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This week we've definitely found a diamond in the rough. Right here in the middle of
Lehigh Valley, Northeast Pennsylvania, only about 45 minutes from Philadelphia, 20 minutes
for Jersey, lies one of the best equestrian facilities on the East Coast. Welcome to Willow Brook Farms.
When I was a little girl, I would see pictures
of my grandmother and my grandfather riding horses. They loved horses. They were horsemen.
I was dying for a horse and I begged for a horse and at 8 years old, my father bought
a horse. Then the next thing I know, he bought another horse and so we had two horses. He
put an ad in the paper for a stable boy. And Bobby Anthony, he answered the ad, and the
next thing I know, he asked my Dad can he start riding my one horse, Breezy, and that
fall he entered the horse in the Pennsylvania National Horse Show in Harrisburg. He won the Open
Stock Horse Class on Breezy, he was just a great gelding. But that was just the start
of it. My Dad and I just thought, okay, we're doing it. We're doing the horses. And I kept saying "Dad, we're
going to do the horses. Let's go!" He agreed and so the next thing I know, he bought Joe
Cody, from Virginia Harper, and she lived on Montauk Point, Long Island which was at
one point, all of Long Island, was the oldest cattle ranch in the history of the United
States. The whole island was. She ended up owning the last ranch with cattle there and
Joe Cody was a cutting horse. My Dad bought him and that was the start of Willow Brook.
All the great horses that came from here. Hapgood Sal was the mother of Easter and Sappho
and Joe and Easter Sappho, Hapgood Sal, Paprika Cody, Highproof, all the world champions are
buried at the top of the hill right over there. That's kind of where it started and here we
are today trying to get it back to where it was.
It was originally a group of farms that were bought by my father-in-law and it was many
years ago, his son, my husband, inherited the property. So we're very, very blessed
and happy to be here. Very, very nice. This is a beautiful part of Pennsylvania.
He hired me in 1957, he hired me and when he hired me, I was hired to take care of a
couple of grade horses and take the kids to school, and odd jobs. It's like everything,
eventually it grew, grew and grew. I won a Reining in New Jersey one time on a horse.
I couldn't show in a registered class but they had an Open Show Class so I entered that,
that's all I could enter. So then they decided the top four horses of the Junior Reining,
Senior Reining and the Open Classes had to go in a stake. I said okay. So I called Mr.
Fuller and said "It's nothing. I'm not going to win anything but they said I've got to
go in the Stake Class tomorrow." He said "Okay." So I got up the next morning and went to the
barn and he was there. C.T.?
Yes, CT. I couldn't believe it. I said "What are you doing here?" He said "I've come to watch you ride."
I said "Okay." So they held the Class and when the smoke cleared, I won the Class. I beat Joe,
I beat Dale, I beat just everybody. And I won it! We went out and went home and that
was the start of the reining right there.
Well, I'll tell you, the one thing is that my Dad had very talented natural athletes. Bobby Anthony was very naturally gifted as
a horseman and a trainer. He really had a way with horses. He really did. The raw material
that he was given to work with with Joe Cody and all those great young horses. They were
so trainable. Gene Bradner, he actually was the one who developed and created a good sliding
plate, he was at Willow Brook. The first sliders were Gene Bradner putting sliding shoes on
these horses so they could go out and really slide. The team that my Dad had was just amazing.
It's so great because they're here today. A lot of them are here today.
It's pretty cool.
There was a shoer worked for Autan Illinois. He actually came up with the game plan and Bob and Mr. Fuller flew him in here. He was
doing a couple reining horses out there by Chicago and he gave me the idea and then Bob
went down to Bud Beeston, where he was at Morgan Freeman's, who owned Blondy's Dude
at the time in Oklahoma. And they went to Bud Beeston to get a horse shot. He sent me
a couple notes on how to improve on the sliding plates and I followed his recommendation and
that's where we went with rolling the toes and pulling the toes out and extending the
shoes out the back and all that. So actually it wasn't directly me that developed it, it was
Rolling Bone, Bud Beeston, and I capitalized on it by refining it a little more. That's
how we got to the sliding plates. But without the sliding plates, I don't believe these
horses would go out there and slide 25 - 30 feet. We have a blacksmith shop at the end
of that old indoor arena down there and I just had one guy call me and tell me that
he remembers me being down in there at twelve, one o'clock, in the morning trying to get
the horses right so he could go to a horse show the next day. There were a lot of 12,
1 o'clock nights, believe me. And we could change a horse 3 times in one day sometimes
if it wasn't working.
He came to me one day and he said "How much would it cost to buy Joe Cody? Mr. Harper wants to sell." So I gave him just a ballpark
figure, he says "Okay, I just wanted to know." So a half an hour later he came back and said
"We own Joe Cody." He bought him. That was that. And then he bought a bunch of mares,
he's say to me "I'd like this horse to be a world champion." That was it. It was two
year olds and he decided when it's 3 or 4, it's going to be a world champion. And that's
the way it happened. That's the way it started. Then they went on and on and on and now days,
it's a national thing.
Joe Cody, Bob was here and the horse died the day he came. It's ironic that it seemed like the horse waited until he came and that's
how that was. Very successful. We were both very successful and very blessed that we're
still here and we can still do what we want to do. Okay?
I mean, from the time I begged for one horse 'til now, our whole family has been involved.
My brother, when we grew up, we rode 4-H together, we did little tiny local shows, and then he
went off to do motorcycle racing, dirt bike racing, and I kept with the horses. He came
to visit me in Colorado about 20 years ago and I was married to a roper and we put my
brother on one of our old rope horses and he came out of the box and that was it. He was back
with the horses. We sent that rope horse back here, he's in the pasture right here at Willow
Brook. He's 30 some years old, he's still here, but that's what got my brother back
into the horses. He got hooked on the roping. And now he was doing the reined cow horse.
Steve, we're all out here as farmers and ranchers to make a living. The best way to
help that is saving money. Tell me a little bit about the HayMax and how it's going to
save me and you and everyone out there a little bit of money.
Well there's many styles of this type of feeder out there. This is just one of the many. Basically
the way this works is you're going to get about a 33% savings from your hay. So what
they say is for every 3 bales, you save a bale. The nice thing about this feeder
is it keeps the hay up off the ground. On a typical feeder, you've got the hay on the
ground and where it sets on the ground, it will mold out. Cattle and horses are not going
to eat it. It also takes that bale and instead of having it right beside the opening where
the animal grabs, when it pulls the hay out, half of it falls on the ground and they stomp
it in. When they grab that mouthful, half of it's going to fall inside and still stay
inside the feeder and so they can still eat that feed while it's still inside. It's got
the sheeting on top which is really nice on a feeder of this style. The sheeting keeps
the animals from coming over the top and grabbing it so where they have to grab it is from the inside.
It's all a pull and grab so what they have
in their mouth is what they're eating, what drops stays inside this line, pretty much
another feed trough at the bottom as well. Yes sir.
I think the last Reining here was in '95 and it's really super to have it back. Holly
taking the place and making it back to what it was and everyone's here today and it's
so great to see everybody here and everybody's all excited. It's like a reunion, it's like
a home reunion. Everyone's just running around and it's a great day. When we left after the
last horse show here, everybody had tears in their eyes. We weren't sure what was going
to happen and we drove back today and everyone's crying for a whole different reason.
It's just great. It's a great day. We're having a Freestyle Exhibition tonight.
And the Freestyle is reining of course, written to music and there are some non-pros and there
are some open riders and it's a fun class that NRHA has offered and everybody really,
really enjoys it. It's a good crowd pleaser. It's fun for the horses and it's fun for the
people and it kind of lightens it up. It's a nice thing to have in the evening because
sometimes the people that don't really know much about reining, if they try to watch a
pattern, they don't really understand what's going on but all of a sudden there's music
to it and they're really interested in watching it. I think they learn a little bit more about
it because they see the music and they see the spins and they pay attention to it because
of the music. I think it's a really good promoter. I've had a lot of people over the years that
have come and wanted to learn reining just because they saw the Freestyle. From other
disciplines too, dressage people, hunter people, jumper people, western pleasure people. They
say "I saw that Freestyle, I really want to do that." And they eventually do it but they
start learning all aspects of it and it really is a crowd pleaser. I think it's a really
good way to promote the reining to the general public that doesn't really understand much
about it. It will be a lot of fun here tonight. I think if you have a passion for reining
horses, or horses in general, it doesn't even have to be reining horses, because a lot of
other horses came from here, not just reining horses, they bred horses that went on to do
other things, I think if you have any passion for horses, it's like going to Graceland to
see Elvis, if you like horses and you like reining horses, you best get in your car or
jump on that airplane and come in here and check out Willow Brook because it's a great
place to see and I think you should put it on your bucket list so you can say "I was
at Willow Brook." It is a great place. I think that's a good way to put it.
*** Pieper came here in 1985 and that's when they wanted to hire a resident trainer rather than sending the horses out anymore. So he
got here in '85 and then he started getting everybody that was working here and breaking
the colts and all of us, he started teaching us how to get the horses a little bit further
and take them on further and it was a great deal. We all had a lot of fun. There was one
time we had 60 head here in training plus Fuller's, C.T.'s horses, so we had 6 or 8
people riding. It was a full staff. We had long days. They were great days but we had
long days, that's for sure. It was good. It was good.
When we got horses and Bob Anthony was Champion at Open Stock Horse Show in Harrisburg, my father
got a spark to do something with the horses. That's what sparked it. He had a vision,
he had this vision about quarter horses and competing and promoting them, doing the back
of the Journal. He was a very good businessman. He always had a vision of what he wanted and
this is it. He made it happen. So you have to have a dream. And he had a dream and he
made it come true.
Everybody stopped here, all the traders stopped here. It was just a constant revolving door of people in the horse business that you get
to know. It's more of a recreational factor here now with running reining, working cow
horses, we used to run ropings here, USTRC Ropings, back about 10 - 12 years ago. There
was an activity here every weekend after we got out of the breeding business.
I think, as far as the other trainers, I just look forward to being here. There's just
something about this place that is reining that just when you're here, and you're showing
here and riding here, and working here and being here, they're excited just to be a part
of it again. It sort of is where reining came from and a big part of the beginning. Being here
just makes you feel like you're home. So it's a great feeling. I think that's about the
best way I could put it.
Well by brother, he was actually very successful with the reined cow horse. He was, I believe, Champion on the East Coast with one of his
horses. He won a lot of big events and was a good rider and did very well. He was visiting
his daughter in Santa Barbara and a truck hit their rental car. A truck was passing
a tour bus on Route 1, which is two lanes, my sister-in-law was killed and my brother
had traumatic brain injury from that. That's why I'm here. I'm the oldest and it's my
family. It's my passion, the horses, and Willow Brook. I want to make it come back to what
it was in a different way. It will be different. We don't have the stallion breeding, we are
not raising horses, but we're going to put on a lot of horse shows, this is a horse show
venue. We love the reining horses because that's what my dad did so we're going to keep
focused on reining, reined cow horse, we'll have hunter and jumper shows here. We'll
have a lot of different things. We're going to have weddings, we have a special place
for weddings. It's going to be a profit making business. It's gotta pay for itself. So that's
the goal. What happened to my brother was a tragedy, a family tragedy, and I felt that
it was my, not only responsibility, but it was my honor to come back for our family and
for the farm. Where I grew up, where I was so blessed to grow up here, with the horses
and wonderful parents and it's my turn now. So I'm here and when you're faced with hardships,
you have a choice. Everybody's going to cry, everybody's going to kind of curl up in the
corner for a little while but you gotta stand up and you have to put the next foot forward.
Look around you, see how lucky you are. Really, even when bad things happen, you have to count
your small blessings. See how lucky you are that you can take the next step forward, that
you can make a difference, maybe for someone else. I think when you can help other people,
it puts your sorrow aside, you then become a useful, functioning person in our world that can help.
That's what my Dad taught me. My Dad taught me that.
I know Bob Anthony, or I, wouldn't be where were at, Bob Loomis wouldn't be where he's at. It all started here. Right here.
I think everything we owe to Mr. Fuller. Whatever I win or however my children win or do, it's
to Mr. Fuller. I think that's the end right there.
He was a unique individual. A good-hearted soul, generous to a fault, and made so many
friends. Loved the horses, he loved the horses. He had a gift of putting a great trainer with
good horses and always knowing the right thing to do. The other thing he did, he bought the
back cover of the Quarter Horse Journal, locked in the price for 20 years, so every time that
journal was either face up or the other way, you saw Willow Brook Farm. He was kind of a genius
to promote and project his wishes. Everyone loved him. I loved him. I wish he could be
here today. It's been 20 years since we had a reining at Willow Brook and we're really
happy to have the reiners back here. And they're happy to be here. I always think that my Dad
is looking down from above and saying he's really proud of what's going on here. I can
hear him say "You go, girl!" Looking forward to a future here. Looking forward to getting
these horses back and making this place really rock. That's what I want to do. Make it pay
for itself. Go to willowbrookhorses.com and we're on Facebook and there's a schedule of
events and there's a lot happening here. We're going to keep it going. So, that's it.