Horsekeeping (2 page)

The factory burned down in 2003. Caught without adequate insurance, Mrs. Johnson needed to sell a sixteen-acre parcel of the El-Arabia hay field. Since it bordered our property, my husband Scott and I bought it and leased it back to her for one dollar, to deter the developer who had been sniffing it out for a spec house. This advantageous transaction preserved the field, protected our property and Mrs. Johnson still harvested the hay and kept her farm. It required money, but no work on our part. The lawyers and brokers handled the deal, so we never met either Johnson. The break up of any farm parcel tugs at our nostalgia for the simpler life of old, but by the time we moved to the road in 1998, El-Arabia had already passed its prime. If in need, maybe our cash infusion would help.

Friends who had once rented an adjoining house overlooking the farm opted not to stay because their view of bedraggled, uncared for horses broke their hearts. I had heard that lax breeding meant many unsold foals were left to mature wildly in the pastures. The breakdown was a pitiful end to a once cutting-edge, top-of-the-line operation run by a woman who adored horses. I'd like to think she was let down by her farm manager and staff, but it was hard to reconcile this with her proximity to the farm: directly across the street, she had only to look out her front door to see those horses, even if she avoided the grounds directly. Only illness and lack of funds could account for what had happened. It's a tough business.

Despite the farm's run-down state, my family and I grew to love the land itself: forty-five acres of gently sloping pastures with a few well-placed mature trees. “There's no tonic like the Housatonic,” quipped Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. about the meandering river that lines the eastern edge of both our property and El-Arabia. Its waters seep a hazy mist over the valley many mornings, a cover that keeps us guessing while it slowly lifts, often to reveal a surprisingly fine day. Hawks, eagles, songbirds, deer, bobcats, coyotes, turkeys and black bears populate our river
valley arcadia nestled between the Taconic hills and Canaan mountain: but in contrast, every barn, run-in shed, garage, outbuilding and bit of fence at El-Arabia sagged and tottered. Relics littering the southeastern property line included the fiberglass hull of a speedboat, a peeling, prop-less Mercury outboard motor, a hulking, broken-windowed multi-stall horse trailer turned condo for squirrels and chipmunks, a “marble/slate” truck shrugging on rusted rims, the carcass of a car resting on its right side, and an antique television poised on a stump.

The main structure stretched longer than a football field: twenty-two thousand square feet of weathered boards wedged into the land's slope up to Weatogue Road. With fifty-eight stalls, this barn was designed to service many needs—6 x 6-foot stalls for ponies and smaller hacks, 10 x 10 for larger riders and geldings, 12 x 12 for brood mares and stallions, and 16 x 16 for draft horses that stand eighteen hands high and can weigh over two thousand pounds. I learned all about stall-to-horse specifications later. For five years I only viewed our neighbor's operation from the outside and knew
nada
about the horse business, not even a gelding (a castrated stallion) from a mare. But there is something about horses, an inner voice whispered. I was seduced by the idea of them, like so many little girls, and even these sad ones intrigued me. Were they wonderful to know once cleaned up? In the way each dog that I meet is cute, but becomes quite a complex “personality” upon further acquaintance?

Once, on a walk past, I inquired about the pretty white horse always isolated across the street.

“He's the teaser,” the farm hand said.

“A teaser?” I queried, eyebrows innocently raised in interest.

Horse man stared past me into the thin air. “He gets the mares ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“For the stallions.” He looked me straight in the eye.

I leveled another squinty-eyed look at this petite animal and only then noticed his preposterous penis that recharged the simile “hung like a horse.” Oh, I thought to myself, I get it. Finding firm ground, I dug deeper.

“But he's over here and the mares are over there. Plus, he's only one horse; does he impregnate all those females?”

Horse man considered me with contempt. “Nope.”

On I blundered: “You mean he never gets to . . . you know, do it himself?”

“Nope.” He was firm and unapologetic.

“Oh,” I said, and moved on.

Just one more aspect of cruelty to animals, I thought. It reminded me of those crass Viagra ads warning men with erections lasting over four hours to head for the hospital. This poor horse spends years “erected,” rendering even gelding a more humane option. Maybe it's a blissful state? If not, should I crusade to improve his lot in life? What do I know? This practice probably dates to the early Moroccans who first tamed horses; like so many other aspects of horsemanship, maybe it's hallowed ground. So I continued on my not-so-merry way and resolved never to look at the pretty white horse and his unsatisfied manhood again.

As it turned out, a few years later the threat of development forced me to look closer at El-Arabia, though in retrospect I see that my destiny was already printed and bound. My family and I treasured our patch of fields and woods in Connecticut, and often talked about annexing land as needed to preserve diminishing open farmland and slow the pace of development, all while protecting our privacy. In 2003 a local realtor notified us the rest of the farm land was for sale.

“How much?” I looked at Scott's scribbled notes as he hung up the phone. “Are you sure?”

“Yep, that's what the man said,” Scott answered. “It certainly can't be worth that; the place is a wreck. It doesn't even have a place to live; the Johnsons are keeping the house and land across the street.”

“Then what do we do? Let it go to whoever walks through the door? Don't you think a developer will go for it?”

“Well, the price would seem even higher to speculators. They'd have to tear down the buildings, improve the drainage and the site in general,
and then resell or build without any guarantee of sale or profit. It's a risky venture at those prices.”

“But the market is pretty strong. Everyone says it can't hold up, but so far it has.” I paced our kitchen island. “Do you think they might try to break it up into smaller lots? Offer more than one house site?”

“Legally it can be subdivided once, so probably two house sites max. But these land deals are often shady.” Scott stashed his notes under his Blackberry, and sorted the mail pile on the counter.

“The land is certainly nice, but there are neighbors in view and few trees. It's hard to judge its value. What should we do?”

Scott's deep brown eyes looked out the window to the open field and woods across the road. I willed his thoughts to form a coherent plan and shifted my weight left to right, a rocking horse of fruitless agitation.

“Well, what do we do?” I asked again.

He surfaced from his inner consultation.

“We should float a lower offer. They may just take it. If they don't, at least we're in there. If other buyers come forward, they'll return to us for a counter offer and we can weigh it again. We can't even see the property from our house so we have no reason to be desperate.”

As unsatisfying as this half-measure tactic seemed to me at the time, Scott was right. The property sat. Nearly two years later, Mr. Johnson died and his widow quickened her pace to sell. The broker gave us heads up that they were about to accept an offer for the rest of the farm, at a lower price than the ask but not as low as our original bid. Taking the bait, I stood ready to pile on as I had worried and daydreamed about the place the entire time. Scott registered my barely contained excitement with a deep breath. He well-knew my tendency to mindlessly forge ahead, but he always hesitated to be piggish in that weekender way of throwing money around. Maybe someone else would take it on and restore its former glory? Or, were we about to be staring at two or three reproduction country manors? Few people eking out a living in the horse business could afford the cost of the real estate, let alone the repairs.

We felt somewhat guilty, recognizing ourselves as part of the problem—weekenders pushing up the price of real estate with friends that follow in our tracks, some of who replaced old barns and farmland with McMansions and guest-houses. We had taken care to fit in rather than burst through, and had predated the more recent soaring popularity of the county. Salisbury is not the Hamptons, but some of our neighboring towns to the south like Kent, Litchfield and Roxbury verge nigh. Now we were victims of the robust prices of a market we helped create. But our chance with El-Arabia is here and now, we realized; no more theorizing. Developers hovered, the market sizzled and the El-Arabia land laid choice. We called the real estate agent with a higher bid.

 

 

A WEEK BEFORE OUR FORMAL TOUR of El-Arabia, Scott and I took our regular walk through our field and into the woods. The bright late October day encouraged optimism; the burnt sienna leaves showered a woodsy version of ticker tape with us the celebrated heroes. The wind whipped swirling eddies amongst the fallen.
Go for it,
nature persuaded. We paused at the border of our property and peered out over the Johnsons' hay fields beyond to the tired barns and horses. A canvas of blue sky arched across it all, shrinking the enormity of the project.

“Wow,” I said, squinting into the lucid openness. “Big sky country. Look at the clouds racing.” I pointed, appreciating a deep inhale of clean air. “What beautiful land.”

“Wouldn't it be terrible if the farm was sold and the land subdivided into spec houses?” Scott mused.

“Yes, that would be the only thing that could make it sadder than it already is, but what would we do with a horse farm?” I parsed, hiding my own land lust to show Scott I was responsibly weighing the situation.

“We'd get into farming,” he replied as casually as he kicked aside the stone under his foot. “Maybe horses.”

Was he serious?
I held my breath.

He frowned. “Can you imagine two new houses, one sitting right here along the edge of our path? As you've so often said yourself, we hope to die in our house, and then pass it on to our kids, so could you really imagine years and years of saying ‘we should have bought that old Johnson place when we had the chance?'”

He came by his decision as emotionlessly as he did all his business transactions, but he also knew how much I wanted this farm. We each dutifully expressed our worries about the expense, about squeezing another project into our full lives, about over-straining our already time-pressured marriage. But beneath this lip service my heart pulsed with delight, knowing that we would go for it at anything close to a reasonable price. Two days later, under pressure from another shadowy buyer, and without even having seen the inside of the barns, we agreed to a purchase price. The double meaning of the term “we bought the farm” was not lost on either of us.

Some of our neighbors had counted on us to rescue our road from the tyranny of the developer. John Bottass, the cattle farmer at the far end of Weatogue Road, guards his acres and watches over what he passionately believes is the last well-preserved valley in Salisbury. A dedicated farmer who laments the loss of local agriculture, he waxes eloquent about our road and the surrounding land. Cautious about us at first, he eventually trusted that our common land interests were in sync and now we share a curmudgeonly skepticism about change. His family and mine bookend Weatogue, and we fret about the next lot in between us to fall. Like two mother hens we catch up and keep tabs; me draped over my bicycle, stroking my miniature black poodle Velvet perched in a basket at my handlebars, and John hanging his head and farm-work dirty arm out of his old green tractor while we trade our gossipy knowledge about the good guys (farmers, land preservationists and unpretentious neighbors), and the bad guys (developers and neighbors who sell to developers). We always agree despite our local/weekender dichotomy.

One day John hailed me down.

“Did you and Scott really buy El-Arabia?”

“Yes John, I'm pretty sure we're getting it.”

“Are you keeping it a farm?” he asked, anxious.

“Yes sir, I think we are. We'll keep the land open at any rate,” I fired back, happy to report some solid action to fortify our heretofore verbal lines of defense. His effusive gratitude embarrassed me: much of the purchase being made in self-interest after all.

Another neighbor, Bill Binzen, is an accomplished photographer whose home borders El-Arabia at the northeastern end. He is elderly, and an impossibly thin six feet four, but he gave me a hug that lifted me off my feet when he heard.

“If I were a little younger, I'd saddle up Western-style and help you out.”

I tried to envision it. In May he had collapsed at the town Memorial Day celebration: a modest parade of fire engines, the ambulance squad cars, daycare kids in wagons throwing wrapped peppermints to the crowd, the elementary school band blaring marches and the seventy-five year old Salisbury Town Band in their gingham-ribboned cane hats keeping them on key, the giggling Brownies, the self-conscious Boy Scouts and the not so modest roster of Salisbury veterans, crisply uniformed, armed, and humbly serious with memories of time served. The scene never varies: a hush falls on the townspeople as they follow the soldiers into the old pine studded cemetery. The master at arms reads the names of all the Salisbury war dead, Episcopal and Congregational ministers and a Catholic priest invoke God's blessing, a local child recites the Gettysburg address, Taps hangs in the air twice—to begin near the crowd, and to end, poignantly far away, an anguished cry from deeper in the cemetery. Four guns salute. The shock of the blasts sets a few babies wailing and nervous dogs howling as the older kids pounce for a prized shell casing.