Free Range

The ground at the barn is finally clear enough to start picking up the poop and leftover hay that the melting snow revealed wherever horses had roamed. This includes the general grounds between the back of the barn and the paddocks as well as the paddocks and turn out rings themselves. The 37 plus year old draft horse is often left to wander loose in the general area. This isn't uncommon when there is a long term senior citizen in the barn. Even much younger horses will not wander too far from their stall and source of daily grain, so it doesn't take robust fencing to keep in a really old, slow moving mare.

But while one horse is fine, two or more loose horses will often act like teenagers and find trouble. The people that run Farnsworth Museum in Rockland Maine reluctantly learned this lesson. The Wyeth family has a long history in that region and has been a significant booster for the Museum. At some point the Museum was given the Olsen House, the house and land that is pictured in the painting "Christina's World" by Andrew Wyeth. The descendents of the Olsen family that last lived on the property donated it on the condition that their daughter's horse, a black Morgan named Sassy, would have lifetime tenancy and care.

The property sits on a dead end road out at the end of a point, with the adjacent farm still owned by the same family that owned it at the time of the painting. There are no major roads nearby. As a result, for many years a visit to the Olsen House included a stop to pet Sassy grazing in the the front yard. The women who worked there complained that she would stick her head through a window to try and mooch food when they had lunch. Sassy also had a regular spot in the local Fourth of July parade.

Then one year when we visited the Olsen House, Sassy had a friend. She had been joined in the front yard by a younger buckskin named Nordie. Nordie lived on the adjacent farm, but had been allowed to run free and join Sassy,

Unfortunately for the people up the road who had gardens, Nordie and Sassy got along famously. They would trot up the road and act like giant squirrels, sampling the vegetation in yards and gardens.

After a season of complaints, Sassy and Nordie had to be contained. Sassy was eventually moved to a nearby farm with fields of soft grass for her aging joints. She died after a long and graceful old age. Nordie was still around last summer - when we visited the Olsen House we saw him in a pasture down by the old farmhouse.