On a Sunday in Jan 2014, my wife and I were treated to a day in the country inland from the Tampa Bay coast of Florida. Real Estate that we are not as familiar with. This is cattle country and with cattle you will naturally find horses. We did, our new friends from Welland have moved very close to us in Ellenton and this is good. We seem to be ready for some new experiences and that is just what we had. Most people are not familiar with some of the lesser known facts of Florida.     In addition to the citrus, tomato and strawberry industry, Florida is the largest dairy state and also has ranches raising much of this country’s beef cattle. The cattle are fed along with their regular diet, truck loads of green tomatoes that would be considered culls.

We went to a new development called “Lakewood Ranch”.  Large stately homes on a few acres, many with horse barns and riding stables. We were treated to a tour of our friend’s son’s boarding stables. This home for expensive horses was very top drawer and I am glad we had son’s and not demanding teen daughters that  had Equestrian aspirations. However, this was not our destination.  We were off to the Polo match. Polo horses are not as finely groomed as the show horses at the stables and the Polo horse seems to be smaller but very fast and agile. I was interested to see the size of the crowd that had assembled surrounding the field. All manner of trucks and cars were backed to the playing field and this was a regular family day, a get together with all the kids and dogs assembled for a huge Tail gate party. We drove through a maze of traffic to a single empty space left just for us and with the name of the stable we had just visited. The private umbrella was raised and our tail gate was also raised to offer all sorts of snacks and beverages.The game was well under way but we soon got into the spirit and had a great time people and horse watching.