Headwaters Stable Tour

My sister and I spent a hectic and wonderful weekend immersed in all things equestrian on September 13th and 14th. The Hills of the Headwaters Tourism Association had the brilliant idea of organizing a stable tour in their 400 square kilometre jurisdiction. Kirsten Ball kindly asked if we would set up a booth at one of the tour's 15 farms to showcase our equestrian photography and web design. We were fortunate enough to be paired with Beaverwood Farm owned by Kirsten Brunner. Their farm is set amongst the rolling hills west of Erin, Ontario and they raise and train sport ponies for riding and carriage driving.

Beaverwood Farm is a busy operation, with many students and boarders on the property. The pastures are filled with well cared for foals and horses and they have 4 stallions on the property.

Helen Amanda Russell provided natural horsemanship demonstrations for the visitors.

Despite the remnants of Hurricane Hannah, and the impending arrival of Hurricane Ike, the weather was fine for September, overcast but hot and humid. My sister and I chatted with many enthusiastic visitors and we made some interesting contacts.

Even though we worked the Headwaters Stable Tour on Saturday at Beaverwood, we decided to spend Sunday driving around the countryside visiting the horse farms. Our first stop on the map was the closest farm to our base in Palgrave - Cedar Mills Classical Riding Club. Frank Grelo hosted an hour long show for the audience featuring his students and their horses performing classical horsemanship and dressage on Luisitano horses. Frank finished off by working with a stallion in hand and then performing a mounted dressage demonstration.

This stable has 25 Lusitano horses including 10 stallions on the property and they are all impeccably behaved in the ring, performing together with no fuss. Frank finished the performance with a demonstration on one of his own stallions, performing the dressage moves of passage, piaffe, and levade.

We moved on to Sher-Al Farm owned by Frankie Chesler Ortiz and Juan Ortiz in Adjala. This farm is a newer facility for world class show jumping horses, with an efficient and massive new stable.

We squeezed in one last stop at the Hockley Hills School of Horsemanship which offers English and Western riding lessons. It was a well kept barn with an interesting arena filled with what looked like cedar chips as footing and nice looking stalls at one end.

See MORE PHOTOS from our weekend.

Congratulations to the Headwater Hills Tourism Association and all of the stables for a job well done. We know that everyone worked very hard to make the Headwater Stable Tour a success and we hope to see another one in 2009.