Microsoft Intern Day of Caring

What a day- Friday was amazing, thanks to the Interns from Microsoft.

Over 40 Microsoft interns (and about a dozen full time MS employees) came out to work for the day at the rescue. We estimated that over 160 hours of work were done that day, saving us thousands of dollars and improving our farm considerably.

Here's what we got done:

• We dug a ditch from our barn to the drainage area, which will substantially reduce flooding in fall and winter. Many rescue horses come in with hoof disease and injuries, both of which are exasperated by mud so flooding is important for convenience and health.



• Our new ditch was filled with rocks picked from pastures – removing rocks is important because it protects the animals from stone bruises and injures and also saved us from having to buy gravel to fill our new ditch. Rocks in our ditches keep the water flowing in the right direction without letting the ditch collapse.



• We put in hogsfuel (an outdoor bedding made from cut down trees- eco friendly) so that we won’t have to put all the horses into indoor stalls at night. The hogsfuel gives them a comfortable place to rest and will reduce the amount we have to spend on shavings. Because of the recent closure of several saw mills, shaving costs are high so this is an important measure.



• We also installed posts for our sign in the driveway, a chore that we've wanted to get done for a while.



• One group groomed and photographed horses so we can better promote them and find them homes. It is also excellent practice for our rescues to be handled by a variety of people, so there were multiple benefits.



• We completed the re bar/stabilizing of our steps which gives us a safe place to get up and down our hill.

All of these projects were really needed but could not have happened without this Day of Caring.

As a nonprofit organization we rely on donations and grants for our funding and our suffering economy has affected us (along with other rescues) so we strive to reduce costs any way we can- on Friday we made some tremendous strides in this area, thanks to you all.

A special thanks to the committee that coordinated this event and our Serenity Volunteers who came out to spend the day helping lead these projects, and also those who helped us get items donated.

More photos from Friday are at: http://serenityequine.shutterfly.com/

Twittering Serenity...

We're on Twitter now so you can follow Serenity and hear what we're up to a couple times a week (we plan to tweet about 3 times a week hopefully).

How to follow us:

1. Either log on to www.twitter.com and request to follow serenityequine
2. you can text the message: "follow serenityequine" to the number 40404 on your cell phone

be sure to read this page on twitter to better understand how it works and of course make sure you've got a good text plan if you use your cell phone to follow us.

Here is more information on twitter, for those of you new to it:

From Wickipedia:

Twitter is a free social networking
and micro-blogging service
that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets.
Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140
characters, displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to other users
- known as followers - who have subscribed to them. Senders can restrict
delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access.
Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or
external applications. The service is free over the Internet, but using SMS may
incur phone service provider fees.

Think of it as a quick and short way to stay up to date by email or text message with someone or a group. You might get a message that tells you we've had a horse adopted, or you might even get one that says we're looking for an item (like right now we need pointed shovels for an upcoming event!!)

Here is a great page of info from Twitter: http://help.twitter.com/portal

If you have questions, email our webmaster Cowgirly at webmaster@serenityequinerescue.com. We look forward to tweeting with you (we're still learning the lingo!!). If you send me an email with the subject line 'twitter subscribe' our webmaster will send you an invite to subscribe to make it easy on you!