring everything I needed was all in a row? Ok, now I’m starting to feel less confident in wanting to take on the horse shipping part… After all, put on your own oxygen mask first, before helping others.
So, with the help of Facebook, I was able to find Twisted Roots Shipping, who was able to not only accommodate my two horses, they also had space for tack trunks and grain in the mid-tack, which cleared up a ton of space when planning my pack. Despite my desire to “be capable” and ship my horses, I cannot express how much peace of mind it gives me to send them with people who do this all the time and are seasoned, long-distance horse travelers.
Multiple times since booking [Twisted Roots], they reached out, helped with further coordination, and have just generally made shipping easy.
Horse luggage waiting at the end of the driveway for the shipper
Originally, the horses were scheduled to ship on Friday, driving through the night, then staying for a day and night in Virginia, before continuing to be delivered in Gastonia on Sunday. Well, Mother Nature has been expressing her displeasure at the plans, and saw fit to play a bit of an April Fool’s trick on me (early, but she’s above such mortal timeline restrictions) by sending a wintery storm into the Charlotte area for Sunday.
Fortunately, the professionals were on top of it - the horses were seen by the vet Wednesday for health certificates, which were fortunately able to be rushed after Twisted Roots contacted me Wednesday night to see if a Thursday pickup was at all possible. It took a little hustle to make the timeline, but ultimately everything was ready for them when they showed up and with the help of the driver and co-pilot, the horses made it down the driveway, onto the trailer with no problems.
All aboard! Factor & Cruz depart New Hampshire, on the Southbound trailer to North Carolina.
I’ve been getting updates on the horses’ travel since they left, which definitely makes it easier to have them in someone else’s care. They went as far as Virginia on Thursday night, where the two horses got to offload and sleep in a temporary stay barn overnight, before continuing on for delivery to our new farm on Friday.
Without horses to keep my afternoons occupied, my world feels so suddenly free of time! The cats and the dog are definitely enjoying the extra scritches… in between packing up the final pieces of my room and workstation.