Kelviden Farm

The history of Kelviden Farm

The 90's

(This page is still in progress)

In December of 1991, I started working at GlanNant Farm to pay my way through college.  In May of 1992, Mollie Butler was diagnosed with cancer.  I can not even begin to tell you the unbearable pain this caused.  Mollie was one of those people who was immortal.  She hadn't aged a day in the 13 years I had ridden for her, and she was still so young at heart.  The idea of her dying was absolutely incomprehensible to me.

I am very grateful to be able to say that I was given the chance to share the summer of 1992 with Mollie.  I've never been a very religious person, but that summer made me believe in a higher power.  Everywhere we went, we won blue.  Mollie had never done anything in a small way, and she was going to go out in style.  We showed GlanNant Serenade and GlanNant Yellow Brick Road the most that summer.  Brick won the AHSA high point championship and both ponies won the national championship in their respective Pleasure divisions.  It was as though some one up there wanted Mollie to know that she would be missed and she would be remembered.

I taught for one more year at GlanNant before the farm officially closed.  I was still in college, but I had grown so attached to my students, that I couldn't let them down.  I went out and bought a few horses, found a local boarding stable and began what was then known as Kelviden Equestrian Services.

Slowly the business began to grow.  When I graduated from Cornell in the spring of 1995, it looked like horses were what my future held.  I had never intended to do anything having to do with riding, but the cards were dealt.  I came to J and B stables in January of 1994 with 3 horses, Annie, Rosie and Daisy.  I'm proud to say I still have all three.  By that summer I purchased a little brown horse by the name of Scooter.  In December I purchased Scooters niece Shannon.  I February of 1995 I bought a wonderful little half Welsh pony named Peachy.  And from then on I had a perfect little school string.  Bambi joined us in the fall of 1995 and Tilly and Ally came in the summer of 1996.

Well at this point my board bill was over $25,000 a year and it became pretty evident it was time to turn Kelviden Equestrian services into Kelviden Farm.

I officially moved into the current property on February 28, 1997.  I was only 23 years old.  Looking back I think I was a little crazy as well!

The weekend I moved in I bought Reggie.  The following winter I bought Breezy.  In the spring of 1998, I sold Scooter, that plain brown horse, for what seemed like a small fortune.  Unfortunately I learned that money doesn't go as far in reality as it does in our dreams.  But nevertheless, Scooter paid for countless things around the barn.  But most of all, Scooter funded a rather spontaneous trip to Texas that summer, where I bought four wonderful mares from Rosmel Farm.

So Ellie, Leah, Maggie and Star came to live with us that summer.  Ellie was pregnant with what would become Kelviden's first foal.  Appropriately named Mollie.

The history of Kelviden Farm

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