Leap Of Faith

I took the leap of faith and have decided to enter the world of technology and start my very 1st blog. I have done Facebook lives and some really crappy YouTube videos of life on our little slice of heaven in southern NJ. But I have never put my thoughts out there for someone to actually read. I have told my friend Kate time and time again that you cannot make this up. My life is so crazy I need to write a book about it. So here goes.

Our family consists of myself, my great husband, our 5 great kids, 4 dogs, multiple barn cats, chickens, goats, pigs, goats, turkeys, ducks, and too many horses. I will mention everyone as these blogs go on. This 1st blog I just want to share how all of this came to be. I get asked -how did this all start, where did you grow up, what enticed you to make this a full-time career. Are you crazy? Well, yes, I am absolutely crazy and never meant for any of this to happen. This being our farm.

I grew up in Philadelphia, The section of Philadelphia called Oak Lane. It is close to Elkins Park and the north east part of the city. I am an only child and my parents are divorced. My mom was involved with horses when she was a child at summer camp, Green Lane. She was a special education teacher in the Philadelphia School District. She worked with multiple handicapped children on a daily basis and decided to marry her love of horses with the love of providing her students with PT, OT, and speech. We boarded our horses in some pretty crappy places and in some really beautiful barns.

As my weekends were always filled with helping her give lessons and working with her volunteers, I began to really enjoy the barn, the horses, and the freedom I felt when riding. I never ever started out with any type of professional lessons. I was put on the back of a horse and told to hold on. I was about 12 years old at this point.

The barns that we had our horses at were always an hour or so from our house so we could only go to the barn on the weekends. Which meant we were at the barn from early am to late evening. I learned so much from the other boarders, the vets, the trainers. I was amazed that I was given such a cool opportunity.

The lessons my mom gave went on for many years. When it was time for me to choose a career and a college, I was certain that if I told my parents I wanted to play with horses all day they would absolutely say NO WAY. They didn't. Can you guess the response? It was actually welcomed.

At this time in my life the Internet was not big, so college research took place in those really thick college books. Where you could look up an area of the country you were interested, then narrow down your options based on likes and dislikes of a school. We narrowed it down to a program called animal husbandry.

My parents were actually on board for this out of the box idea. My parents both had very steady jobs, both of them were teachers and my whole family and extended family all had normal jobs, doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, business owners. None of them had any animal/vet experience. Nobody owned anything other than a cat or dog. So for me to want to work with horses was absolutely unheard of.

Blog #2, where will me dream of working with horses send me?????