On Saving Farms, Horses, Kids and Rural Culture

Family farms are going the way of full service gas stations. Horses are being shipped to slaughter outside of the country. Kids grow up in a vacuous culture of ipods and computer games. Yes, so far this has been one sorry excuse for a century.

With enough vision and dedication we can help turn these connected crisis around. Education and citizen action can help keep farms afloat, increase the number of horse owners and give more kids lives with meaning through horses. We can produce healthier kids, healthier horses, and healthier communities.

The key to doing so is to turn portions of unprofitable farm land into natural horse care boarding facilities. The first step is for everyone that cares about kids, horses, and family farms to read and completely understand two great books, Joe Camp's, Soul of a Horse and Jamie Jackson's, Paddock Paradise. These two books show both how a horse benefits from natural horse care and how to develop a facility that promotes a natural lifestyle for horses.

Family farms, particularly those close to urban or suburban centers, can create affordable boarding opportunities of varying size and can even do so on their most unproductive crop land. In many cases they can produce their own hay and increase their profit margin. The cost of converting open cropland to a natural horse care facility is minimal. There is no need to build a barn, stables or any other form of maximum security incarceration for horses. If shelters are absolutely necessary simple, three sided shelters which do not trap a horse inside an ammonia filled cell provide a healthy alternative to stables.

It is important to understand that every natural horse care facility need not perfectly mimic those set out in Paddock Paradise but that the principles of movement, forage diets, and fresh air are vital to the horse's health and well being.

How many parents out there would love to have their kids on horses but have no space for them and cannot afford the monthly board at a modern equine incarceration facility? The only way that we can find out how many such families exist is to give them access to enlightened natural horse care facilities.

What can keep this from happening? Two things, apathy and the intense opposition of the established horse world. That means that everyone that is willing to take on this crusade has to be prepared to thicken their skin, increase their knowledge, and work to make their communities a better place for horse, kids, and farmers.

Here is the beginning of an action plan for those who do care.

Become absolutely familiar with the literature on natural horse care. Do not be intimidated by "experts" from the established horse world. After one reads Soul of A Horse and Paddock Paradise one will already understand more about a horse's physical and emotional needs than do many of today's "real horse professionals."

Meet with your county extension agent. Educate that agent on the advantages of a natural horse care facility for the local farmer. Speak with a rural insurance agent concerning the cost of insurance for the services that a board provider at a natural horse care facility would actually need. Determine the cost of fencing per acre for a facility.(No barbed wire, electric fencing and suitable wire mesh fencing is entirely appropriate, metal "T" posts would require some form of capping system to make them safe)Research the cost of boarding horses in you area as it currently stands. Determine how many kids are in school in a fifty mile radius of a proposed facility by simply looking up enrollment in local schools.

In short, know the answer to the questions that any farmer is going to ask right off of the bat. How much will this cost me to build? What about insurance costs and liability? How much will it cost me to provide care for each horse and how much will the market bear for a monthly board fee?

Then develop a program that, with the help of your local extension agent, that can be presented to local farmers. Work with your local extension agent to develop a brochure/flyer that can be made available to farmers on natural horse care facilities.

We will provide a short DVD at no cost that can be used at informational meetings with local farmers. (Yes, home made and cheap but you will not be using it at the Cannes Film Festival.)

Get evangelical about this! My weekdays consist of prosecuting children and adults that commit crimes against children. I know how much these kids would benefit from the entire experience of having horses. I look into pastures where obese horses stand around wearing their pasture blankets in 50 degree weather. I drive past land that was farm land for 200 years but is no longer possible to farm at a profit.

Then, I get home to my horse lot where I am met by happy, healthy, dirty horses that eat grass, hay and browse and never enter a stable or wear a shoe. I watch as kids go out to the pasture, catch their horses, saddle their horses, mount up on their horses, ride their horses, and improve their lives.

We can make this happen all over the country. All we have to do is work.

(Editor's note: This message does not apply to hose who have more important things to do than saving farms, kids and horses.)