Hunter Hollow Farm

08/03/2026

🐴 The average horse lives between 25 and 30 years — but some keep going well into their 40s, and the ones who do carry a particular kind of presence.

Caring for an old horse is different from caring for a young one. The urgency of training fades. The competition goals fall away. What's left is simpler and, in some ways, more demanding: the daily work of keeping an aging animal comfortable, known, and not alone.

Senior horses need their diet adjusted — less rich grain, more easily digestible forage. Their teeth change shape with age, making it harder to chew long hay, so soaked beet pulp and senior feeds become staples. Their joints stiffen in cold weather; many benefit from turnout on mild days, gentle exercise, and anti-inflammatory support in the hard months. Their immune systems become less robust, and regular veterinary dental care matters more than ever.

But what they give back cannot be measured in metabolic terms.

An old horse knows you. Not just your routine — your moods, your hesitations, the particular sound of your footsteps coming down the aisle at dusk. They have learned you over years, and they carry that knowledge in the way they turn their head when they hear you coming. In the way they exhale when you rest your hand on their neck.

They give patience, presence, and a quality of stillness that younger horses haven't earned yet.

What is the oldest horse you have ever known?

07/24/2026

❤️🐎☺️ IYKYK

“Farm work doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t make you anything. It reveals you.
There’s gym strong and then there’s farm strong. They’re mutually exclusive. The toughest women you’ll ever meet spend their days on a farm.

There are more uses for twine than you can possibly imagine. You can tie up a hole in a slow feeder, fashion a tail strap for a horse’s blanket, mend a broken fence and use it as a belt.

“Well that certainly didn’t go as planned,” is one thing you’ll say quite a bit.
Control is a mere illusion. The thought that you have any, at any given time, is utterly false.
Sometimes sleep is a luxury. So are lunch and dinner. And brushing your hair.

If you’ve never felt your obliques contract, then you’ve never tried stopping an overly full wheelbarrow of horse manure from tipping over sideways. Trust me, you’ll find muscles that you never knew existed on the human skeleton to prevent this from happening.

When one of the animals is ill, you’ll go to heroic lengths to minimize their discomfort.
Their needs come first. In summer heat and coldest winter days. Clean water, clean bed, and plenty of feed. Before you have your first meal, they all eat.

When you lose one of them, even though you know that day is inevitable, you still feel sadness, angst and emotional pain from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. And it’s a heaviness that lingers even though you must regroup and press on.
You’ll cry a lot. But you’ll never live more fully. You’ll remain present no matter what because you must. There is no other option.
You’ll ask for so many miracles and hold out hope until the very last.

You will, at least once, face-plant in the manure pile. You’ll find yourself saying things like, “we have maybe twenty minutes of daylight left to git ‘er done” whilst gazing up at a nonspecific place in the sky.
You’ll become weirdly obsessive about the weather.
You’ll go out in public wearing filthy clothes and smelling of dirt, sweat and p**p. People will look at you sideways and krinkle their noses but you won’t care.
Your entire day can derail within ten seconds of the rising sun.
You can wash your coveralls. They won’t look any cleaner, but they will smell much nicer.

Farm work is difficult in its simplicity.
You’ll always notice just how beautiful sunrises and sunsets really are.
Should you ever have the opportunity to work on a farm, take the chance! You will never do anything more satisfying in your entire life.”

-Author Unknown

06/22/2026

And that is 100% true.

The riders who improve the most are not always the most naturally gifted. They are the ones who can have a terrible ride, put the horse away, and come back the next morning without carrying it. 🤍

What do you do when a session falls apart on you?

04/10/2026

❤️

There were maybe eight of us in the arena that morning.

Just a handful of his most devoted students, standing quietly by the rail, watching the old man walk across the dirt toward the mounting block.

He was 83. Maybe 84. I can't remember now. What I remember is the way he moved. Slow, deliberate, like every step cost him something but he was willing to pay it.

Quatar was already tacked. A big bay gelding, 20-something years old, with kind eyes and a neck that had learned to arch without being asked decades ago.
___________________________

We all knew what this was.

His last ride.

He'd been saying it for months, but none of us believed him. Men like him don't retire. They just keep going until they can't anymore.

But that morning, standing in the early light with the arena dust hanging in the air like fog, I believed it.

One of the younger students, maybe 19, still green, still hungry, whispered to the woman next to her: "What do you think he's going to do?"

Linda, the older woman, didn't answer. Just shook her head slightly.

I wanted to tell the girl: He's not here to perform for you.

But I didn't. She'd figure it out.
___________________________

He mounted from his step with the help of one of his grooms.

Took him a full minute to settle into the saddle, adjust his reins, find his seat.

Then he nodded and the groom stepped back.

And he walked.
___________________________

That's it. He just... walked.

No warm-up trot. No collected canter. No piaffe, no passage, no extended anything.

He walked a 20-meter circle. Slowly. Quietly.

Quatar's ears were soft, flicking back toward him every few strides like they were having a chat no one else could hear.

The old man's hands were still. His legs barely moved. His seat, my god, his seat, it was like he'd dissolved into the saddle.

One lap. Two laps. Three.

The young student shifted her weight. I could feel her confusion radiating off her in waves.

This is it? This is the last ride of a man who trained Olympic horses?
___________________________

But Linda, she understood.

I saw it happen.

Her face went still first. Then her eyes filled. Then her hand came up to cover her mouth and she turned away so no one would see her cry.

But I saw.

Because I was crying too.
___________________________

See, here's what that young student didn't understand yet:

After 65 years of training horses, 65 years of piaffe and passage and Grand Prix and podiums and students and lessons and competitions, you don't need to prove anything anymore.

You don't need to remind people that you were once great.

You just need to walk with your horse.

Just two old partners who've spent decades learning how to talk together, saying goodbye the only way that matters.
___________________________

He only rode for maybe 15 minutes.

Then he halted. Sat there for a long moment, one hand resting on Quatar's neck.

His horse stood perfectly still. Not tense. Waiting for the next command that would never come.

Just... there.

Together.

The old man dismounted, slowly, carefully, with the groom's help again and stood next to his horse for a minute, forehead pressed against Quatar's shoulder.

None of us moved.
None of us spoke.

What the hell do you say after witnessing something like that?
___________________________

Finally, he turned and walked toward us.

The young student opened her mouth, maybe to ask a question, maybe to say something polite, but Linda put a hand on her arm.

Don't.

The old man stopped in front of us. Looked at each of us, one by one.

Then he said, voice quiet and rough:

"It was always about the walk."
___________________________

When he left, the groom led the horse back to the barn.

We stood there in silence, watching him go.

The young student looked at Linda and asked, voice shaking:
"Why are you crying?"

Linda wiped her eyes. Laughed a little.

"Because I just spent twenty years trying to make my horse do something impressive," she said. "And I just realized I never learned how to walk."
___________________________

I think about an 83-year-old man choosing to spend his last ride doing the simplest thing a horse and rider can do together.

Walking.

Not because it was easy.

Not because it was all he had left.

But because after sixty years of making horses dance, he finally understood:

The walk was never the beginning.
It was always the destination.

03/22/2026

🥰❤️🥰 Not just a horse....

03/05/2026

01/24/2026

Despite, the weather, the animal still have to be fed.🥶

01/23/2026

🙏🏼

A Farmer’s Prayer Before the Freeze

Tonight, we ask for mercy in the cold.
For wind that softens its grip,
for temperatures that ease just enough
to let life hold on.

Watch over the animals tucked into straw and wood,
the quiet breaths in barns and coops,
the ones who trust us without words.
Keep them warm where our hands can’t reach.

Bless the fences, the heaters, the water lines,
the lamps glowing through the dark.
Bless the tired hands that checked one more time,
and the hearts that won’t rest until morning.

We’ve done what we can.
Now we place the rest in Your care.
Carry us through the long night,
and let the morning come gentle.

Amen 🤍

12/25/2025

❤️

Morning thoughts about Christmas. 🤗❤️