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COUNTRY LIFE DIARY
Three Years in the Life of a Horse Farm
by Josh Pons
This diary originally appeared in The Blood-Horse magazine from 1989 through 1991, and was published in book form in 1992, with illustrations by Ellen Pons. The diary was awarded the 1992 Eclipse Award for journalism.
"Animals are the first inhabitants of the mind's eye. I thought about the animals in my young son's life, the mares he stares at, silouetted at sunset... The boy keeps looking out the window, watching the mares graze. He is transfixed. There is more here than meets the eye. "
Today is Saturday, February 4, 2012
But, on this date in the Country Life Diary:|
Monday, February 4: Many of the old-time breeders fastidiously maintain a split-page pedigree
binder, to view at a glance inbreeding or outcross strengths of a prospective
mating, to recall precise comments about the resulting foal. The top half of the binder displays
the five-cross pedigree of various stallions. The bottom half of the split pages is for the broodmare band.
Mr. Janney could flip the pages back to the nineteen-thirties. to his three foundation mares. Orme Wilson, in whose crimson silks Ritchie Trail races, carries his binder with him whenever he inspects our stallions. Hal C. B. Clagett, perennially a leading Maryland breeder, ponders matings in the warmth of his Weston Farm study, frayed edges of his black binder encasing dog-eared pages, the length of gestation penciled in for every foal. I have watched these men as they consult their binders. Their faces wince when they recall youthful mistakes. They smile when good horses leap from the page. The binder is their almanac, their diary, their legacy to those who come after them. From Country Life Diary, Year Three (1991) |
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