Is anyone watching Plantation?

[Divine_Comedy]

@bornfreenowexpensive

Yes it was hot (had been cool earlier in the week) and unusually dry. It’s normally lush green this time of year.

This might have been true for a long time, but I’ve been coming to PF every year (riding or spectating) since 2013 and most years have been hot or at minimum warm and the ground has been hard/needing lots of aeration all save last year’s event.

Morven too has been 50/50…I’ve been recent years where we just barely got enough rain to make the ground good and years when the ground was hard, hard, hard.

Even Fair Hill hasn’t has a truly muddy cross country since at least before 2013…again, I’ve either ridden or spectated since that year. Sometimes it has rained enough to make the ground perfect, and sometimes the ground has been bordering on firm. I would bet that this year they will need to aerate heavily, based on the current long-term forecast.

Setting just events aside, the ground is almost always awful to gallop and do fitness on up and down Area II for the past several year from August through late September and often even early October.

I think there’s some merit to moving the entire fall season (PF-Morven-FH) back 2-3 weeks, since climate change has clearly had an effect up here. I realize that these dates have been in place for forever, but especially with the new 5*, it seems like a good time to re-evaluate if these are really the best times of year for each of these venues. It would also be nice to see GMI folded into the fall season as another option, maybe for those aimed for a November long format. The late summer and early fall dates really seem to do a number on the footing for Area II and we can not only save the horses joints but also the events’ pocketbooks if they could cut back on manhours spent trying to improve the footing.

[Jealoushe]

Carolin Martin is injured every 2 months. She needs to take care of herself if she wants a long career in horses, her body is going to be in rough shape!

[jcraig10]

Praying for rain soon here, although the 10 day forecast is dry, dry, dry.

Caroline Martin posted her XRay on her IG story. Broken collarbone.

[bornfreenowexpensive]

@Divine Comedy

I think there’s some merit to moving the entire fall season (PF-Morven-FH) back 2-3 weeks, since climate change has clearly had an effect up here. I realize that these dates have been in place for forever, but especially with the new 5*, it seems like a good time to re-evaluate if these are really the best times of year for each of these venues. It would also be nice to see GMI folded into the fall season as another option, maybe for those aimed for a November long format. The late summer and early fall dates really seem to do a number on the footing for Area II and we can not only save the horses joints but also the events’ pocketbooks if they could cut back on manhours spent trying to improve the footing.

I’ve been here over 20 years…it changes from year to year. We had heavy rain at FairHill almost every other year…but the turf there is better than most and can take. You get later in the season and that is not the case. NO way can we back the entire fall season in Area II later into the year…have you looked at what that would do to the events (I have). We already have multiple events running on the same weekends…you would have even more events on the same weekend and kill several venues as a result because the weather is ALSO not consistent in November and no events want to run in mid-November up here.

[Divine_Comedy]

@bornfreenowexpensive

I’ve been here over 20 years…it changes from year to year. We had heavy rain at FairHill almost every other year…but the turf there is better than most and can take. You get later in the season and that is not the case. NO way can we back the entire fall season in Area II later into the year…have you looked at what that would do to the events (I have). We already have multiple events running on the same weekends…you would have even more events on the same weekend and kill several venues as a result because the weather is ALSO not consistent in November and no events want to run in mid-November up here.

I get that weather changes year to year. But the climate change is what has been continuously pushing the rain and fall season later consistently for the past six years. Reacting to problems like this by trying to force events to throw more money and time at the footing, only to still have riders upset, year after year after year? It’s silly to say that an event schedule forces certain dates…we (well, someone) actually do have the power to change a schedule. We aren’t exactly in a position to change the climate (as a sport).

Why do we constantly try to force nature to be ‘fixed’ to make US happy, when we should be reacting to nature? For instance, if my house was in a 100-year flood plane when I bought it 20 years again, and it’s flooded 5 times in 6 years, it’s clearly time to stop rebuilding in that flood plane!

Yes, I have looked at the fall schedule. I’m talking about moving the ENTIRE fall season later. That would preclude events bunching up. I’m also not talking about doing this without warning in a year…but it’s something that should begin to be addressed for the calendar in 3-4 years, for example.

Also not sure why people wouldn’t want to event in November. Most of the time this past five years, the weather in November is what we had expected in October: both some warm days, and cool days, dry and rainy days, the footing is finally good enough to gallop out in the fields again…

If events want to stay in September and fight the footing battle, fine. If competitors want to trailer out to a track or gallop on concrete footing for fitness, fine. But the long formats should push back far enough (late October/early November) that people have a chance to run prep events on footing that is consistently good or at worst muddy, instead of constantly worrying about concrete, something you can’t determine until well after closing date. Prep events (especially the ones early in the season like Plantation and GMI!) for long formats shouldn’t be constantly responsible for putting money into fighting against nature’s changing climate, just because it’s ‘always been this weekend’. We should be adapting in a way that makes this sport more affordable AND healthier for our horses.

[bornfreenowexpensive]

DC—the calendar is worked on years in advance. We are currently working on 2021. There is NO WAY to roll our Area II calendar back 2 weeks. That puts events into the middle to end of November. I’m having trouble with it now when we have just rolled back one week and have one less weekend than normal and it is chaos for our calendar. We have had snow on the ground in late October and so you can have crap footing then too. We have 3 events most weekends already. We cannot move FHI later than it already runs both because weather and footing…and then you have issues with it being too close to Ocala…let alone the effect on other venues. Then you need the right events running early enough to be either qualifiers or good preps for the big events so you need enough recovery time…then you need to understand the impact on other events. If the Pros are all out at a big destination event, it can affect our equally important more regional events (critical for building our base and developing riders and horses). The Calendar process is tough. It is NOT easy to shift things around. We do the best we can but you also have to balance the impact on the entire area and other events…the availability of volunteers as well as the availability of venues that often run other events.