Thornapple Farms, LLC

01/08/2025

Wishing everyone a happy new year.

12/06/2023

Advent [5]
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

12/02/2023

Advent [2] Dec. 2
Let a bright light shine around and bless our land.

08/07/2023

We had a great time at Dublin Irish Festival this past weekend. TESS and DOTTIE were superstars.

01/15/2023

TAF Carrickfergus and Tipperary Pippa departed today for their new home with the Cassidy family in Tennessee. Saying an Irish prayer to carry them on their way. Thanks to Janice Temple and Donna Molnar for your help and Dr. Jana Tuckerman for flawless vet service with Pippa's breeding and their travel docs. It takes a village to do it right. Max and Adreanna Cassidy....you folks rock!

10/26/2022

Holly J Butterman this brought Katrina to mind, and you too. 😇

The red mare has had her few days off, on account of being in season and needing a dreamy, dozy rest. Today, the sun came out and all the autumn colours were singing to me, and I had a couple of hours between clients, so I thought we might ride out and look at the view.


She was telling me that she was back to herself: comfortable in her body and in her mind. So I gave her a little snack and saddled her up and hopped on.


Sometimes, when we haven’t been into the world for a while, we can both have a little wobble. I become very aware of my middle-aged body and think that I can’t be tumbling off, not at my age. She can become a little mentally and emotionally unbalanced if I’ve let her go too deep into her comfort zone, and she forgets her coping skills, and she can grow a little anxious.


None of that was there today. We were both blithe and bonny and off we went and the world welcomed us. I made a video of it, because I wanted to take you with us, but there are some more things I want to say. I don’t just want to show you the trees and the colours; I want to show you our hearts.


My heart was bursting - with sheer pleasure, with ease and connection, and with pride in my brilliant, brave girl. She did not put a foot wrong. She hardly required a hand on the rein. At the end, we even did a bit of showing off, and did some walk to trot transitions off energy only. (This never fails to make me feel like the Queen of the World.)


I hadn’t had to do any preparatory groundwork with her. I did the thing which everyone tells me you can’t do: take an ex-racehorse out of the field and go.


We’ve been doing precisely nothing for the last few days. And yet there she was, with her relaxed body and her bright mind and her pin-sharp transitions.


But then I realised we had, in fact, done an awful lot of preparation, in those days of nothing.


I’ve been very conscious of listening to her lately, in the most minute ways. I’d love to tell you I do this every day, without thinking about it, because the habit is dug so deep. But I am aware that I can take her for granted a little bit, and not give her every inch of my awareness. We are such old friends, after all.


Going back to that keen consciousness, noticing every twitch and turn of the head, really seeing her and responding to her - that was what I’ve been doing. And you might think that has very little to do with riding out into the hills. But I think it’s the foundation of everything. I’ve been truly focused on showing up, in all the ways she needs me - not just giving her a bit of love and making her tea, but being absolutely present and absolutely devoted to her, in all her incarnations. That, I think, is the building and rebuilding of trust. And if she can trust me, if I prove myself to her, again and again, then she has that bone-deep confidence which will carry her into the open spaces, even when she’s a bit out of practice.


There is a part of me which sometimes thinks: surely all this stuff can’t really work? Some of it sounds a bit hippy dippy, and airy fairy, and off with the woo. It’s the polar opposite of the schooling and training I learned as a child. Yet there it is, working. And I adore things which work.


We were happy today, and I want to write that down. I want to honour that and mark that, because that shared joy is what it’s all about.

10/22/2022

Thornapple Farms, LLC is pleased to announce that the Cassidy family of Tennessee have acquired 2 rare Kerry Bog Ponies: TAF Carrickfergus (gelding) and Tipperary Pippa (mare). Pippa is in foal to our stallion,The Bog Prince, for a 2023 foaling date ! Congratulations to this wonderful family! And to the ponies for a super new home.

10/16/2022

What a beautiful essay. Farming is the essence of life.

09/20/2022

Every day Dmytro, a 20 year old boy from Kharkiv, bakes 300 loaves of bread for the Ukrainian troops. He lives at his place of work and turns on music every time the air alert siren starts to wail to continue his daily work.

09/16/2022