Jimmy Young
How Disney Inspired the MFHA Conservation Award
It was the Disney Company that inspired the creation of the Chronicle of the Horse/MFHA Conservation Award, but for the wrong reasons!
And it’s most fitting that George Ohrstrom III was presented with the Conservation Award at the 2014 annual meeting of the MFHA, for he is connected through his family to the genesis of the award. Ohrstrom currently serves as co-chairman of the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), the respected and influential Virginia-based conservation organization that the Ohrstrom family was instrumental in forming in the 1970s.
The PEC gained national attention when they demonstrated how local grassroots efforts—combined with a clever strategy of enlisting the support of the nation’s most prominent historians—defeated the Disney Company’s efforts to build a theme park in Virginia’s historic countryside in the fall of 1994. At the time the PEC went to war, Disney had already quietly amassed political support in the Virginia legislature, had seduced the local Chambers of Commerce and real estate boards, and had secured the rights and promises of approval to the land they wanted, on the eastern border of some of Virginia’s prime foxhunting country.
Fuss, Fuss
I’ve been grousing about four long rows of round hay bales left in my field. The guys that make the hay usually take the bales right off. But it’s been two weeks, and they’re still sitting there. Now, I’m going to have four long stretches of dead grass. Fuss, fuss.
This morning I took my dog Mara out for a walk as usual, and, glancing over to where the round bales were still sitting, it seemed there was something lying on top of one. Too big for one of the cats and not the right color. I recalled that foxes love to perch on top of round bales. Every warrior seeks the high ground. I stopped, hoping it was what I thought, and sure enough an alert head and two enormous ears fixed me in their sights.
Who Are those Red Ring-Necks?
Anytime I see Melvin Poe, I always make a point to speak to him and show him his Florida strain of the Orange County red ring-neck foxhounds. He’s always so approachable and friendly and, of course, always interested in the red rings. In fact, last year at the Virginia Foxhound Show, I nearly missed one of our classes because I was talking to him just outside the ring. Luckily, Mac came running over and told me to get in there!
Our association with Orange County began in 1996, during our first season, when Kerry Glass, former Master and huntsman of the Norfolk Hunt (MA), contacted Melvin and arranged for us the draft of Orange County Boots, Bundles, and Britches. After our very first breeding to Boots, we instantly shifted our previously tri-color pack to red. Whenever we come to Virginia, we visit the Orange County kennels. It’s a ritual.
