Where It Begins Again
W.L. Ranger and the Promise of a Foundation Stable at Musicwoods Farm
If you've followed Musicwoods Farm for any length of time, you know the Haflinger story. My parents were lifelong riders and that got me started as a junior rider in the AHSA Hunt Seat Equitation and Jumpers back in the day. In the late 90's my mother had a significant fall from a horse named Ozzie, one I had retired up to the farm, who tripped and broke her arm when he stood up , with no fault to a great horse. That was the moment they decided riding had simply become too much. They were not people who could sit still, though, so a few years later they did what any sensible horse person does when one door closes: they found another one.
They took a trip to Scotland. And in Scotland, they encountered something that changed everything. We had made a call to a friend and they were picked up in a grand coach in Edinborough, and given a tour, a lesson and a driving experience by John Stewart — the Master Coachman to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II — and whatever they felt in those reins, whatever feeling came through the leather that afternoon, it followed them home across the Atlantic. They came back to Musicwoods Farm and bought a pair of Haflingers. Stash and Teddy first, then Nate, Thunder, and eventually Mike — five golden horses over the years, with their flaxen manes and their steady, generous natures. Together they pulled a bird-in-hand wagonette everywhere from the Rockefeller estate in Acadia National Park in Maine, to the Tubbs Parade in Lenox, to the Rockefeller Kykuit estate down at Tappan Zee. And through these very fields, of course. This farm rang with the sound of hooves and harness bells for years.
My father's favorite quote and an Austrian folk proverb about Haflingers: "They are princes in front and paupers behind."
Then, three years ago, my parents died — at 93 years of age, after 71 years of marriage. Years before the end, the horses had been sold and the carriages let go; it had simply become too much to keep. So when I moved home two years ago to begin the long work of restoring this place — the barns, the pastures, the paddocks, the whole beating heart of it — I made a quiet promise to myself. Before too long, the sound of hooves was coming back to Musicwoods Farm.
The road to Ranger was not a straight one. It started at an auction — a horse I could only see online as the far-lead of a 4 in hand. Nevertheless caught my eye. Something in the way he moved. But I wasn't about to buy a horse I couldn't put hands on and drive myself in an Amish Action in PA. I walked away.
Ranger on the far lead, closer here, of a four-in-hand — the horse that caught my eye before I even knew his name
Weeks later, I learned that Hopeland Haflingers in Stevens, Pennsylvania, had purchased him. They'd put a few weeks of careful work on him, assessed him thoroughly, and listed him for sale. That was all I needed to hear. I drove down to meet him. Spent time with him. Liked enormously what I saw — the eye, the temperament, the willingness. Spent a night Bird-In-Hand, went to the Carriage Shop where my Dad had bought his Wagonette and they sent me to checked out a safer one horse cart at Shady Lane Carriages where i saw a safer front loading cart than I owned and may go back and buy/trade. Drove home that afternoon, called Willow Creek Equine Veterinary, and scheduled the pre-purchase: full exam, X-rays, the works.
W.L. Ranger HBA at Hopeland Haflingers. We hadn't been on the road five minutes when a truck blew past and backfired — the kind of sharp crack that sends lesser horses sideways into the ditch. Ranger's ears flicked. That was it. A moment later we were crossing an interstate overpass, traffic rumbling beneath us, and he walked on as if he'd done it a hundred times. Calm, forward, unflappable. By the time we turned back up the lane, the decision had already made itself. He has a great gate — and the kind of mind you spend years looking for.
On Monday he passed. Today, May 14th, I sent the wire transfer. W.L. Ranger HBA, a 4½-year-old Haflinger, 15 hands, with a personality that feels immediately like home, will be arriving at Musicwoods Farm shortly. I won't pretend I didn't feel something catch in my chest the moment the transfer went through.
But the story has a second chapter, and this is the one that stops me cold when I think about it.
On my way home from Bird-In-Hand — still warm from meeting Ranger and restored wagons, still running the visit back through my mind — I spotted a listing for a Bird-In-Hand wagonette when I stopped for gas and bite. Same style my parents drove and in Berkshire County. Too large for a single horse, yes, but I couldn't not go look.
Four days later I was standing in front of it. The seller told me the carriage had passed through few hands over the years. But that it had belonged to an older couple — charming, she said — who had kept a pair of Haflingers.
I bought the wagonette.
My parents at the reins — carriage driving was always part of life at Musicwoods Farm
I cannot prove it was theirs. The color has been repainted; something small has been added along the way. But it is the exact same cart — same profile, same proportions, same quiet dignity. I have spent more than a few evenings just standing in the barn looking at it, trying to decide what I believe. And honestly? It doesn't matter whether it was their carriage. What matters is that it felt like one. And that it is here now, where it belongs.
So here is where we stand. Ranger is coming. A Meadowbrook cart is already here, ready for the patient early work of starting him in earnest. The wagonette — painted over and altered slightly, but essentially the same carriage that carried so much joy — is waiting in the barn. The pastures are green. The trails into Greylock State Reservation haven't gone anywhere.
The plan is to find Ranger a companion by the end of the summer. A matched Haflinger, close to his size and temperament, so that we can go back to doing exactly what this farm has always done — putting a pair of golden horses into traces and heading out across the fields and into the woods. The way my parents did it. The way it was always meant to be done here.
Some things take time to come back around. Some losses just sit with you. But sometimes, if you're patient and you pay attention, the world offers you a small thread of continuity — a horse with the right energy, a wagonette in a stranger's yard — and all you have to do is reach out and take hold of it.
