Runaway Train

You know when something is right when it takes off like a freight train.  This is something that I heard at a friend's wedding this past weekend, and reflecting back to everything in my life that has been good and healthy and "right", this has held true.  My mother has always said not to try to fit a square peg in a round hole.  How many times in our lives do we think we know what is right and try so hard to force it, when in the end it turns out to have been wrong all along?

Hope Grows Community Farm Program has taken off this week with the force of a runaway freight train.  I'm going to take this as the first sign that we are creating something "right".  It fits.  There is a place for this dream within our community and the excitement over it has been contagious.

I had my first meeting this week at a high school to discuss our program.  I left with more ideas than I came with as well as with the urgency to start something as soon as possible.  While we aren't quite prepared to run a full program in the dead of winter, I am finding it difficult to say 'no' to anyone.  There are children out there starving for an opportunity that we have the ability to provide them with.  After my meeting at the school, a counselor with two of her middle-level students accompanied me out to the farm for a tour.  They pulled in right along side of me and I looked over right in time to see these two boys high-five each other in the back of the car.  While they only had time for a quick tour, they got to tour the property, meet all of the rescue horses, and observe a round-penning session with one of the two-year-olds and Erika.  In the bitter freezing cold, those two boys (without hats or gloves on) could have stayed there all day long watching that horse run around the round pen.  Now they are hooked.  I received a call from their counselor asking if there was any work for the boys to do during their half-day off of school tomorrow as they can't stop talking about the farm.

With the phone ringing off the hook this week with inquiries for private therapy sessions, work programs, after-school programs, internships and mentoring, my head is spinning and I now realize that we can't possibly hold off until spring.  We will create a program to run through the winter to meet as many of these needs as we possibly can, given our limited resources.  

On a separate note, Erika and I (plus all 3 of our kids, and one very little puppy) took the trailer down to pick-up two beautiful mares today for our program.  These two mares were donated by a woman who rescued them from the New Holland auction last spring and nursed them back to health.  Thank you Kima for your profound generosity!  We are so thrilled to welcome Dakota and Cheyenne to the farm.    Pictures to follow!

Where love is spread, hope will grow

Tracy

The Girls - Cheyenne and Dakota

Growing a Dream

Growing up I always dreamed of being a cowgirl.  I drew pictures of my ranch (out in Montana, where I had never been) and imagined snowmobiling through a blizzard to a warm-lit barn where the newest foal was being born.  I dreamed of riding in the rugged mountains, passing bugling elk and their calves while bald eagles circled the sky above.

This dream was such a part of me that after college I left everything I knew - the east, my family, my friends - and with my pick-up truck and faithful Labrador, Kota, at my side drove west.  I ended up in Wyoming and it is there that I stayed for 8 years before a series of events led me back east to where I am today.

While living on a beautiful ranch outside of Jackson, Wyoming, I was able to fully realize my dream.  Wrangling horses, crossing paths with grizzlies, fly-fishing the Snake river as eagles watched from above, snowmobiling through blizzards to feed the horses, crossing paths with mountain lion stalkers in the hay barn, and teaching children the love of horses.  The day before returning east my new rescue racehorse, Henry, and I took our very first ride together on a gray October morning through a meadow full of bugling bull elk and cows and calves who were gathering south from Yellowstone towards the Refuge before a long winter.

Four years later, I am living a new dream as a mother of two beautiful children, Max and Grace, and wife to the kindest, most wonderful man in the world, Jesse.  While we keep two horses here at our home in Stowe, Vermont, I had thought that my cowgirl days were over - a wonderful chapter in my life closed.  Now the book has been reopened and it is there that a new dream grows.  A dream that involves rescuing horses, mentoring children and healing a community.  A farm that grows hope, love, trust, friendship.  A refuge that allows children to dream and to never be afraid of letting those dreams come true.

Where love is spread, hope will grow.

Tracy

Introductions...

Meet Heartsong Equine Rescue Organization's current herd!  These are very special horses looking for their forever home.  If you are interested in adoption, please visit H.E.R.O.'s website and fill out the adoption application.  If you are wanting to help one of these beautiful creatures, please inquire about our "Guardian Angel" program.

 

"Tucker"-  yearling Thoroughbred colt

 

"Harley" - yearling Hafflinger cross colt

 

"Autumn" - 2 year old Buckskin/Paint filly

 

"Romeo" - 2-year-old Quarter horse colt

 

"Calypso" - 6-year-old Pony mare

 

"Reba" - 12-year-old Quarterhorse/Arab mare

 

"Stetson" - 2-year-old Unknown breed colt

 

"Forrest" - 2-year-old Thoroughbred colt

 

"Judge" - 20-year-old Belgian cross gelding

Greener Pastures

Moving Day!  Four H.E.R.O. horses were relocated to the farm today, the yearlings to come towards the end of the week and hopefully the "ladies" in quarantine can heal up and join the herd soon!  

Today was really my first day getting to know these horses a bit and I kept asking Erika, owner of Heartsong Equine Rescue Organization, what the story was behind each horse.  The answer was "who knows?"  I was sadly mistaken to think that a meat buyer would give a rescuer a detailed write-up on each horse, like the kind you would find on dreamhorse.com, but if they did I can imagine it might look something like this...

"Judge" a 20-year-old chestnut gelding, 16 hands.  A used up Amish work-horse owner no longer has a need for.   Despite visible scarring on body and face, previous starvation, a couple blown-up legs, this sweet old boy will willingly do whatever is asked of him.  Price:  he is worth his weight for meat.  

There are no descriptions of the horses that arrive at H.E.R.O., many times no known histories.  What steps off of the trailer is exactly what you get, and the work starts there.  Because it is a horse's past experiences that make them who they are - scars and all - it is resilience of overcoming the past in order to begin moving toward greener pastures that make them a hero. 

Where love is spread, hope will grow.

Tracy 

 

Judge - need I say more? 

 

Judge and Forrest wait for the others

 

Romeo and Stetson join the crew

 

Happy tails!

Everyday Heroes

Hero (n.)

a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble  qualities.

What if a hero is not necessarily a man, but a woman, or even a horse?  What if a hero is not looking for admiration, but instead prefers anonymity?  Everyday heroes walk among us, not seeking recognition for their deeds, but simply looking to help those who others have turned their backs on.  

Raymond and Carolyn Chauvin, whose vision and commitment to starting a community farm where kids can experience the therapeutic miracle which comes with creating a bond with a horse.   

Erika Gutel, founder of Heartsong Equine Rescue Organization (H.E.R.O.), has committed to saving rejected horses who were sadly destined for slaughter, and who cares for these horses as they slowly regain their dignity and trust and are ready to find their forever homes.  

And the eleven H.E.R.O. rescue horses, the welcome new residents at the Farm.  For what is more noble than a horse, and who is more brave than one who has experienced fear and trauma and has started the journey again toward trust.  

These are the heroes, and so our journey together begins...

Where love is spread, hope will grow,

Tracy