Fourth Installment
Betsy and friends escape frozen Virginia for a week of hunting in warmer climes. We bring you Installment Four of her daily blog, exclusive to Foxhunting Life.
Tom Neel and Gene Hough out with Whiskey RoadRained all night long Friday, and into the morning Saturday. I picked up Tom at one a.m. in Columbia, and I think we arrived home only a few minutes after our little Hunt Ballers. Over breakfast in the morning, it was reported that Don was the belle of the ball (see photo from Installment Three). He danced every dance and was a most charming escort for our three bedecked ladies.
We decided to hack out in Chime Bell Chase (one of the horse developments in Aiken) with landowners Paula Michaels and Clyde Smith (from Great Falls, Snickersville/Fairfax members), trainer Steve Stienhoff of Bluemont, Bob Best of Fairfax, and several other Whiskey Road and Why Worry members. The developer, Woody Baxt, met us afterwards and explained that he’d purchased the property southeast of town in around 2004, and it was “love at first sight.” He saw potential with an equestrian development and created a matrix of fifteen- to twenty-acre properties with a fourteen-mile trail system that encircles the entire neighborhood and tie-ins between each parcel.
After riding, we attended the evening affair at Equine Divine, an equestrian-themed art and unique housewares store downtown. Several people reported that the hunting Friday had been soggy but the rain was primarily light.
Sunday dawned lovely and light, cold and frosty but with that promise of a warm afternoon. Whiskey Road met at Donnie Morris’ farm past Blackville, a full thirty minutes southeast of our place, so we hustled to get out of the gates. Joining us this day was historic cemetery restoration expert Gene Hough (Pennsylvania’s Radnor Hunt and Whiskey Road member) who I put on PB. Tom rode X, Don rode Frosty, Maggie rode Savanna. I inherited Tip when Dawn begged off.
There were more than 120 riders in three fields following (an estimated) fourteen couple of Whiskey Road’s level English and Crossbred pack. The Crossbred are mostly from Ben Hardfaway’s Midland lines. The temperature was sixty degrees as we set out. Delicious. Sunny. Light breeze from the southwest.
Hounds moved off from one of Donnie’s hayfields drawing north toward the swamp, past one of his oat fields. Donnie, who always joins the hunt when they meet there, was mounted on his gaited western cow pony. He filled us in on the crop rotation (winter rye overseeded on most, Bermuda grass drilled into another) as we watched and listened to the hounds worry a cold line toward the orchard. We crossed Holman Bridge Road into higher ground, but the hounds couldn’t carry. Huntsman Joseph Hardiman put them into a covert past a house that had, as Tom put it, melted into the landscape, and they immediately struck and pressed, fast, west back into another swampy area. After a full half-hour run, hounds lost and Hardiman called them in. They struck once again in a swampy area favored by the local game—primarily coyote—and they set off back toward the orchard. After the run, we called it a day, and the huntsman collected the pack with the help of his wheel whips.
As a unit we caravanned back northwest to Gus Schickedanz’s farm, Longleaf Plantation, east of Aiken. Gus, who turns eighty-three tomorrow, hunted first flight today. He’s an amazing horseman, born in 1929 in Memel, Germany, then occupied and considered part of Lithuania. The family farm in Memel was 300 acres near the Russian border along the Baltic Sea. The area was occupied by the French from 1919-23.
As the Russians approached in 1944, the Schickedanz family left the farm, taking horses and wagons with them. He came to Ontario, Canada in 1950, creating Schoenberg Farm, which means “Nice Hill” in his native German. Three brothers followed him to Canada, and they became very successful residential developers.
Schickedanz took up Thoroughbred racing in the 1960s, with “some real cheapies,” he said, improving the stock in the early 1970s with well-bred fillies acquired from Canada’s famed Windfields Farm (birthplace of classic sire Northern Dancer.)
Some of his best horses have been Canadian Sovereign Award winners Glanmire (1997 sprinter), Langfuhr (1996 sprinter) and Wando, 2003 Canadian Triple Crown winner and Canadian Horse of the Year. Homebred Woodcarver won the Queen’s Plate the same day his Clever Response won the Nearctic Stakes at Woodbine.
Wando stood with his sire Langfuhr at Lane’s End Farm in Versailles, Kentucky, but Wando is now in Canada.
Whiskey Road held their famous puppy auction after lunch, selling a dozen of their new entry for an average of $600 each. Our Dawn “purchased” two puppies.
Tom, Jackie, and I attended a lecture that night by Dr. Jeffrey Burden, who did his PhD in Architecture and Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of California at Berkeley. He worked extensively on excavations in Egypt, Greece and Italy, as his research focused on the work of architects and craftsmen in the ancient world. He was Architect for the School of Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome and Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame and Clemson.
Dr. Burden spoke on the architecture and history of the convergence of English and American equestrian building. He compared and contrasted Middleburg, Virginia; Saratoga, New York; and Aiken, South Carolina as communities built around, upon, and over the horse world.
It was a near sell-out crowd at the historic Green Boundary Club, a private dining club. The lovely white brick house, designed by Willis Irvin, was built in 1927 by William Zeigler, board chair for the Royal Baking Powder Company. In 1956 Seymour Knox and a group of winter colony friends bought the eight acres and the big house to create a private club.
After the lecture we hurried back to our place at Full Gallop to catch the Super Bowl and chow on local pizza and wings Don got for our impromptu gridiron party. We plan on hacking tomorrow in the Hitchcock Woods in the morning and taking in the Ouisha McKinney trunk show in the afternoon. Big fancy benefit for the Hitchcock Woods Foundation tomorrow night. To be continued….
Posted February 7, 2011
Maggie Johnston (Old Dominion and Snickersville), Tom Neel (Old Dominion), Paula Michaels (Snickersville), Don Palus (Santa Ynez Valley), Dawn Cline, Betsy Parker (Old Dominion), and Marge Fowler (Snickersville) hack out on Chime Bell Chase