Volunteers engagement when lessons are limited?

Also in the winter we work on de-sensitizing the horses. Our horsey volunteers ride them through obstacle courses while making noise, crinkling water bottles, touching the horse all over, laying down and sitting up, bouncing gently, whatever. Even non horsey volunteers can help by making a lot of noise outside the ring or sidewalking. It helps them feel involved with the horses and the other volunteers and excites them for the real thing :)

I like teaching our volunteers something new. We have a sign up sheet where they can put up a topic they would like to go over. It could be feed, english v western, bits, anything that peeks their interest. Then we go through it by explaining it in detail then go do it or show it.

They also like their horse time, grooming specifically. Our horses started to sour out with all the people grooming and tacking them. Now we have only a handful of people allowed and it seems to have improved the horses moral but it has been disappointing to our volunteers.
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I love the idea of asking them- I just had one of those "duh" moments- I've tried every way but straight up asking them to write down what they want to learn haha!

70-150!!! WOW!!!!
That's fantastic!!!!
We live in a small community, and our facility is pretty far out of town, down a long dirt road, so that is a big downfall for us. BUT, it's a GORGEOUS 600 acre cattle ranch.

NHR closes in the winter because we don't have an indoor riding arena yet. This year we closed in late Nov. And will start up again in April, I think. We are praying that somehow we'll get an indoor arena though!