Maeve Birch Home

    Tag: Book

    • New Herds, New Discoveries

      It’s been so many weeks since I last posted. I think whatever algorithms drive social media traffic have probably forgotten about me, but oh well. Sometimes things in real life are moving fast and you just don’t have any words that can be shared with a wide audience. That’s fine. I’ve been getting to know…

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    • Fall is Book Reading Season!

      It’s November, and we’ve had chilly weather here on the east coast for the past few days. Soup weather. Cozy blanket weather. Book weather. It’s also time for me to begin thinking about holiday gifts for friends and family. It sneaks up on me every year, and by December I’m always so busy.  If you’re…

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    • Horse Book Dreaming

      The weather here became decidedly autumnal this weekend. Heavy rains and wind from a tropical storm, and nighttime temperatures that convinced the barn to swap horses from night turnout back to day turnout. It feels like book writing weather. I have plans for my next book vaguely in an outline, but am a little nervous…

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    • Books that Influenced Me

      If it hadn’t been for the other horsey memoirs and instructional books out there, I certainly wouldn’t have made it to the relationship I have with horses today. Back when the only thing I did was lessons and trail riding I felt the overwhelming itch to learn everything I could about the link between human…

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    • Need vs Gratitude

      With autumn approaching here in the northern hemisphere, harvest season right around the corner, I tend to get a bit busy. I grow tomatoes, squash, and greenbeans in my suburban yard. Beans need canned, squash needs discovered before it becomes the size of a bus, tomatoes need picked before the next storm or they’ll split.…

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    • Excerpt from the Chapter “Rex: Discipline”

      Rex, unfortunately, was impatient with staying still for long while humans did things to him. Some days he would behave perfectly, and others, he wouldn’t want to do anything. Brushing would elicit small kicks of his back legs and rocking away from the brush. Being on cross ties would make him shake his head and…

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    • Story Snippet: Thoughts on the Herd

      You ask how the horses are. I tell you they’re fine. I brushed Spruce. I was able to stand next to Red today. I speak in terns of progress. Activity. I haven’t told you how peaceful it felt as the cuddly one kept nodding asleep with his nose pressed into my jacket. I haven’t told…

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    • Traveling Around

      The book and I are on vacation this week, wandering through the Appalachian mountains again. I took along a few copies to drop off in various places. If you see my book in the wild, it may be that I left it in a coffee shop somewhere! It feels good to have some time off…

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    • Story Snippets: Flora

      I barely mentioned Flora, the oldest mare at the rescue, in my memoir. Though I didn’t work with her often, Flora was a wonderful dark bay with a generally pleasant personality, aside from a few quirks. She had a terrible fear of clippers, whips, and fly masks, and grumpyness about picking her feet up. She…

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    • Story Snippets: Beating the Rain

      I thought I might make the next few blog posts some small story snippets from my time in Field Board that didn’t quite make it into the memoir. The first is a visit to Red’s field during the early summer, right about this time of year four years ago. I was standing out in the…

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