Second Tuesday on Franklin Hill Farm

Meant to be

By Bettina Sperry

[Editor's Note: Today's article inaugurates a new monthly column by the latest addition to our staff, and we're lucky to have her.]

When I was a child, I had a large playroom. The room was filled with toys, dolls, and stuffed animals. I’d put my stuffed animals in chairs around my little table where I would serve them an imaginary lunch and tea. Foretelling, perhaps.
    Farming is in my blood. From a multigenerational crop and horse farm, my grandmother raised her daughters in a very small farming community where she taught them the ways of living characteristic of farm life. My mother taught her daughters the same. Ducks, chickens, eggs, gardens, hogs, beef, milk cans, and romping through acres of apple, pear, plum, and cherry orchards all fill my childhood memories. So does chopping wood to heat the kitchen or for cooking. At a young age, my sister and I chopped wood outside my grandmother’s home. Piece by piece we would fill the small wood-burning stove, helping our grandmother heat the home during fall and winter.
    And so it went. Love of farming and horses didn’t stop with my mother. My father loved dogs and horses, too. As a teen, he worked in the barns at the race track. Much like my mother’s side of the family, my dad would later share his love of horses with his daughters when he would take us to the track to watch the horses race.
    Many years later, I now find my greatest comfort arising out of owning my own farm, raising my own animals, and gardening much as my mother and grandmother did. I am a thoroughbred horse farmer. I drive a tractor, move round bales, haul feed, mow with a bush hog and a commercial grade zero-turn, wear rubber boots all day sometimes, and periodically wallow in mud – sometimes with the horses. Sometimes I have to build things, repair fencing, clean up run-in sheds, or generally construct better ways to do things on the farm. I plant fruit trees and spring flowers. I also have the pleasure of raising thoroughbred foals. On a good day, I have time to walk the green pastures of my 48-acre farm.
    How I found my way back to being a farm girl is perhaps a twist of fate that life sometimes brings. Having a late marriage to a childhood sweetheart and farm boy, we had a small, 6-acre farm that included a few horses. A local racehorse trainer gifted us with a beautiful racehorse that had recently come off the track. Reminiscent of my childhood, the little girl in me was sure her eyes sparkled. I called her Star, a short version of her racing name.

Dial the Star and foal, 2013

    In 2011, I suggested to my husband that I’d support any retirement dream job he would like to have. My thinking was that he’d start up a business of some sort – something related to his prior 40 years of work. What I got instead was, “Honey, I know what I want. I want a racehorse.” In shock, I distinctly remember telling him that was a tall order and I’d have to think about it. Exactly six months later, in the spring, I agreed to financially support his dream. Having found Star in her cycle, I rushed my thoroughbred off for breeding. Within 24 hours, my husband’s dream foal was due in eleven months.
    Three months later, my husband passed away abruptly from cardiac arrest. Within minutes, his dream became my responsibility. It was clear that my future included a little foal that would need proper love, care, and preparation for his career as a racehorse if I were to see Jeff’s dream come to fruition – but I knew nothing about raising thoroughbreds. I was a scholar, educated at some of the world’s best universities, not a farmer. How hard was it to let go of one dream, to quickly latch on to another?

Mau Loa on hill

Mau Loa was born April 10, 2013. Honoring Jeff, “Mau Loa” means forever in Hawaiian. The first several months of Mau Loa’s life were spent teaching him how to give hugs and how to be a loving animal. I worked with children and education policy, not horse babies. Recognizing that he needed and deserved to experience life through the perspective of a thoroughbred, on a thoroughbred farm, and with other thoroughbred babies, I sent Mau Loa off to “boarding school” at the farm where he was bred and born. He deserved to run with other horses.
    I spent the following year learning, specifically about the needs of thoroughbreds. The work was hard. I did a lot of stupid things and didn’t understand much that I was looking at, but my boy (as I called him) was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. Mau Loa remains special in that he is Jeff’s dream horse and he launched my thoroughbred farm. I have since had two more beautiful foals, Couch on Fire and Indiola.

Couch on Fire 2014

Hugs from mom Mau Loa, April 10, 2013

    Two more foals are due in spring 2015. Of course, all of this would soon prove too much for a small 6-acre farmette, and I took the next leap of faith.
    In spring, I scouted around for more acreage. Having found this completely fenced beautiful farm, with a lot of lush grass, I quickly put the farmette up for sale. The farmette sold in record time. Both the contract for the sale of the farmette and the purchase of the new farm came within 24 hours of one another. My new farm was meant to be.
    There are a lot of unpredictable moments and events when working with horses and when working a farm. Getting settled in has been like camping on most days. My farm house needs a lot of personal attention, not to mention a new kitchen. I am up at 4 a.m. every morning. I walk the pastures to feed the horses during the dark hours of the morning. Without fail and without a lead rope, one of my horses accompanies me, side by side on our walk to the barn. She loves me. On a clear morning I always take a moment to look at the stars above. I also have to take a few minutes to look for bears and coyote. During the day, an eagle is frequently spotted. Last week I saw a king fisher perched on a tree above my pond. There are tiny little fish in the creek that winds the full length of my pasture. Wilderness is at my doorstep.

Adams Lil Monster

    Franklin Hill Farm is not just a farm, it is a business. To survive, businesses have to earn a profit. In today’s economy, this is not such a light matter. How do I go from manure-graced rubber boots to moving soil, hay, and feed with a John Deere to working with horses to handling unforeseen emergencies and raising well-behaved foals with a degree of grace, all while trying to turn a profit? What jumped over the fence, barreled through the fence, and rolled over it? Who tells me when a horse isn’t where it belongs? Who won’t cross a creek on one side, but will on another? What is that smell? What is that slimy green stuff? And more simply, which cow is my favorite? Many questions. Many more stories.

Sunday Morning October

Copyright © 2014 by Bettina Sperry Bettina Sperry is a business owner and intellectual farmer, educator, and lover of roses and all things botanical. She raises beef cattle, thoroughbreds, and Shar Pei near the George Washington National Forest in the eastern mountains of West Virginia. The grass is always greener at Franklin Hill.