In my opinion there is no better time of day to achieve the sensation of existing within the grandeur of the Universe (if you’re into that sort of thing) than dawn. This morning I walked outside with my cup of coffee just as the fiery orange hues of the sun began to bleed across the horizon.I let out a sigh and thought.
“Fall…at last.”
I watched the white light above the orange horizon push back the darkness of night. The stars and planets growing fainter with each moment. My mind wandered down to the barn where our night turnout horses would surely be sporting fluffed up coats for the first chilly morning of the fall. Our lives are so intertwined, my family and the horses. Soon everyone’s dinner time schedule will shift earlier with the light, and we’ll all start wearing more layers and marveling at the first sight of our breath in the morning when it’s frosty.
Sunrise happens faster than you might think. If you have the time to watch one from the break of dawn up until the Sun has fully crested over the horizon. The period of contrast at dawn is as short lived as it is dramatic. It’s nice sometimes to remember that we live on a small Earth in a big Universe. Think for awhile about the larger sphere we exist in as opposed to the small sphere which dominates our lives. The little orbits we make.
I know people hate winter, because it’s cold and it sucks to drive on slick roads. I will tell you now, that for the most part winter, even a bad winter, doesn’t hold a candle to the annual travails of summer. Summer is brutal. In summer we get long days, heat, humidity, horse shows, hay season and of course flies. Some combination of these things generally makes everyone at the barn cranky or obsessively worried at some point. It’s normal. Frustration, worry and all of the lesser angels of our nature come out to play in the long hot afternoons of summer. Even summer lovers are not immune to these issues. It’s fact of humanity. We call our tempers hot for a reason. As a barn owner I know it’s much easier to keep horses healthy and safe in even extreme winter weather than it is to keep those same horses comfortable during a heatwave. My attitude is directly correlated to how much I hate heat, humidity and flies. I work hard to maintain a reasonably positive attitude about it.
This summer has been a wonderful summer in many respects. We have welcomed new members to our community and it’s a joy to see the new people interacting with longtime boarders. We have new staff members. A couple of my students successfully showed their horses in local horse shows and I’m very proud of them. Everyone’s riding has improved. The rains came this year and made our hayfields grow. Importantly my husband’s latest back procedure finally seems to have done something positive and he’s back to work again, albeit, slowly. Our daughter began preschool at the the end of summer and her life has changed for the better. We’ve hit our targets.
Moving into summer I had endured a large shake up to my schedule, which was already busy as the barn running mother to a 3 year old daughter. In any event, I ended up taking an off farm office job to enable the family to move forward (go ahead and read that achievement part again about how Hubby had ANOTHER back procedure and my daughter started preschool). The choice to be a driving force for progress to get my hubby back not just to work but to living a life without pain was necessary. As is obviously, learning for children. So, though it was crazy, and has made for some long days and long weeks, I forged ahead.
This move at the time felt like a step backwards for my equestrian goals, but was a leap forward in our capacity to be a healthy, happy, educated family moving forward into 2025 and beyond. It’s the kind of sacrifice you make for long term success. There were bumps in the road along the way. I set aside my time for hobbies, socializing and self-care to make room for the new job. I knew I needed to keep this up until at least the end of July, when if things went well, my hubby’s procedure would have been successful and he could get back to normal life…and then by the end of August with him recovered and Vivian in school we’d be in good shape.
So summer proceeded. Rainy, cool. Delightful. Tired on Friday nights for sure, but always grateful to be in a stall on Saturday caring for my horses. The horse shows came and went and goals were met. Surgery got moved up to the end of May, meaning my time of double work would be eased sooner than I anticipated. I was thrilled, I was gonna make it! Things were working out in my favor!
Then the rains stopped, and the summer heat turned on for the first time. While sitting in my office, I got a call from my mother. One of those calls you really don’t want to get. One of those calls you know are coming as your parents start to age. This is when life went sideways. Sideways; blowing through the guardrail, down the walls of the canyon and into the river below. My life bobbing over rushing rapids and briskly away from everything I had planned for the summer of 2024.
Within minutes of the phone call I was on my way to meet my folks at the hospital, hoping for something relatively simple like dehydration. Alas that was not to be the case. One hot afternoon in June stretched into more than a week in the hospital and then more time still in a Rehab hospital. My already long days got more complicated as I navigated my own emotions, my role as a supportive child to my parents and trying to muster up the energy to keep going at work and have something left of myself to give to my own daughter when I was home.
Eventually in all this stress the proto-human survival skills kick in, and you just shut down the unnecessary parts of your life entirely and focus all your energy on getting your family and yourself through “danger.”
Thankfully I have the very best staff in the business. I couldn’t have gotten any of this done without Karen, Ella and Lane. Thankfully, Dr. Diamante did a really great job on the very expensive procedure Zack had done and he could, step in for me in ways he’s not been able much sooner than he should have, but he did none the less.
All the while, as my family endured a prolonged health crisis, and I’m working and being in many places at once, always feeling as if I’m not anywhere I need to be. Drinking massive amounts of black coffee and taking likely unhealthy amounts of ALIVE! Women’s Energy Multivitamins I would look across the pasture and feel the looming weight of hay season. Prior to being stretched to my limit I’d been thrilled all year that the grass was so tall and growing in nicely. The rain stopped just in time for me to have absolutely no time to move 800 or so bales of hay. I rushed into finding help mode.
On a Sunday with windrows laying in neat piles across 20 acres of land behind our house, I took a phone call from my Mom that really rattled me. Our family health crisis was all of the sudden looking far more grim than it had just 24 hours before. It was a dark afternoon, I sat, watching the hay dry and bawled. I was tired, I was emotionally spent and more bad news was gut wrenching. I’d been holding it together pretty well until then. So I sat for awhile. Before long, my friend, the Hay Queen who does our field with her family every year called and told me they were coming to bale and we’d be stacking TONIGHT.
My heart sank and my guts churned. I contacted all the people who I had lined up to move hay for me, the ones who were so excited to make some money. Well it turns out they all had golf tournaments and vacations that day or needed more notice than I was giving. So it was, on a day when it felt as if everything inside my body turned into a poisonous lumpy jelly, I would be stacking hay in the barn instead of going to be with my Mother in her time of need. Luckily, our Hay Queen had some help coming with help.
We quickly got a hold of hubby’s family to watch Vivi for the evening so we’d not be worried about keeping her entertained and safe while everyone was operating machines and I was on the edge of sanity. I rounded up my gloves, a Dr. Pepper, some water and headed down to the barn. My mind going through its fire up routine, earbuds in place. “I got this.” I told myself.
I did have it. Honestly though, I really would have rather been at home, laying on my couch, crying and being upset about the terrible news I’d just received an hour ago. Alas, when you own a barn it’s not an option, not when the hay needs to get stacked. The hay you’re gonna be feeding out for a couple of months. The hay your horses need to live. The hay you wished for all last year, and have been excited to get cut and brought in. Now I must do this…and I remind myself on the way down that I stacked hay in terrible heat like this 3 years ago just the week before I found out I was pregnant, “this” I thought to myself “cannot possibly be worse than that.” And I thought of the omnipresent Taylor Swift “I’m a real tough kid…I can handle my shit….blah blah blah this guy is a liar….I can do it with a broken heart.”
And I did. I didn’t fake anything, I just made it happen. I outlasted the strapping 18 year old budding horse trainer who left an hour into the job sweating because, in painful irony “I need to go spend some time with my family.” I nodded as he drove away, and I drank some water and waited for the next trailer load of hay, most of which, it turns out we could stack this year with the grapple.
Among the worst confluences of personal life and barn management this places second. We need not discuss the rest of that list.
Zack and I have been running this place for 10 years now. I in fact, celebrated our 10 year anniversary while I was sitting in a hospital room with my parents waiting for doctors and news and anything that would clarify what the hell was going on and how things would progress. In a decade of barn ownership we have regularly had to choose horses over family. I’ve rescheduled at least 2 family Christmases at our house because of the winter conditions forcing us to work long hours, rendering entertaining impossible. I’ve had to punt Thanksgiving when we also had hiccups in staffing and the horses need care. I’ve spent many many of my own last 10 birthdays cleaning stalls. I’ve missed concerts, dinners and birthday parties because the horses needed us, or the clients needed us and we were there. We chose the barn and those caretaking duties over others in our lives.
It’s not a hard choice to make usually. For me it’s very black and white. The horses don’t choose to be here. The horses need us to live. And, yes, we have wonderful boarders and they help us out so much when we need them. Again, I have THE BEST staff around, but everyone has a life. A family. People go on vacation. People have their own health issues and golf outings and holidays. I am the one who owns the barn, and ultimately it always falls upon us to take responsibility and do right for the horses who live here. It’s our duty, it’s our calling. It is inevitable and rewarding. 10 years ago I chose to be here because I love caring for horses and I do so everyday. It is my job to consistently choose horses over everything else, even, on occasions, my own health and benefit.
This blog always comes back to advocating for horsemanship, and for barn owners and horse professionals. I am one, and we need voices. Yes. We are underpaid. Yes, we are tired. But we are human beings, with families. Our families have the same needs for medical care, education, and emotional support and time as horse owners or people who don’t own horses at all for that matter. The personal lives of barn owners are not soap operas for boarders to enjoy, although I have met some in my 40 years in horses who certainly have acted that way.
Barn owners, we are not all orphaned, divorced social outcasts. We have human families who have a real need for us. A real need for the kind of care and consideration we show for our animals. The hardest part of barn ownership is not all the struggles you read about all the time on bullet pointed, angry blog posts. No, it’s that when your life is crumbling, when any normal person would just go to bed and rot for a day or so, we are the insane people who put on our pants one leg at a time and go stack hay with a broken heart. And sometimes it takes until all the hay you stacked has been eaten for those broken hearted feelings to re-emerge and finally leave you.
It is Autumn now. It’s a time to Harvest the fruits of the seeds we planted months ago. This fall, my harvest of Gratitude is booming. The family health issues that so defined the last 3 months of my life have abated and we are normalizing. I have amazing people in my life everywhere. The ones who watch the kiddo, the ones who reach out with a text. The people who listen or make me laugh. The bringers of barn donuts. I’m grateful I remembered the lesson I learned Winter of 2023: I’m tough and I know damn well I can do this stuff in all kinds of weather. I am grateful for my family as they are. Grateful for horse poop and hay. Grateful for barn aisles and school bags and all the things that push me to keep going. All the things that remind me I’m capable. I’m grateful for love, kindness and compassion.
Autumn is the time when the trees let loose the leaves that no longer serve a purpose. Fall is a time for letting go. This fall I am releasing things that no longer serve me too. Perfectionism. The feeling that I must be the absolute best, most positive, energetic, generous, understanding woman to absolutely all people with whom I interact daily. Letting go of the notion of: fun, self-care and rest and joy as things I can put aside for some vaguely determinant amount of time. I’m thinking maybe, just maybe I might release fear of the unknown this year too. Who knows. Perhaps I can let go of these fears and embrace the beauty of life that is sometimes lived in darkness. When a light arrives in darkness it illuminates more brilliantly things you cannot appreciate when the sun shines brightly.
Thanks to all who have helped us make it through a decade of barn ownership. Thanks to everyone at LEC who has supported me personally, and worried about me and reached out as my life went flying down the canyon walls.
