Classical Dressage Art in Motion

It's always fun to play with the 'big boys' in any sport. Who wouldn't like to try their hand at handling the best of the best. Many companies make a ton of money by offering folks the opportunity to do just that.   This Grand Prix horse with his GP rider Paul have worked together for over 22 years..still going strong.   For a considerable fee you can visit a racetrack and take a turn driving your dream Ferrari. Under supervision of course. Sailing the seas as part of an experienced crew for a few hours aboard a racing yacht that cuts through the waves like butter is also an expensive 'experience' that can be purchased if you have the right access. What about riding a Grand Prix dressage horse? Can you go out and do that, even if you can't afford to buy one for yourself? The answer of course is yes. It is entirely possible to work with a dressage trainer that has a suitable Grand Prix schoolmaster available for lessons. Naturally, this time will be spent und...

  Organic Hay at Willowview Hill Farm, NY   It's been twenty years (or thereabouts, as Peter Wright would say in his Yorkshire accent on The Yorkshire Vet, my latest binge watch on Acorn), since we began proudly producing and marketing our organic hay . There have been years before now when supplies of hay were low in our region of the N.E. U.S.A. One year it was the awful slimy army worms that devoured much of the County's hay supply, drought, monsoon summer rains have all played their part in Mother Nature's symphony of the unexpected. A farmer's lot in life. One neighbor even had his second cut horse hayfields trampled and chowed down by a herd of wandering bison that had escaped their keeper for months.  But in 2020, along with everything else that went sideways, the year brought little rain and much drought to the N.E. Connecticut was as dry as the dust bowl, grasslands laid bare in MA, VT and NH. Here in Stamford, New York, in the micro-climate of heaviest rains i...