Horsekeeping (11 page)

Pausing, he looked right at me.

“I suppose having kids was worth it. But, do you think you'll really like having a horse farm? You know, actually find it fun?”

The kid thing is a running joke between us. Married fourteen years before ambivalently taking the plunge, when parenting gets tough we ask each other: “Whose idea was it to have these no-neck monsters anyway?” He accuses me of not liking them, and I retort that I would love having them if I had a wife like he has. But his due-diligence into my staying power regarding farming reminded me that for a no-nonsense, tough-minded, relentlessly practical investment banker, deep down my husband is an aspiring romantic. The guy doesn't desire to ride, isn't crazy about animals, has an insanely busy life, but wanted to do this thing for me, knowing that already I was too emotionally invested to turn back. Over the past two weekends I had watched my kids play with a week-old foal, born to the last remaining boarder at El-Arabia, a mare too close to term to evict. The sweetest animal any of us had ever met, we were licked and nibbled all over by toothless filly gums and batted with long dark lashes framing oversized, curious eyes. We “ooohed” and “ahhhed” at Thea's attentive mothering of little Rosie, the pushing and probing, her teaching loving yet stern. We awed at the power, speed and knock-kneed majesty of this lanky, tottering new life, unable to tear ourselves away. Overcome with beatitude, I had recklessly promised Elliot and Jane their own foals to raise—a promise I whispered out of Scott's earshot.

I saw Scott's “fun” question as my chance, and I went for it.

“Absolutely I would have fun, no question there, but what an amazing experience. It would be wrong to kill a farm, and think how great it could be for the kids.” I smiled, warming to my subject. “Jane will have horses instead of boyfriends. Elliot will be active and engaged rather than a teenage slug on the couch. We don't allow television, Nintendo or many computer games, the least we can do is buy them a horse farm.” I gave Scott a wink, and he rolled his eyes in return.

Our conversations about money and our indulged children always go like this: he rides the brake, and I'm full speed on the gas. Usually we stay on the road. We pedaled our bikes faster, powered by the adrenaline of a major decision.

“I guess it comes down to the horse's ass rule.”

“Aptly named,” I said, “but how is it applied?”

“Do you wake up after it's all said and done and feel like a horse's ass?”

He wasn't kidding; I knew he used this internal restraint meter to make decisions.

“Well,” I said, “if we're going to be in the horse business, perhaps being a horse's ass is an asset. But maybe we can cut some things. . . .”

I said this but didn't really mean it, and we both knew it. If anything, when faced with a choice between pretty and prettier, or good and best, we mostly, sometimes foolishly, choose the upgrade in an attempt to get a jump on future needs. And it is easier to opt for the “best”; lesser options, even when wiser, require comparison, analysis and therefore time, the commodity Scott habitually lacks most. Luckily for the kids and me, he falls short of “workaholic” due to his efficiency at the office (he makes timely decisions and delegates), and generally he satisfies our demanding family requirements; he keeps that scale carefully balanced. But there is scant room for an ounce more. Still, we both wanted to crack this nut of a personally important farm project; he would tackle the business, and I the aesthetics, united in our innate desire to organize, restore, improve, make work, and, dangerously, perfect. We have checked this compulsion at the door when it came to our kids; regarding
the farm, since we are not totally reckless, just the notion of trimming
something
got us over the hump of backing out.

We were born five days apart in May, both conceptions to four people just either side of twenty years of age, so I envision us both having been conceived under the same Saturday night, August moon. In 1959, our parents-to-be scrambled into timely marriages. That I was born in New Jersey and Scott in Michigan did not matter—we emerged soul mates. We think so much alike that our irregularly exercised communication sometimes results in marital discord. But generally our telepathy operates on the big things—lifestyle, how to raise our kids, politics, culture, friends, décor, food, art, movies, sports. We instinctively knew ourselves incapable of doing a half-assed job (even if we were horse's asses), so on our bikes we puffed, pumped, sweated and saw our way clear to approving everything on the estimate short of automatic watering systems for each stall and a fully heated barn.

Cutting the equine drinking fountains initially seemed crazy upon realization that each horse slurps down six to ten gallons of water a day. Multiplying this by thirty-eight horses, I envisioned stumbling stable hands yoked like oxen, one sloshing bucket to a side rather than the actuality (I discovered later) of long hoses pulled to each stall for refills. Moreover, the purists claim that an automated system A) makes it hard to gauge how much the horses are drinking, especially important when they are sick (regularly), and B) seizes up in un-insulated barns during the long New England winters. Plus, our horses were going to spend most of their days outdoors, and automatic watering systems for the paddocks were budgeted. It was a relief to excise this expensive idea as our habitual zeal to improve was already edging us from the Buick to the Cadillac of barns.

To her credit, Bobbi also persuaded us against the heating option. When I pictured the horses freezing their haunches off November through March, it sounded like a no-brainer. But I was considering my own comfort in the barn. I ushered my son through five hockey seasons and fully comprehended the misery of frozen hands, stump-cold feet and an ice-numb
butt. Saving us from ourselves, Bobbi reported that as cozy as central heating is for us, it messes with horses' respiratory tracts and is unnecessary as long as they can get out of the wind. Their winter coats insulate them so well that they actually prefer to tough it out in the elements, and even a cold barn is sometimes too warm for their furnacy selves.

“It's more the heat of summer that you have to worry about with horses,” she informed. “And there's always the tack room for us, the one well-heated spot in any barn.”

I was thankful to be spared heating a holey, un-insulated structure, and that some of our pastures already had run-in sheds for the horses to take shelter as desired from sun, rain and bitter winds, if not wind shears that might part them from their shoes.

One topic left to consider was a name change for the farm. El-Arabia suited an operation dedicated to breeding Arabians, and given that El-Arabia was lately known as “that run-down place on Weatogue Road,” we wanted to start fresh. We brainstormed selections: “Housatonic River Farm,” “Canaan Valley Farm,” “Rolling Meadows Farm,” even “Jersey Girl Farm” with a wink and a nod to my southern New Jersey roots and the iconic Bruce Springsteen, a longtime favorite musician to Scott and me. I fondly remember an early E Street Band concert, in the mid 1970s in a Red Bank, New Jersey, movie theatre. Springsteen played four hours straight, and we all risked injury by dancing on the flipping up seats. Ahhh, those glory days... but ultimately “Jersey Girl” reminded Scott of a pendulous, sway-backed milk cow as much as me, so I took a pass on that glory.

My personal favorite was Elliane Farm, an awkward conjunction of my children's names Elliot and Jane. But consensus funneled us toward the place specific, the address being 33 Weatogue Road, and therefore practical “Weatogue Stables” (though more than one person has mispronounced it “way-to-go” stables). Bobbi indicated that “stables” suggests more down-market operations, but a neighbor had already claimed “Weatogue Farm.” We briefly weighed “Weatogue Equestrian Center,”
but didn't feel that posh and in the end challenged ourselves to put some class back in “stables.” “Stables” also nodded to our five years in London and so incorporated that aspect of our lives into what is, after all, a very English pastime. The “Weatogue” part of the name would help the hoards of people looking for the perfect boarding barn find us—wishful thinking couldn't hurt—and touches on local history, Weatogue being the Native American word for “Big Wigwam Place.” Since our barn is the biggest “wigwam” of sorts around, situated in a stretch of valley where the Weatogue Indians gathered in large groups, it rang true. We love the road and respect our neighbors and liked the idea of cheerlead-ing both. Finally, it is a name that future owners can retain once we relocate, broke and broken-hearted from years of horsekeeping, first to the poorhouse and then to the cemetery across town.

We had a decrepit farm, a cheerful manager, a game plan, a practical name and a lot of naïve excitement that oxygenated our still sparkling dream. We would work and build and ride and make horse-loving people happy. Our kids would grow up kind and well adjusted and not addicted to X-Box and Barbie. They would thrill to the outdoor life, responsibly care for beasts of burden, learn animal husbandry, and keep fit by shoveling shit. We were going to be farmers.

CHAPTER SIX

First, Death

T
HE MAY MORNING DAWNED EXQUISITE against the dismal forecast—one of the challenges of living among hills is that maverick microcosmic effects buck prediction. But a perk of buying the horse farm was another forty-five acres to walk on, and Scott and I are prolific amblers. For our first walk from our house to our new property, the weather gods favored us. We began our ritual round across the freshly cut alfalfa field and along the ancient tree line that demarcates our property from our eastern neighbor's sixty-acre hayfield.

Crossing the narrow, wood-slatted, metal-railed footbridge, we checked the culverts for fish and frogs and wound the trail through the brushy woods, occasionally unhooking ourselves from the thorny Barberry, a spreading “exotic” or non-native plant, that pricked through our jean-clad thighs. Spring tinted the air, but the sluggish, muddy Housatonic still emanated a damp chill. We zipped our polar fleeces against the forest shade and pocketed our hands. So far our walk mimicked what it had been for eight years. But as we left the river, instead of heading back across the alfalfa field to our house, we exited the woods northward onto the edge of the open pastures of what was El-Arabia, rechristened Weatogue Stables. We paused, breathing in the privilege of open space. On this very spot Scott and I had decided to purchase this property, concluding that a McMansion paved over this horse farm would haunt us until we died.

As we crunched through last season's desiccated hay stubble with new growth peeping gamely through, we felt the satisfaction of preserving a farm in a time of their rapid extinction throughout Litchfield County. Though it benefited us and our neighbors personally and immediately, we also felt we were gifting future generations of Salisbury—open space for our children and their children. A sappy sentiment yes, but also true. Conservation easements would ensure our vision for this land, our little piece of immortality, control from beyond the grave.

Our boots tore through the more tangled, overgrown grassland in the middle of the field we anticipated coaxing back to a healthy carpet of green. We traced the dirt service road that curves past two ancient oak trees and around the eight fenced paddocks, saying hello to big brown Thea and her seven-week-old foal. Rosie sprinted and bucked, recklessly expending her youth in the sunny coolness. She gummed our fingers. Chipper bluebirds and stealthy swallows streaked impossible trajectories through the open outbuildings to rest and sing in the crannied rafters before returning to bug-catching over the manure-dotted paddocks. Reluctantly moving on, we paused again to greet the remaining four mares that Mrs. Johnson could not relocate in time for the closing three weeks previous. Not willing to let even these bedraggled, unbroken horses slide to auction, Bobbi agreed to find them homes. The mares stood ankle deep in mud but did not seem to mind, sensing spring's imminence. They recognized us now and coyly approached the fences for conversation. I breathed my hello into their nostrils, moist and velvety black. They snorted back and shook their matted manes. The sun's heat drew steam from their wet legs.