Tag: fair

As A World Turns

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all photos from the Rose Carousel of Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island, British Columbia
all photos from the Rose Carousel of Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island, British Columbia

Under its canopy, in the shade it casts,
turns a world with painted horses,
all from a land that lingers a while
before it disappears.
Some, it’s true, are harnessed to a wagon,
but all have valor in their eyes.
A fierce red lion leaps among them,
and here comes ’round a snow-white elephant.

Even a stag appears, straight from the forest,
except for the saddle he wears, and,
buckled on it, a small boy in blue.

And a boy in white rides the lion,
gripping it with small clenched hands,
while the lion flashes teeth and tongue.

And here comes ’round a snow-white elephant.

And riding past on charging horses come girls,
bright-eyed, almost too old now for this children’s play.
With the horses rising under them,
they are looking up and off to what awaits.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Jardin de Luxembourg”

As a child, I could not resist a ride on a carousel, waving each time I came round.  As an adult, I can not resist watching a carousel, waving back.

It is a world that turns and turns without going anywhere, except in the imaginations of the riders who fly higher, leap farther, jump huge gaps, race fastest.  It becomes a world that goes anywhere and everywhere.   The swirl of surroundings and magic of music raises each child up, up, speeding faster and faster to catch whatever may await them.   Then the world slows, settling and settling until each waving child becomes the stationary waving adult who stands their ground fast faithfully waiting — remembering how going round and round without going anywhere was the most wonderful feeling in the ever turning world.

You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around – and why his parents will always wave back.
~William D. Tammeus

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The Sparkle That Lingers

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Lea and Marlee
Rosie playing with her toy while Marlee entertains kids on her back
Emily Vander Haak hearing a secret from Rosie
Emily VH and Marlee cuddling at the fair
Haflinger display right before the fair opened

Another fair is over, the Haflingers are back in their own beds, as are we.  What was remarkable about this year was the heat requiring fans and misters for the horses (over 90 degrees several days of the week) and the number of children we put up on Trillium and Marlee’s backs for their first ever opportunity to “ride a horse.”  The reality was, there wasn’t any riding to be done, only sitting, but a “pony sit” was so popular at a fair with no pony rides, we at times had a line up of 10-12 children waiting their turn.

I had never seen so many children, some as old as ten, who had never even sat on a horse before.  In a rural county, that is a sad fact of life.  There are fewer families able to afford to keep a horse, or who know someone with a horse to share, and the liability of pony rides as a business has jumped insurance to the point where they simply aren’t offered in carnivals or fairs any longer.  Horse camps and riding lessons are too expensive for many families in tough economic times.  These are children who will never know the wonder and challenge of feeling a large animal under them, learning to work together as a team and to be confident enough to ask for and expect obedience.

So we started putting kids up on the horses, for a minute or two each, just so they could sit on those broad Haflinger bare backs, hanging on to manes rather than a saddle horn, and have a basic lesson in mounts and dismounts.  They learned to find favorite scratch/itch spots on the horse’s neck and withers, learned to move slowly and talk softly, remembered to say thank you with a stroke on the shoulder.

My favorite part, over and over, was watching those children as they first settled into place behind the withers and then looked out at their parents and siblings standing out of reach outside the stall, with the line up of other children waiting their turn.  Their eyes would get large and sparkly as they felt the horse warm, strong and soft beneath them, and that spark ignited a smile that never stopped as they realized this was a “real” horse, not a video game, or a bouncy plastic horse on springs.  There was a time for them to be speechless as they took in the sensation, and then becoming very talkative, if I asked them questions, like what the horse felt like to them, or what it felt like to be up so high.  They would sometime share the most remarkable thoughts in those few minutes.  It felt almost like a confessional.

There were a number of special needs kids, some autistic, some with cerebral palsy and other physical limitations.  They struggled to relax their limbs onto the horse’s back, but once in place, muscles finally cooperating, they never wanted to leave.  One Down’s Syndrome child, so excited to sit on a horse for the first time, couldn’t stop hugging her neck and kissing her mane.  He didn’t even want to sit upright because it would mean losing the hug that meant everything to him.

Our mares were very patient with the process, as we gave them regular breaks.  They enjoyed the hugs and kisses given so freely, and blew back plenty of their own.

Within our rapidly urbanizing and risk-averse society, our children are losing any direct connection with larger animals aside from the typical house dog or cat.   As long as we are able to do this, we need to offer this opportunity, brief as it is, to hundreds of children during fair week.  They need to feel the warmth of the horse’s muzzle, the expansion of their ribs with each breath, the flicker of the skin when touched lightly.  They need to know the respect and honor owed to these animals who have adapted to life with humans, to serve us and work alongside us.

The spark in these children’s eyes keeps the fire from going out for me.   The memory of Haflingers lingers.  There will always be good reason to keep coming back.

It’s “Fair Thee Well” Time Again…

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Jessie, Kelsey and Chesna bowing during their grandstand performance

It is Fair time again, a traditional August activity I’ve cherished most of my life, and we celebrate the Centennial of the Northwest Washington Fair this week.  As I worked today preparing our horses’ stalls at the Lynden fairgrounds for moving in our Haflingers tomorrow, I could remember being at this Fair not quite fifty years ago, tagging along with my father as he did his job supervising FFA teachers in the region.   Although he had taken a state job in Olympia with the Department of Agriculture, he was responsible for the Future Farmers of America programs and teaching in Whatcom, Skagit, Island and Snohomish Counties, so made regular visits to all the high schools.   He never missed any of the county fairs as that was the place the FFA students competed, learned, judged and developed their skills and character.  I came along because I loved going anywhere with my dad that had to do with animals, and I absolutely loved the fairs.  The Lynden Fair, in particular, was my favorite because it was one fair that my dad felt safe about my taking off and exploring on my own.     Hanging out in the cow barns was okay, but the fair was a contained microcosm of the wider world, in my view, and I wanted to absorb every bit of it.   There were kitchens with competitive food preparation, table settings and an array of preserves and desserts.   There was the sewing building with girls busy at handwork and modeling their designs.  There were Grange displays artfully designed into intricate maps with positive messages about farming and community.  There were rows and rows of flowers, each bloom more fantastic than the last.  There were huge pumpkins, and perfect ears of corn and collections of kewpie and Barbie dolls.  There were intricate quilts and embroidery and tatting.   I watched children show their poultry and rabbits, learned about all the different breeds of sheep and pigs, and observed what it took to be a gracious winner and loser.

By the time I was eleven, I had the good fortune to win a weanling colt in a radio essay contest and part of the commitment the winner had to make was to join 4H and participate in the Thurston County Fair.  This was a dream come true for a kid who considered sawdust a favored brand of perfume.   I accepted the responsibility of not only training and preparing my horse, but learned how to be a part of a club with shared duties, including getting up at 5 AM to get to the fairgrounds in time for the morning cleaning.

My husband-to-be had no idea what life-long commitment he was making when he agreed to tag along as one of a group of friends I invited to go to the fair together, and after that day spent riding the ferris wheel, talking about our shared farming backgrounds and simply getting to know each other, we were together forever.  I don’t think we’ve missed a fair in thirty years, and for eighteen of those, we have become the exhibitors, watching fair-goers pass by as we dwell long hours in the noisy, smelly, bright and bold community that forms for one week of the year.

It begins again this week,  as we move in, settle our horses, and get back into the early to rise, late to bed routine.   Over the years, our children and their friends have taken the bulk of the responsibility so we pop in and out as we need to.    I’ll breathe deeply of the smell of sawdust, horse sweat, corndogs and curly fries and remember the freedom it represented for an eight year old girl allowed to explore a safe and fascinating world all on her own.  I’m still exploring, seeing with the eyes of an eight year old now housed in a fifty six year old body.

And that’s what brings me back, year after year.

Fair Weather Farewell

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For the first time since 1992, we are not preparing this weekend to spend the week displaying our Haflinger horses at the Northwest Washington Fair in Lynden.  BriarCroft has been a consistent presence at this fair for almost two decades, promoting the Haflinger breed in a well  decorated display, providing 24 hour a day coverage for the horses for the 6 days of the fair. We begged the Fair Board for 5 years to allow us to display at the fair, and they finally said “okay, here’s the space, build it yourself” and we did! We were not there for classes, competition, or ribbons. We were there because people enjoyed our Haflingers and we enjoyed the people.

But this year, it was not to be.  Our faithful trick riders Kelsy and Chesna who performed daring feats on their Haflingers in front of the grandstand crowds are busy with their horse training in Tenino, our adult sons have headed off to work in Tokyo, Japan, and college in Chicago, leaving us short of the crew needed to man the display for the week as Dan and I have to work our day jobs.  It was a painful decision to make, but it was simply not going to be possible to do it this year.  I will miss spending time with our dedicated young helpers–my daughter Lea, and the Vander Haak family–Emily, Christopher and David.  Over the years we’ve had many young helpers spend the week with us, now many of them grown with children of their own.

Every year since 1992, we evaluated whether we had the energy and resources to do it  again–for the initial 6 years when Dan and I were the sole farm doing  the display, it meant a week of vacation from work, and very very long days, juggling our small children as well as several horses. Then, with the help of 3R Farms and Teaglach Farm as well as older children, we were able to rotate shifts, still work at our “real” jobs part days, share duties and expenses together. The older kids watched the younger kids, the inbetween kids did most of the horse stall cleaning duty, and the adults sit and shoot the breeze.

Did this sell horses for us? Not really. But it sure did create good will for the fair visitors who depended on us every year to be there with horses that they and their children could actually pet (and sit on ) without fear, who enjoyed our braiding demonstrations, and our various Haflinger trivia contests with prizes.

Most of all, why we continued to do this so long, was that we provided what  dreams are made of. I’m not sure how many times a day there would be a bright eyed child who approached our stalls, climbed up on the step stools and reached up to pet a Haflinger nose or neck and looked deep into those big brown Haflinger eyes, and lost their heart forever to the breed. They will not forget that moment when a horse they had never met before loved them back. Haflingers are magic with children and we saw that over and over again.

Our first year, in 1992, a mom and her 6 year old son came up to our stalls, as do some  10,000 people a day, and spent a long time petting the horses and talking to them, and enjoying them. They walked off, with the little boy looking over his shoulder at the Haflingers until they turned a corner and went out of sight. An hour later they were back and spent more time with the Haflingers. I offered the little boy a chance to sit on a Haflinger, and he agreed readily, and sat and sat and sat, playing with the mane and petting the shoulder and neck and was simply in heaven, quietly dreaming his own dreams on the back of a horse. His mom told me that they lived in a suburb near Seattle, but always spent this particular week in August at a local beach cabin, and the fair was one of their favorite activities each year. Her son Gary had never had an opportunity to sit on a horse before.

Next year, they were back, and Gary was a little taller, but still a quiet boy, and he kept dragging his mom back to the Haflingers, and she’d sit and visit as he’d sit on the Haflingers. He watched as we watered the horses, or fed them hay, or cleaned their stalls, and pretty soon he was asking if he could do the scooping, or dump the buckets or brush the horses. So he became, out of his own initiative, a helper.

By the time he was 8, he was spending several hours at a time with us at the stalls, taking his turn at the chores, and his mom, trusting that he was in good hands, and that he certainly wasn’t going to wander away from the Haflingers, would check back with him now and then to see if he wanted to go on rides, or see a performance, and his response was always “no, I can do that anytime, but I don’t get to see Haflingers very often!” He would talk a little about his hope someday to have a farm where he could raise Haflingers, and one year even said that his folks were looking at property to buy with acreage, but apparently a job for his dad didn’t materialize, so he remained a city kid in reality, even if he was a future farm kid in his heart.

He was one of our regular kid helpers every year until he was 12 when he started turning out for junior high football, and the football summer camp coincided with our fair week, so we’d only see him briefly on Saturdays as he got into his teens. He’d stop by to say hi, pet the horses, catch up on the Haflinger news, and because he only had a few hours to spend at the fair, he’d head off to other things. I really missed him and his happy smile around the stalls.

When he was 15, I missed seeing him because I was working when he stopped by. When he stopped by at age 16, he strolled up to me and I found I was looking up at this young man who I had to study to recognize. I’m a tall woman of 5’10”–he was at least 4 inches taller than me! He told me he wanted to come by because some of his best summer memories were of spending time with the Haflingers at the fair and he wanted me to know that. He thanked me for welcoming him and allowing him to “hang out” with the Haflingers. He told me his hope and dream someday was to live somewhere where he could raise Haflingers, and he was working hard in school so he could make that happen. He was a  4.0 student and the first string quarterback on his high school football team. I was as proud as if he was my own son.

This young man received a full scholarship to play football at a major university, and over four years waited his turn to be the starting quarterback.  Once he had his chance, after only a few games, he was tackled hard, sustaining a neck fracture which thankfully resulted in no permanent damage, but his college football career was suddenly over.

I hope someday to see Gary again–it would be great to see this tall accomplished young man who so recently was a shy quiet little city boy of 6, draped across the broad back of a Haflinger, and lost in his dreams of a “someday” Haflinger of his own. This is why we’ve done what we have at the fair all these years. It was for people like Gary who made a connection with a horse and never ever forget it. I’d like to think that a little bit of who Gary is and what he is becoming is because he had a dream of a horse farm that he held onto all these years.

Perhaps we’ll be back again at the Lynden Fair in the future if we can organize enough helpers.  We do hope the fair-goers miss the friendly golden horses with the big brown eyes that help make dreams come true.

Wholly Weaned

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The usual peace and quiet on our farm has been anything but the last few days. The time has come to wean foals from their mothers and they are all protesting loudly about the separation, day and night. This is always a difficult time every year, rattling my senses more than usual because I am in the process of being weaned as well. Their cries echo deeply in my unsettled heart. As the mares stand at the field gate calling to their babies stowed safely in the barn, I know they want them back for their own comfort–mostly to relieve swollen painful udders. They also need to know their babies are safe and content. This feeling I know all too well.

We’ve recently delivered our second child back to college, even farther from home than our first child chose to go. It was a difficult leave taking in many ways, primarily because I wasn’t as prepared as I hoped to be. I still want that comfortable feeling of knowing my children were tucked safely under my wings. It just doesn’t seem possible they don’t fit there as easily as they used to. My children certainly understand that better than I as they are the ones feeling crowded and anxious to leave, ready to embark on independent adult lives.

An unexpected preparation took place recently when we took several of our Haflingers to a regional fair for a week’s stay. We moved into covered outdoor stalls that stand empty 51 weeks of the year, but for this one week, the stalls are decorated and built up with fluffy shavings, and the horses shined to a gloss. The night before the fair was to open, I was sweeping the area in front and discovered a barn swallow’s nest had been built in the rafters right above where the public would be standing to pet our horses. The pile of bird droppings had heaped high on the cement and the nest was full of chirping fledglings all prepared to produce more where that had come from. It was an inconvenient and potentially messy spot for a nest’s front porch so I carefully lifted it and its chirpy contents from the front rafter and placed it on a back rafter above one horse’s stall. It was a minor move of about 10 feet, but that proved to be a major obstacle for two dedicated swallow parents who had five noisy hungry mouths to feed. I hoped I had not completely disrupted this little family’s world.

It took about an hour for the swallow parents to decide they couldn’t bear to listen to their displaced babes’ cheeping any more, so they swooped into the stall with insects to feed five gaping mouths, putting aside their indignation at the semi-eviction and the objectionable human and horse smell all over their home. They felt compelled to care for those offspring, no matter what the dangers may be.

It became quite the show stopper during the week as people leaned over the stall gates to pet our horses and a swallow would swoop right past their ear on its way to the nest. We watched those five babies grow fluffier over the course of the week, and several times had to rescue one or another from a horrible fate under a horses’ hoof as the birds bumped and jostled each other out of the crowded nest. By the end of the week, they were not yet flying but they were able to sit independently next to the nest on the rafter beam and a few days later when I went back to check on them, they were already gone, the nest feather-lined and poop filled, looking a bit forlorn and terribly empty, no longer a comfortable fit for a family that had outgrown it.

A barn swallow is more resilient than I am about letting their offspring go. Even my mares are slowly settling into the knowledge their youngsters are now on their own and perfectly capable of taking care of themselves in the big world. I am not nearly so settled with my children’s transition to adulthood. Yet I know it must come. It’s not just about the inevitable resolution of the uncomfortably swollen udder, but in time to feel the calm and quiet fullness in the heart of the wholly weaned.

photo by Harry Rodenberger
video by Harry Rodenberger