News - from January 2010

I´m really sorry that I have not updated our news for such a long time. The weeks just seem to fly and pass by during the last months. Many things would have been worth to mention and to tell about, for instance the foals. We have once again a very colorful herd of foals. Our 1st prize mare Veiga got a beautiful yellow dune mare after the famous stallion Froði frá Staðartungu. Kvika (1st prize) and her daughter Vænting (after Tindur frá Varmalæk) got mare foals after the 1st prize stallion Roði frá Garði. We are very happy about these mares which are probably future breeding prospects.

We started the riding season in May. All longer tours for this summer are fully booked and we are pleased about the busy season of our "10 year anniversary" year. There is still place left for the sheep and horse round up in September.

As many of you may already know has Landsmót 2010, the big horse event in the beginning of July, been cancelled. The reason for that was an infectious coughing disease which many horses have been suffering from during the last months. Instead of the planned "Landsmót program" we put up an alternative riding/discovering program which went very well.
Our own horses are doing fine. We could so far go on with the planned riding tour schedule and keep intensive eyes on our horses.
At the moment we ride with our guests through the beautiful Austurdalur valley and will discover the Vesturdalur valley next week. The weather has been very Icelandic during the last two weeks but since yesterday the sun has find her way back to us. We use the good weather also for the hay harvest.

Beside our longer riding tours we offer as every year 1-4 hour rides for people who are traveling around the island and like to experience the Icelandic horse. Many tourists have already found their way to us.

Many things have been going on here since my last news. First of all to mention are the volcanic activities. After the beautiful eruption on Fimmvörðuháls we got now a very inconvenient eruption on Eyjafjallajökull. The volcano centre is under the glacier. When lava meets ice it becomes ash which is thrown out of the volcano in big explosions.
Big floods have already been from the glacier and some areas got lots of ash. An ash sky is now over Europe and causes a lot of air traffic problems.
We are situated in the north of Iceland and have so far not have any trouble. As soon as the wind changes we might get ash over us. The ash which contains a lot of flour can cause health problems for the animals and the vegetation. For interested people I can recommend following website for further (English) information: www.visiticeland.com.

Our dog Skutla got five beautiful puppies just before Easter and we enjoy them every day. We are now looking for new owners and hope to get nice homes for them.
At Easter Monday we got a big surprise when a new born lamb waited for us in the stable. It was unexpected early but mother and child were doing well. The lamb season will officially start after one week.
The horse training is going on very well. We are happy about the horse's progress and will finish the training season in May when other works like lamb season and the riding tour season overtake our daily work.

February has already passed and the March days are flying while they get longer and longer.
There were some really cold days in February but otherwise the winter has not been very hard this year. Good for us as the last weeks have been a bit unusual. Svenni had an accident in the beginning of February and stayed in hospital for almost two weeks. I had to manage the farm with feeding and care taking of all the horses and sheep by my own. It was a lot of organization but everything worked out well.
Nikki who helped us with the young horses did a great job during the last weeks. She trained 10 horses at the age of (almost) 5 and 6 years during her stay until last week. The horses got a couple of days off now and we will start again next week. We have some really nice and promising horses in the stable. Two geldings from the world champion Tindur frá Varmalæk are among them and they are both very kind and good horses and fun to work with. There is also Stelkur, a son of Tenor frá Tunguhlíð (First price stallion, half brother to Tindur and our Jörfi). I put two pictures here beside. One photo from when he was just born and one when he was under the saddle for the second time.

Our riding tour program for next summer is very well booked and we are very pleased about that and look forward to welcome this year´s first guests. Please have a look at our program to see the actual capacities.

While cold winter weather rules in Europe we have constantly +6°Celsius and storm. The storm makes it impossible for us to ride but nevertheless we use the time as much as possible. Most of the foals have been taken away from their mothers and we took them in the stable for a short first training. We put holder on them, tied them up, thought them to lift the legs etc. It is nice and interesting to get them to know quite well during these days.
The next weeks and months will keep us busy with the training of the young horses (4 and 5 years old).

Beside the work with the horses we have a lot to prepare for next summer. Some riding tours are almost booked out (the Landsmót week has been fully booked since last autumn).
We had some problems with our online guestbook and are happy to present you a new one now. The old guestbook entries will be saved in an archive. Please feel free to leave a message in our guestbook. They are always much appreciated.
If you have a Facebook account (or intend to get one) we would like to invite you to join our Lýtingsstaðir group. Many beautiful pictures have been uploaded and you can meet other Lýtingsstaðir friends there.
Lýtingsstaðir on Facebook - Riding Holidays and Riding Tours on Iceland

Further on we like to show you a few pictures from a mare we sold many years ago. Hylling frá Lýtingsstöðum has been home in Denmark for many years and has been used as a breeding mare.
Her owner Astrid writes in a letter:"... Hylling is 21 years old now, but still going strong. The last two years she has finally given me mare foals. Both five gaited and piebald, so I'm very happy! I'm really looking forward to work more with her youngsters. I can only say that I'm very happy about Hylling and her offsprings and that many people are jealous and would like to have a mare like her. She is really one of a kind and gives very good offsprings no matter which stallion I use! ...".
Letters like this make us more than happy! Many thanks to Astrid!
By the way: Hylling was one of the first foals from Dúfa frá Lýtingsstöðum which is also mother of our two breeding mares Sylgja and Rauðhetta.

The new year is already a few days old but I think it is not too late to wish everyone reading this a HAPPY NEW YEAR!
We would like to thank our friends and guests for the good time we spent together during the last year and hope to see you all again soon.
The year 2010 is an anniversary year for us. We started our riding tour business in 2000 and we can now celebrate our 10 years anniversary.

We have already many bookings for the next summer and the week around Landsmót in the beginning of July has been booked out since last autumn. We expect many guests, lots of fun and a great Landsmót event.

The winter has not been very hard or cold so far and we enjoy the good weather conditions. As you see on the pictures beside we have spectacular morning skies with beautiful colors at the moment.
We have stabled a few young horses and have started to train them. It is always an exciting time to see how the youngsters turn out and I will report about their progress later.
Some foals have been taken away from their mothers and into the stable today and we will give them a light training during the next week. We will put a holder on them to lead them around. Afterwards they will stay outside in a separate herd with as much food as they can eat.

As every half year I have started a new News site and put the last one into the archive where you can look them up whenever you want to.
We have had some problems with our online guestbook recently. Lots of spam which were impossible to delete. We are now looking for a new guestbook with a proper spam filter.