Six years ago, I arrived at Mount Fair Farm on the heels of a very large, by Virginia standards, snow storm. That winter wound up being a historically snowy one, and we didn’t see very much of the ground again until sometime in March. 

Since then, we have built horse barns, workshops, storage barns, houses, an indoor arena, many miles of roads and four-board fence and, well… all the infrastructure necessary to operate a world-class equestrian property. And we gathered a world-class team, too. Mount Fair Farm today bears only a passing resemblance to the place that went by that name in January of 2010.

There is a symmetry to the seasons and years on a farm… leaves, grasses, winds and weather, four and two-legged creatures, all come and go just the same, but different.

As we clean up after this latest storm… variously called the Blizzard of 2016, Snowmageddon, and by other rather less admiring – or even decent – names, I am once again on the move. In a handful of weeks, I will take over as general manager at a large, complex and beautiful property in the northeast. It is a very exciting opportunity to continue to learn something every day, contribute something every day, and meet new friends, as much as I will miss old friends excruciatingly.

And leaving, I can look around and see many things in which I had a hand… some useful things, some good things, even the occasional beautiful thing. 

Hard to ask for more than that…