08/14/2025
My favorite independently owned coffee shop opened up another location in my town. OK let’s be honest, it’s actually a DONUT shop that also sells coffee, and man these donuts let me tell you…lol.
Anyway, as soon as they opened I went in and bought a dozen super fancy donuts and a couple of coffees. Now, these aren’t cheap donuts, probably by the time I was all said and done, I spent close to $75 on donuts and two coffees. Yeah, they’re that good. When I got home and my boyfriend saw the half empty box (I handed them out to people, I swear!) and the size and elaborateness, he wanted to know how much I spent. Sheepishly I (lowball) told him, and as the fiscally responsible one, he was horrified. “Why’d you spend that kind of money on DONUTS?”
Whyyyyyyy?
I mean, besides that they’re incredibly delicious? Have you ever had a chocolate drizzled churro donut the size of a man’s hand before?
But also why- ‘cause if I want businesses like that in my town, places I like to go to, I’ve got to support them. Yes, even if that means I hand out donuts to everyone else while reminding myself that my horses require me to keep at weight lol.
And that’s your horse girl Sunday sermon parable, a few days early. If you like your boarding barn, and your lesson horses, and your open land to continue, you’ve got to support it. Just like buying donuts, if you want it there on the good days, you’ve got to support it on all the regular days too, it’s not only when you want to treat yo self.
I think it’s hard for clients to understand that most farms survive on the forms of income that are secondary to the board cost. Week to week your lessons matter, and we need that financial support as much in the off season (hello January) as the show season. Lesson horses eat all year long and any barn owner will tell you board doesn’t pay the bills. Never mind the horses, land alone is expensive to own and maintain and most farm owners would do better selling out to some wealthy stock market hotshot and moving to a condo, but instead we doggedly hold on year after year, cause ponies are…well…as addictive as sugar, which is as addictive as cocaine…so I’ve heard (I do horses- clearly I don’t make enough money to do both).
But Ali… you say…it’s winter….it’s cold/dark/windy, I’ve got seasonal depression, it’s the Christmas holiday, I want to ski Vale or whatever your inner monologue is telling you right now. I know it’s very tempting in the off-season to cut back on lessons and clinics to save money, the season seems months away right? But if there’s no farm to go to when the season rolls around, what have you actually saved? I’m telling you, horses and horse sports will be gone from the landscape if not supported. Sure, there’ll be pay to play competitive barns for the elite 1%, but you and I in the middle class will be s**t out of luck.
And fineeeeeee if the mood doesn’t suit you to lesson in temperatures below 30° then maybe pay for your horse, or a lesson horse, to have an in house Magnawave session (cause your crazy trainer own the machine, I mean of course she does lol) or a training ride. We’re not looking for a free handout, we’re looking for work to keep the doors open until summer comes round again. So as we get into the last quarter of the eventing season, and the back to school shopping starts, please think of your horse farms, and how you can support their business until spring comes round again.
And when it does, and everyone is chilling in the barn making plans for the season after a fabulous team jump lesson, who knows, there might also be coffee and fancy donuts. 🍩
