I recently posted a couple of questions to my Instagram story along the lines of “how can I serve you?” and “if we were to hang out for a day, what would we do and what would we talk about?” And obviously, most of the responses were “we would go riding and you would take photos” (you guys are great!) but I also got quite a few responses like, “I would like to talk about how you own horses and work away from home and make time for everything and not starve.”
Well, that’s fair.
Let me preface this post by (hopefully) stating the obvious: we are not rich. At least, not monetarily.
I think it all comes down to priorities. We have made owning horses a priority in our lives. The opportunity cost of that is that we have not made things like vacations and new vehicles a priority in our lives.
Anyway, here’s what our M-F generally looks like:
5:00 wake up, Kelly gets ready for work, I feed critters then get myself ready for work and use any remaining time to work on photography/blog or clean the house
5:30 Kelly leaves for work
7:00 I leave for work
All day long: dogs and Piper party in the house, Annie causes trouble outside
6:00: I get home from work, Kelly varies but he’s usually home around the same time. We drop our stuff in the house and head out to feed together, play some fetch, give some lovins to everyone. In the Summer months we have time to ride a little before dark, but as the seasons change that’s just not possible.
6:30 – 7:00-ish: head inside, get supper started, dishes/laundry as needed, talk to Piper about her day, visit with each other, maybe have time to sit on the couch for a few minutes
8:30: bed
Sometime after I fall asleep: Kelly sneaks off to play on the computer because he’s not an old person like me and he’s not sleepy yet.
M-F isn’t ideal, we don’t get to spend the time we wish we could with everyone and that stinks. But you know what? Nobody’s suffering because we have to work away from home. Everyone is well taken care of, everyone is well loved, everyone is pretty dang happy.
If we want (or need) to go somewhere for a weekend, we have to plan around the critters. The dogs have to come with us, depending on where we’re going Piper has to come with us or be set up like a queen in the house, the horses have to be set up with food and water… it’s no easy task.
We try to spend quality time with the horses every weekend, grooming, riding, whatever that may be but sometimes life gets in the way and we have to learn to be okay with that, too. Would we rather be adventuring on horseback every weekend? Heck yes! Is it feasible? Nope.
I know our adventures look pretty dang glamorous and I get a lot of messages saying, “you’re so lucky, I wish I lived there!” but the truth is, we don’t live where we adventure. We have to drive to these awesome places… and I’m talkin’ we drive hours to get to these places. But we’ve made those adventures a priority – when we can afford the fuel and the time away from home, that’s where we prefer to go.
As far as the money side of things, we pay our bills, we feed everyone (including ourselves, but barely) and we hustle our behinds off. We don’t fly to exotic places for vacation, we don’t buy new vehicles (both our pickups are 2010 models, my commuter car is a 2001). We eat a lot of burger because we have access to it through both of our families, when we work cows we are often paid in hay, and we use my photography income for horse-related expenses (farrier and hay).
It’s not glamorous, and it’s not easy, but it’s so completely worth it.
One Comment
As for rich, it depends on how you look at it.☺ You might not have a lot of money, what most people consider rich, but you have animals that you want and love. Enjoying all the critters you have and loving all them to the extent that you are working hard and taking great care of them. Seeing how happy they are and feeling that happiness as well to me is being rich. Keep up the great hard work.😊
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