We're the Sanders family: Tom, Linda, and our kids Jenny and Matt. We've had horses on this farm since Tom's folks bought it, and we've been boarding other people's horses since 1979, when a neighbor asked if her mare could stay with ours for the winter and never quite took her home. We keep 24 horses in the barn and up to 10 on pasture board, which is as many as we can take care of the way we want to, and we live right here on the place, in the white house at the end of the drive, so there's always somebody home.

We are a quiet, friendly, working barn. Most of our boarders are pleasure riders, trail riders, a few who show at the local open shows, and a lot of kids who are learning. We aren't a fancy show barn and we don't pretend to be. What we are is a place where your horse is fed on time, turned out every day, and looked at, really looked at, by people who know what a horse looks like when something's wrong.

Jenny put this page up over the summer (she's 16 and says we needed to "get with it"), so now you can read the rates and the rules before you come out. Come out anyway. The coffee's on in the tack room.

Also available: a stall for a visiting horse or a horse in transit, $12 a night. Layup or stall rest care (hand walking, wrapping, medicating) by arrangement. Trailer parking, $10 a month. We don't charge extra for "turnout" or "hay" or any of that; the price is the price.

Board is due on the 1st of the month, and we ask for 30 days' written notice if you're leaving, which is fair to the next person on the waiting list. There's a waiting list for full board most of the year; pasture board usually has an opening or two.

The main barn is a center-aisle barn with 24 stalls, built in 1986 to replace the old bank barn (which is still here and holds the hay). Wide aisle, good ventilation, a heated tack room, a wash stall with hot and cold water, and lights that Tom finally replaced in 1998 so you can actually see your horse at 6 p.m. in January.

The indoor arena is 70 by 160 feet, attached to the barn, with a sand and rubber footing, a kick wall, lights, and a viewing area with a bench and a heater for the parents. It is not heated (nobody's is, around here) but it is out of the wind and the rain and the mud, and it means you can ride every day of the year. Boarders can ride any time the barn is open; lessons have the arena at scheduled times, posted on the board every Sunday, and we ask that you share the ring politely when a lesson is going on.

Outside there's a 100 by 200 outdoor ring, a 60-foot round pen, and about three miles of trails through our back woods and along the creek, which connect to the neighbors' trails with their permission. Most of our boarders ride out more than they ride in the ring, and we think that's good for horses and people.

The pastures are about 40 acres in all, split into six fields we rotate so there's always grass. Board fence around the front fields, high-tensile and electric on the back ones, all of it walked once a week.

Our instructor has taught here for eight years and teaches beginners through intermediate riders, English and Western, ages 7 and up. She is especially good with nervous beginners and nervous parents, in that order.

• Private lessons, $25 for a 45-minute lesson on one of our school horses, or on your own horse.
• Semi-private (two riders), $18 each.
• Group lessons (3 or 4 riders), $15 each, one hour, for kids who've had a few privates first.

Lessons are Tuesday through Saturday, afternoons and evenings during the school year, and mornings too in the summer. We have five school horses, all of them sensible and none of them young. Beginners learn to catch, groom and tack up before they ride, every single lesson, because that's most of what having a horse is. Helmets are required for every rider in a lesson and we have loaners.

We also run a summer day camp in June and July for kids 8 to 14, a week at a time, and it fills up by April. Sign-ups for 2000 will start in January.

These are posted on the tack room door and every boarder signs a copy. They're not many and every one of them is there because of something that happened.

1. Barn hours are 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Lights out and gate closed at 9. If you need to come earlier or later (a sick horse, a show), tell us the day before.
2. Close every gate and every stall door behind you. Every time. Even if you're coming right back.
3. No smoking anywhere in the barns, the arena or the hay shed. Smoke in the parking area if you must, and take your butts home.
4. Helmets are required for every rider under 18, in the ring or on the trails, and strongly recommended for everyone else.
5. Sign the board when you take your horse out on the trails, with the time you left, and erase it when you're back. If you're not back by dark we come looking.
6. Dogs stay in your car or on a leash, and not in the arena at all. Our two barn dogs live here; yours doesn't.
7. Children under 12 must be with an adult in the barn and the arena. This includes brothers and sisters of lesson kids.
8. Clean up after yourself and your horse: sweep the aisle where you groomed, pick out the wash stall, put your stuff in your locker. Cross-ties are for grooming and tacking, not for parking a horse while you chat.
9. Don't feed anybody else's horse anything without asking. Some of them are on special diets and some of them bite.
10. Ride in the arena with the door closed and call "door!" before you open it. Pass left shoulder to left shoulder. Slower riders on the inside track. Nobody lunges when three or more are riding.
11. Every horse coming in needs a negative Coggins test within the past 12 months and current vaccinations (we ask for at least tetanus, Eastern and Western encephalitis, rhino and flu, and rabies), with the papers before the horse gets off the trailer. New horses spend their first two weeks in a stall and a private paddock before going out with the group.
12. Board is due the 1st. After the 10th there's a $25 late fee, and we don't like charging it.
13. Be nice. To the horses, to each other, to the kids, and to us. We have asked exactly two people to leave in twenty years, and it was for this one.

Farrier: our farrier comes every other Wednesday, starting at 8 in the morning, and does most of the horses in the barn on a six-to-eight-week rotation. We hold the horses; you don't need to be here, and you pay him directly (a trim runs about $25 and a set of shoes about $65 right now). Sign your horse up on the farrier list on the board. If you use a different farrier, that's fine; you just need to be here to hold, or arrange it with us.

Vet: our regular vet's practice comes out the first Tuesday of every month for routine work: spring and fall shots, Coggins, teeth, sheath cleaning, that sort of thing. Doing it all on one day means one farm call split among everybody instead of each person paying their own, which saves about $30 a horse. Sign up on the board by the Sunday before. Emergencies are, of course, whenever they happen; if we can't reach you, we call the vet first and you second, and you'll agree to that in the boarding contract.

Worming: we worm the whole barn on the same schedule, every eight weeks, rotating the type, and it's included in full board. Pasture boarders buy the tube ($6 to $8) and we give it.

Fall shots this year are Tuesday, October 5. Sign up by October 3.

Tom grew up on this farm and does the fencing, the hay, the tractor, the arena footing and anything that breaks. He rode Western as a kid and rides about twice a year now, and says that's plenty.

Linda runs the barn: feeding, stall schedules, the medicine cabinet, the books and the boarders. She's been around horses since she was six and she is the one who will notice your horse is "off" before you do. She rides an old Quarter Horse mare named Dolly, mostly on the trails.

Jenny, 16, does evening feed, teaches the day camp in the summer, shows her Appaloosa gelding Chief at the open shows, and made this page. She would like it known she was not paid.

Matt, 12, does morning water buckets before school, mostly without being asked, and is in charge of the barn cats, of which there are currently five, and the two dogs, Rusty and Belle, who will greet your car.

We are the only people who work here. If you see somebody in the barn, it's one of us four, a boarder, or the vet. That's how we like it.

The best way to know if a barn is right for you and your horse is to come look at it, unannounced if you like, and see how the horses look and whether the water buckets are clean. We're on Meadowbrook Road about four miles out of town, past the covered bridge, the farm with the red barns and the white house on the left. If you'd like a proper tour and a cup of coffee, e-mail or call and we'll set a time.

Phone: (555) 555-0174 (the barn phone; it rings in the house too)
E-mail: [email protected] (Jenny checks it every night after feed and prints it out for Linda)

Openings right now (September 1999): two pasture board spots. Full board is full, with three on the waiting list. We expect a stall or two to open in November when the college kids take their horses home.