Message from your President:

Spring may be just around the corner and the new leaves are coming out on the oak trees, but this one-day hot and one-day cold weather is terrible. I have both my heavy jackets and light jackets all over the house, not sure which one I will need. And my electric blanket is still on the bed and will be until I thaw out; hopefully by May!

We had a fabulous Valentine’s campout and special dinner by Sue Michel. Tons of food and a good group of riders. I think we had 24 for dinner. The entire weekend was a fun one with rain one evening that was enough to keep the dust down. I hid a bunch of painted rocks for a scavenger hunt and the winner was Dave Morris finding 18 rocks including the special rock; a yellow one with leather boots on it. Libby McDermott came in second finding 15 rocks. I am not sure she actually found all of them as much as she “mooched” some from others! At least it kept folks busy for a short period of time. Saturday evening saw us all at The Cove Pub for a great dinner and lots of fun. It was a great campout and Sue stated she wants to make it an annual event. We thank Andy and Sue for their hospitality.

We did not have a speaker at our Feb. meeting but we did have a guest, Karen Lindeman, CEO of Horse Girl USA. She has a line of shirts and tops with UV protection that will be great for summer riding.  

We had a mid-week day ride on Feb. 20 at Ross Prairie with Nancy Cloos as our leader. We had 11 on that ride, rode for 2 hours and had lunch. Feb. 22 was a Camp Boggy Creek family weekend and we had a good turnout of members; Lisa Wood, Ron Smith, Becky Sheryak, Louise Harting and Jerry Harrington. Thanks for supporting this cause. Our next family weekend will be March 28. Please come and help if you can. 

We had a board meeting on Feb. 25 at Gator’s Grill and discussed several items. For our banquet we will look at 2 places – Tillies new place in Eustis and the Eustis community center. Will report on them later on. After some discussion, the board voted not to offer a scholarship this next year. We have not had a lot of response over the years to it and did not have a lot of kids going specifically into equine fields. We agreed to offer $300 to Camp Boggy Creek for their summer needs. And we are changing up our year end awards just a bit. 

Our March meeting will be on March 5th and will feature very special guest speakers. I call them the Three Wise Men; in the form of Jerry Harrington, Jeff Gregory and Ron Smith. They will each speak for about 15 minutes on pertinent topics; Jerry will talk about hornets and yellow jackets that are in the ground, sometimes on our trails (don’t call them bees!). Jeff will talk about trailer maintenance and Ron will talk about electric hook-ups at campouts and adapters that you should have. Come and listen to what they guys have to say.

And then we have our biggest fundraiser of the year – our annual horsey yard sale on Sat. March 7. We did a great job last year netting over $1,000 thanks to Michelle McWilliams and her helpers. I hope we do that well this year. So, you still have time to go through your barns and tack rooms and part with some of your stuff! And then bring your friends and neighbors out on Saturday and shop!

We will camp at Fechtel Mar. 13-15 and then on Saturday March 21 we will have a Memorial Ride for Bud Jenkins and Judy Goodroe. This will be a time for all to come out and ride with the spirit of these two who have recently left us. We will ride at the new Ocklawaha Prairie trail head for a couple of hours. We are asking for a minimum donation of $10 for this ride and lunch will be provided. All proceeds will go to Bud’s church, Ride for Jesus in Moss Bluff. Please come on out and support this ride.  WE MUST HAVE RSVP’S FOR THIS RIDE SO LET KAREN OR MICHELLE KNOW THAT YOU WILL BE ATTENDING.