NEW !! HORSE TRAINING SCHOOL AT BOWERS FARM!

Patricia Hills of England doing some ground work with one of our colts out near our lake. Patricia was here for a week last summer as part of her work with "The Working Horse Trust" of England. We had a great time having her here - we even started sounding a little like her by the end of the week!

There seems to be a lot of people out there who would like to learn more about the horse training and using techniques being promoted here at Bowers Farm. For that reason, we have decided to open our farm to a limited number of students for week-long opportunities for instruction. This is your opportunity to bring your horse or team, get yourself lots of experience, have a great time, and your horses get trained also. Some people arrive without a horse so they can help us to train our resident horses. Unlike most schools, where you are thrown in with a group of students you don't know, we plan to keep this experience for individuals and their immediate family or friends. If you just bought a horse or a team and they seem to know more than you do, this program is for you! Maybe you have a training problem with either a riding horse or a driving horse that you want to concentrate on improving. Or, perhaps you'd like to learn how to get your saddle horse to be a driving horse, or vice versa. If your interest is in learning to be a better trainer, better rider, or better driver, we can design a week to deliver the instruction and experience you'll need to succeed!

For any of you who have seen our place in Fort Collins, Colorado, you'll realize that our new program of offering a school experience for small numbers of students is a logical transition. We already have a log house with lots of entertaining space and decks overlooking the farm and lake. Our log house is built over the barn where we bring horses in for saddling and harnessing. It sits within a stone's throw of a beautiful large lake that is connected to two other lakes. Our place naturally provides not just miles of private lakeshore and dirt road riding out the back gate, but also swimming, canoeing, fishing, hiking and biking. The farm sits on a dirt road that is just a couple of miles to one of the nicest little cities in Colorado, with plenty of big city eating and entertainment options for evenings. But if you aren't inclined to go to town in the evening, you might enjoy staying here and spending the evening relaxing with your horse, or just reading a book on a deck.

Floyd Forbes, head wrangler for Crazy Mountain Ranch in Montana doing some early training on a pair of our Belgians. This was the second day these two were put together as a team, and they did really well. Floyd was here for a week during early October, '05.

Steve got involved in the guest ranch business at an early age as a wrangler and chauffer at one of the fanciest five star guest ranches in the world, Hacienda Del Sol, in Tucson, Arizona. The guests there included many of the big name publishers, writers, and captains of industry from all over the world. The things he learned there while being a part of that highly successful operation will be applied to assure the happiness of our guests staying here at Bowers Farm. The chef there at Hacienda Del Sol spent his summers as head chef on the King of Norway's yacht. Our head chef, Steve's wife, Peggy, is a woman who is also a capable chef with more of a local reputation. Her pie baking ability, one of her passions, was mentioned years ago in an article about Bowers Farm that appeared in The Draft Horse Journal!

Our vision is to offer these weeks that focus on training, for riding and for driving, where the student brings his or her own horses. If you don't have a horse, or live too far away to bring one, we are happy to let you learn all you can on our horses. We always own lots of horses at various stages of training, so there are great opportunities to learn about training and using horses. We are nicely set up for horse training, with a sand surfaced 50' round pen, two 32' square pens, lots of logs and natural features on our farm to play on, a large arena, and miles of lakeshore trails. Horses are kept individually in 32 x 64' log pens with log shelters. There is no extra charge for bringing your horses as long as you bring your own hay and grain for the week. We have a nice training cart for single horses, and a training sled for teams, that can be used on horses that are ready to be hitched, but you should plan to bring your own harness and/or saddle for your horse.

Making A Reservation To Come To Bowers Farm

The price for this week-long school at Bowers Farm will be $1800/ person, which includes accommodations for horse and human for a week starting on a Sunday afternoon and staying through the following Sunday morning. If you bring a friend, the rate for each person drops down to $250/person/day, or $3000 for the two of you for the week. If you bring two friends (three people) the rate drops to $200/person/day. Full meals and sleeping will be provided in our log home, with a number of options from guest bedrooms to bunking in our tack room, Each full day will start around 8:00 and include lots of training activity until supper time, which will usually be sometime after 5:00 pm. We require $200 deposit to secure your reservation, and full payment the week before your arrival. You can set up one of these weeks starting in May, '05, subject to prior commitments by Bowers Farm to be somewhere on the road. Check the Schedule page to help you figure out weeks where Steve is away. If you have any questions or if you are interested in learning more about this new program for Bowers Farm, feel free to give us a call toll free at 1-866-360-1212. Look for more information here in the near future as we further develop the presentation of this program.

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Private Clinics

Bowers Farm now offers private clinics for farms or individuals who want Steve to come to their location to work with their horses. These types of private clinics cost $1000/day plus room, board, and travel both ways. If you are interested in this type of private clinic, please call Steve directly at 1-866-360-1212.

Steve teaching some of the students during a private clinic for Parelli Natural Horsmanship on their farm in Ocala, Florida.

Rob, from Australia, getting some drive time instruction from Steve at Parelli's. We sold them the russet harness, the doubletrees, neck yoke, and the training sled, too! We think the russet colored harness looks great on Belgian horses. It's natural, too! No black dye to come off on your white shirt.