Horsekeeping (30 page)

The smell of sawdust promised a new start for this old barn that now radiated a palpable lightness, freed from the dreary dank of the last decades. Scott and I realized how happy such transformations make us
and how right it felt to rehabilitate a farm, speaking both to his farming roots and my solidarity with animals. Our barn walk-abouts dissolved any remaining rancor from our fight about my riding, which we left alone to find its own way. Time management is tricky for both of us, especially when we can't resist projects that push us well beyond a reasonable fullness, but we'd work it out. Eventually the farm would heal the land and us.

Outside, beyond the double-sized riding rings still under artistic management by Kenny, the round gazebo beckoned as a prime destination. Originally used to showcase young, untrained horses, its one hundred feet circumference impressively radiated without any center support, but it leaned like the tower of Pisa. Gary hoisted and reinforced the sagging frame and halved the sides to waist height. We splurged on blue stone flooring to evoke a shaded terrace. Indulging aesthetics now, my plans percolated a rapid boil: ring the inside with teak benches and lighting and fill the middle with tables and chairs. Not only will it shelter us from the summer sun and thunderstorms, but also afford perfect viewing of the outdoor arena, the barn, the fields and the hills beyond. During shows, vendors can hawk their wares, and I envisioned breezy summer dinner parties with soft notes wafting around men with ascots and women in spaghetti-strapped, ruffled dresses dancing barefoot in the grass. A dreamy Ralph Lauren scene had carried me away perhaps, but to think that we'd considered taking down this lilting relic that now reigned as the crowning centerpiece.

In our earliest imaginings for this project Scott and I had just hoped for cheap and cheerful. But with Mrs. Johnson's legacy, Gary's touches, Bobbi's horse knowledge and our funding, Weatogue Stables emerged deeply beautiful in the way that form follows function. We uncovered the farm's original blueprints that beckoned us that extra mile, and we followed its design. Deceptively simple and re-colored to blend into the New England landscape, the farm re-birthed unpretentious and welcoming, an enterprise that will wear more comfortable with use and age. The
disdain I initially heaped on the former owner, I supplanted with respect for the flow of the grounds and the layout of the barns, and I can now understand its former healthy life. I saw that Mrs. Johnson got it right: horses were everything to her, and she sacrificed much for her dream, but sometimes even your all is not enough. Many worthy farms arc a belled trajectory, with heartbreak obliterating success. I hoped we would fare better longer, and that Mrs. Johnson would find some pleasure in El-Arabia's resurrection as a boarding stable rather than a subdivision.

Our fencing man finally showed up, months late, but flew along faster than we could believe with 11,000 thousand feet of new wood. I apologized to our neighbors for the days of post pounding, 1,710 to be exact, only to be encored by weeks of hammering on the four boards in between each and every one. Mike still disappeared occasionally, but snapped to when, frustrated, we dictated a deadline for a particular section. Perpetually jolly, he was hard to yell at.

“Have you heard from Mike, yet?” Scott asked every week.

“No,” I'd sheepishly reply, feeling responsible.

“We still have to get the fencing all painted before winter, you know.”

I didn't have the heart to tell him it was already too late; the wood too “green” to take the stain. We wouldn't see the finishing touch of ink-black outlining the paddocks until spring.

“And just why is that huge mountain of dirt still lurking in the middle of the fields?”

I shrugged. I had no good answer other than Kenny was on the project part-time, a cost-saving measure to us. The topsoil mountain built from what is now the outdoor riding ring was half gone, but the unsightly rest sprouted tall weeds like a steroidal Chia Pet.

“I think that guy likes his job a little too much,” Scott said testily. “This can't be right.”

I also questioned Kenny's progress, but I wanted to pacify my impatient husband who was tired of all the mud. He understands the bushy
look in wild spaces, but likes good grooming in his landscapes. Likewise, I'll never see my husband in a beard; I think he distrusts wooly guys.

“I don't know... drainage is complicated? If we get it right, proper elevations will rid that huge pasture of standing water—you know, what Elliot calls the skating rink? Plus, Bobbi rightly concluded that the last bit of driveway and parking area closer to the barn shouldn't be finished off until all the heavy equipment is gone?” I smiled my reasons and met his eyes in anticipation of a funny rejoinder. He squinted back he wasn't buying, but graciously let it go.

Underlying site work is expensive and necessary, but hardly aesthetically gratifying. In our farmed valley, streams, culverts and drainage pipes all pour the rain from our expansive barn roof and out of the pastures into the many streams running from the hills neatly into the Housatonic River. Many of these waterways have been enhanced by farmers of old, and Kenny busily tapped and redirected them yet again for our own purposes. Excavation also continued to run septic and water lines from the barn (which never had a bathroom), an undertaking held hostage by the mostly obliging building inspector, and what also prevented us working on the little cottage meant to house an on-site stable hand.

Thankfully, to hydrate our aesthetic thirst, the Italian stone masons arrived to lay the flooring in the gazebo and to snug a walled patio into the nook outside the main barn's tack room. They worked by hand: chipping, lugging, pounding. New England stone is beautiful and echoes olden times, and the artistry hasn't changed. I added the last minute, view-encompassing patio with Scott in mind, just in case he decides not to ride. At least he can comfortably survey his land.

Well, maybe.

“You know if Kenny doesn't sort out all that dirt we'll never get the grass seed down. You know what it's like around here in the spring.” He frowned.

“I DO know. I'll have Bobbi talk to him again.”

I had hoped my commiseration would appease, but undoubtedly we
were facing vast tracts of mud-in-waiting. Our restlessness met some consolation in the new (though raw) fencing that contoured the paddocks and delineated the pathways throughout. The entire property finally cohered as “farm.” Where the line of fencing meets the river and our northern boundary, we'd left enough room to mow a bridle path. Between this late addition, the open fields to the east and south, and the adjoining twenty acres of woods, we'd have plenty of territory to explore nature from our mounts. I looked forward to this more than anything else and pictured Scott, Elliot, Jane and me on our own safe, contented horses enjoying a family ride. It was a dream that seemed distantly within reach,
once
the farm was complete and
if
we all learned to ride well enough.

Preserving open space excited Scott and me, but underutilized farmland quickly reverts to brush and woodland. Hayfields must be cut and tended, and openness guarded. While a return to tree cover is generally desirable, Connecticut sports more forest now than one hundred years ago when entire mountains of trees were cut, round-stacked and slow-burned into charcoal to fuel the iron industry. Salisbury's strong iron ore was its heritage, significantly contributing to the Revolutionary and Civil Wars mostly in the form of canons, balls, guns and anchors. Much of this region's beauty relies on patches of open agricultural views that followed in industry's wake, but such vistas are shrinking as farms disappear.

That said, Scott is a tree hugger, and our farm lacked shade. Only a few ancient, questionable oaks graced the property, and these sat on the road or distant along the far fence line. On one of our more exciting days at the renewing Weatogue Stables we attended the installation of fifteen thirty-foot sugar maples to line the main driveway into the farm. They arrived in threes each laid out long on, and carefully tied to the bed of a trailer, five Gullivers among the Lilliputians. Their six-foot root balls were neatly burlap-wrapped and tied for protection—massive gifts
of nature. Our landscaper Mari staggered their planting in two pseudo-organically unlined rows.

“I really wanted you to see them with some leaves before the winter set in,” Mari told me as I practically wept at the graceful sweep of their branches, inviting arms that waved us in with every breeze and rustled benedictions in our wakes.

“This really makes the farm,” I said, collecting myself. “They're tremendous!”

“I know. I went with the bigger ones because of the scale of this place. The land, the barn—I was afraid the twenty-footers would look like lollipops.”

My mind wandered to the added cost of these giants, but deemed them worthy.

“Just think how much grander they'll be in ten more years,” Scott mused, characteristically comfortable with delayed gratification and long-term investment.

But I knew he was pleased. Wealth has its privileges, as the old advertisement said, this time in the form of mature trees. We had long since stopped trying to contain all the “requirements” into some kind of meaningful budget. The overruns serially exceeded our re-padded projections, but so had the transformation. Our deepening satisfaction was such that, dangerously, we felt compelled to tack on whatever marginally made sense. Like kids in a candy store, the addicting sugar fueling a reckless overdrive, we simply couldn't get enough. At least I couldn't, and more restrained Scott was not enough of a killjoy to rein me in. And I knew the added touches satisfied such that even if Scott never climbed aboard a horse, he would enjoy this farm.

On one hand, I newly appreciated his generosity of spirit even though the Weatogue Stables business model of personal indulgence and land conservancy didn't fit his hard-headed capitalistic parameters. On the other, we both worried about what it messaged the kids. Regularly, we tried to keep ourselves and our kids thankful for Scott's business acumen
that affords us an exciting NYC life and a refuge in bucolic Salisbury. Scott and I remember that money doesn't grow on trees having come from little, but our kids have only ever known prosperity. They can't help but take a lot for granted. We understand, but it pains us, more so since we can't resist the fruits of his labor—nice homes, pricey vacations, horses and a farm we don't have to kill ourselves working. Is personal philanthropy and talking them to death about the harder roads of others on our own block and around the globe enough or are our kids lost to Mammon devoid of their own bootstraps?

 

 

TOWARD THE MIDDLE OF NOVEMBER Bobbi deemed the farm complete enough to move in horses. The sun shone boldly for a late autumn day, a sign of approval. The morning clanged and banged with hammer-in-hand Bobbi hanging water buckets, installing gates and blanket racks, and organizing bedding, food and wheelbarrows. Elliot's hockey game sent us south to Danbury mid-day, so we returned just in time to see the horses arrive in shifts of two in Bobbi's trailer. We brought all of Bobbi and Chip's horses over, optioning immediate critical mass and avoiding the split of a well-knit group of five—the princess Angel, her younger brother Toby, and the three oldsters Theo, Glimmer and Katie. Room we had in abundance: should we be lucky enough to eventually fill all thirty-seven stalls, we could repatriate them.

So far, we boasted one boarder who lived in Avon, Connecticut, over an hour's drive due east. Nancy discovered us from a handmade flyer Bobbi persuaded a friend to post in her tack shop. Our new facility, the ample pastures, Bobbi's training and especially the all day turn-out overrode Nancy's longer commute. Previously her horse spent limited time outdoors because of the pricier suburban real estate. Chase is a six-year-old gelded Quarter Horse on full training board. “Board” means we perform all the daily horse care—feeding, hay and grain supply, cleaning, bedding supply, turn-out, and arrange shoeing and vet care. The training
part consists of Bobbi either teaching Nancy or riding Chase four to five times a week. As our prized first customer; Nancy opted for a near paddock with a run-in shed to provide sun, wind and rain shelter, and a roomy center aisle barn stall between two horses for company. When chestnut Chase moved in our first day, he pranced and whinnied his satisfaction with Nancy's choices.

Scott opted for a hike and office work rather than hanging around the barn awaiting four-footed tenants. He promised to turn up later, so Elliot, Jane and I hung out with the new barn cat Ninja and the two bunnies Elliot had begged for and Bobbi had needed no encouragement to find. She located the bunnies through a newspaper ad and put together the wood hutch herself. Scott wisely pits himself against more pets as a bulwark to my tendency to stockpile, but since these mini-furballs would live in the barn I just gave the nod without the usual family council.

“Guess what?” I announced at the dinner table one Wednesday night.

“What?” Jane and Elliot shouted in unison.

“Bobbi got the bunnies.”

Scott eyes darted:
did we discuss this?

There was cheering all around, and I described the two female sisters (we hoped—despite dedicated peering, unlike horses' balls, bunnies' are hard to spot)—one black and white and the other mostly white with tan markings, both with blue eyes. Luckily, Elliot claimed the black and white one “his,” leaving Jane surprisingly content with the white and tan. Elliot named his “Hera,” after the Queen of Olympus and the goddess of marriage. Jane decided on “Butterfly Girl.”

“Oh, Jane, that's a terrible name,” Elliot said.

“No it isn't. I like it,” she frowned, bracing for an argument.