Historic Homes

In December, I wrote a post about some of the beautiful barns that are close to where I keep Abby. There are also some beautiful, brick historic homes within that same radius.

Home #1

Like this one at Cassins' Christmas Tree Farm. 

This is a front view of Cassins' home. You can see the barn to the left. The home sits on a small rise which is why that three story barn looks small in comparison.


Home #2
This next home is tucked away on a back country road that is not paved and difficult to navigate, even in warm weather. Most people avoid the road and do not know the fascinating story about this home's history.

Back in the late 1800s/early 1900s it was an inn! I only know the story because my mother, Fern Honeywell Martin, was a local historian and authored several books on our area's history. How I wish I could remember more of what she told me about this place!


Home #3
This next home is on the same road as the Cassins farm and about a mile north of them.

I know nothing about it, and only discovered it a few years ago during winter when the leaves were on the ground and I could see the home from the road. It's not as grand as the other homes are, but certainly the family that lived here were prosperous as most of the old farm homes in the area are made of wood, not brick.

Home #4
This home may once have been a parsonage at one time or even a church as there is an old cemetery behind it with an ancient wrought iron fence surrounding the graves.

 You can see a rectangular date marker in the center between the two upper windows.

The home/church/parsonage was built in 1898.

An interesting couple of notes on this brick building is that it is catty corner to Cassins and that it sits next to the Potawatomi Trail of Death that went through West Lafayette in 1838.

Home #5

It was hard to get any pictures of this home. It is located on a curve on a busy road. I checked carefully for oncoming traffic behind me before stopping and snapping the photos.

 A view from the side.  Like homes #3 and #4, it is just a short distance from Cassins. This is another home for which I have no information, but it sure is beautiful!


Home #6

 Located across the road from my high school, this old beauty is very familiar to me. I saw it every day throughout my teen years as I attended school.

 I even cantered my horse, Cee, through this field a time or two, and once we hit a hidden patch of ice under the snow and went sliding, heart in my throat!


Home #7

Is this charmer an old schoolhouse? A grange hall? (There are several grange halls still standing in the county.)

 It's now used as a home. You can see that the city is encroaching on this one - see the new homes in the background?

"Dist. No. 9, 1899" is what the date marker says. I think it must have been a grange hall as schools had not been put into districts (or corporations) back then.

Like my mother, I love history. But the history of these homes also includes horses as they were all built at a time when the horse was the main mode of transportation, used for farming, and other purposes. I like to imagine what they looked like 100 years ago, fresh and new, with horses in the pastures surrounding them.

If only they could talk and share their stories!

Variations: Bay Running Foals

Due to the holidays, it's been a while since I did a post on variations within my collection. The holidays are over now, and all my kids and their families have gone to their own homes, so I have time to pull out some models, photograph them, and then take a closer look, comparing and contrasting them to each other.

This post will look at Breyer's Running Foal in bay - a long running color of twenty-five years or so on this mold.

Running Foal #1

His four socks are very high on both sides of the model. This is an early piece - in the very earliest versions, the off hind hoof was pared down for stability.

Pared hoof on left, chalky bay Running Foal hoof on right.

(As an aside, I find it very interesting that my woodgrain, glossy dapple grey, and wedgwood Running Foals all have the pared hoof while my gold charm one does not.)

 He's pretty unremarkable, and in an orangey bay that is not to my taste.

 Hooves are the old black version that Breyer used to do (which I love)

and there is some pinking in his ears and on his nose. The eyes, like the hooves, are very black and have been glossed, and he is a semi-gloss, although it does not show well in the photographs.

Running Foal #2

 I like the bay color much better on this guy.

 Like the first foal, he is also a semi-glossy model. His socks are much lower than the first piece.

 Hooves are very black but the off hind is not pared.

He has some yellowing, but you can still see the pinking in his ears and on his nose.

An interesting note: I acquired this guy from eBay in 2014 with his original box. I took him out for display and stored the box.

Running Foal #3

 This guy is definitely a chalky!

The Running Foal in chalky bay is very common, and I got him from my friend, Teresa Rogers, a year ago.

His socks are very low and there has been no hoof paring on him, but you can see some excess paint/gunk that is common on the bottom of chalky models' hooves. (Look at his near hind hoof.)

That chalkiness really shows up on his facial features, and he has the same pinking as the other two.

 Running Foal #1 has no USA mark by his round Breyer stamp

 while the other two do. This places them as having been molded 1973 or later.

You can clearly see the sock differences in this photo. (Chalky, #2, #1.)

The Running Foal mold is one of my favorite vintage molds.  While the bay coloring on him is my least liked of all the colors Breyer has produced on this mold, still I am glad to have these three in my collection.

2018 in Review, July - December

And the 2018 Year in Review continues!

July, 2018

Allison Pareis hosted a swap meet/get together at the tail end of June that drew collectors from across Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Michigan.

 In July we met our local kids and grandchildren in the small town of Delphi for the annual Delphi Canal Days celebration, complete with a parade!

 I found a big box of vintage trophies and ribbons for sale and purchased them to use in future Happy Trails shows.

 I got to spend many warm and happy hours with my girl. (Doesn't everyone write their grocery list on the back of their hand?)

Although I'd straightened the hobby closet earlier in the year, I decided to pull EVERYTHING out, go through EVERY box, and purge. What a mess, but I got the job done!

Health-wise I was not up to the rigors of BreyerFest, but dear friends Liz Cory and Susan Bensema Young made sure that I got the models I wanted. (Heartfelt thanks, ladies!)


August, 2018
August started out very rough. My teacher friends all went back to work with fresh faces in their classrooms while I stayed home. I was terribly sad, and second guessing myself as to whether or not I had made the right decision to retire. 

Spending time with Abby helped put a bandaid on my heart, but I was (and still am) very sad to be no longer teaching.

Having said that, I spent the first day of school and several subsequent days after that in the hospital. I had a bad bout with diverticulitis and would never had been able to teach that first week of school. Oddly enough, that helped underscore that I had made the right decision to retire.

There were new faces out at Tim's. Shayne and Guppy's owner began renting the blue barn and its pasture. (Sadly, Shayne died a few months later.)

 I was lucky enough to find one of Donna Chaney's circus ponies for sale and bought it.

And at the end of the month I went to the August Great Lakes Congress Show up in Chicago.

September, 2018
After nine months of trying to help our rescue, Molly, relax and adjust (Molly was used for breeding at a puppy mill and had little socialization, high anxiety, and many fears) we let her go live with our daughter, Lisa, and her other dog, Millie.

Molly would cling to Lisa when she would come to our house and clearly felt safe with her. While it made us sad to lose her, she is happy and much less anxious and stressed in Lisa's care. Just look at this picture of the two of them! (And Millie's backside. Haha!)

 Allison Pareis invited me to join her and a couple of other ladies in her home for an afternoon of model chatting, trading, swapping, and crafting.

My dear friend, Susan Bensema Young, came for a visit and we had a lovely day talking non stop about horses, looking at tack and binders of tack photos, and Sue even played a mini concert for me on the piano! (She is a very accomplished pianist.)

 I found and purchased two decorator Running Mares in September,

 spent time documenting my collection,

 learning about Breyer's twelve molds that have molded on tack,

and examining variations among my collection.

Since it was apple season, lucky Abby got a seasonal treat, apple spaghetti!


October, 2018

Since I was now retired, I could go out to the barn whenever I felt like it. 

Pony Pal Mila liked to join me there.

I spent some time documenting the site of the very first live model horse shows in my area, if not all of Indiana. My friends Bobbie, Carol, and I started gathering our horses for shows in this home way back in 1966. (Yes, I am old!)

I wrote about horses that I have owned and loved. (This is me on my Quarter Horse gelding, Cee Hunt, at the 1974 Tippecanoe County 4-H fair.)

We spent a week in North Carolina with some very special Pony Pals! (Look closely and you can see the horse with glitter in Cambria's hand and the unicorn tucked between us.)

And I took up Jennifer Buxton's challenge to try candy corn as a treat for Abby and see how she reacted. Well, she loved it, and the post I wrote about it, a nod to Dr. Seuss, was my favorite of all the blog entries that I wrote for 2018.

November, 2018
Jennifer asked if she could use my post on her blog, and I agreed, not realizing at the time just what that would do for Horsiemama.

I received over 500 visits in just twenty-four hours! Thanks, Jennifer, for the exposure!

During November I carefully picked apart a Breyer blanket and made a pattern from it, then started sewing some of my own.

And, I found a very unusual Freeman-Leidy Circus Horse - in green! Pink, purple, and blue, yes, but green?? I have never seen this piece in that color. I have been doing internet searches but have not yet turned up any others in this color. I am also looking for the matching head-down version.

December, 2018
Craig and I traveled to St. Augustine, Florida to visit our son and his family for a week.

Naturally we played my favorite car game, Horses Across the USA. 

I wrote about several of the beautiful barns that are in a mile radius or so of Abby. This one is my favorite.

And all our kids and their families came to spend Christmas with us, so we had eight kids younger than four at our home for a week.

Since five of those were girls, there were a whole lot of unicorns trotting around my house!

As I have written yesterday and today's posts, I am amazed at how much was packed into the year. Retiring was, and still is, hard for me, but I have enjoyed the opportunities that being at home, having time to travel, and spending time with family that retirement has afforded me. No doubt I will continue to adjust.

Have a happy, healthy, and blessed New Year!