Quartet Farms LLC

Congrats to the lessors of Frosted Flakes (“Tony”) on renewing their lease and for qualifying for Pony Finals!
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➡️FOR SALE OR LEASE⬅️

🛑TOP small green contender for PF! 🛑

Small Whinny

Welsh Pony (Oldeworld Brilliance x Plum Jellybean)

8 year old gelding, carded at 12.2h

Beautiful, changes, honest, easy prep, fun, and the best personality.

Was reserve champion at his first two shows in the 2’ division, including a win at WEC.

Available for S in the lowest of mid-5 and for L in the low 5

https://youtu.be/Ubh-l3NrVOE?si=s8tXmwSSMXUUeYuX

Located in Ocala with (941-961-5008)

NorCal Finals throwback! Missing these shows!
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Tigger and Crackers are proof that soulmates don’t always walk on two legs ❤️.
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Welcome to our new barn cat, Nala! She came to us as part of the Working Cats Program and has been a wonderful new addition!

For sale or lease: super fancy and easy small green pony!

✨ Name: Small Whinny
✨ Age: 7 years
✨ Height: carded at 12.2h
✨ Bloodlines: Oldeworld Brilliance x Plum Jellybean, by Beaverwood’s Shayman
📍 Location: Ocala, FL

🏆 Show Highlights:
• Winner in the 2’ hunters at his first two rated shows
• Reserve Champion in the Future Hunters at the WEC Summer Series

Exceptional quality and EASY! Brave with a great lead change. Has been a winner in the USHJA 2’ hunters at his first two shows, including reserve champion at WEC. This will be the one to beat at Pony Finals 2025!

Priced at $50,000 for sale and low fives for a one year lease.

The real question is: do we own Nugget or does Nugget own us? 🤔

Missing Cory so much on the one year anniversary of his passing 💔. I wrote an essay for called “When All That’s Left Is a Halter” about him and my other pony, Gordon — link in bio.

🌵✨ Having right here in my backyard feels like such a gift, especially with moments like these. At the Scottsdale Fall Classic I, Rocco and I were champion in both the Adult Hunters and Equitation, and then at Classic II, we kept the momentum going – champion in the Adult Hunters, winners of the classic, and topping the Ariat. The highlight was taking the CEP Equitation Championships, a class that challenged us across three phases: over fences, gymnastics, and a flat work-off.

Grateful doesn’t even begin to cover it – for Rocco, for the incredible village behind us, for the journey, and for everyone who makes this possible. ❤️
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I finally wrote something I never thought I’d be able to put into words. For anyone who’s loved a horse so deeply that the goodbye doesn’t really feel like goodbye, this is for you. It’s about the things we keep, the moments we don’t realize are slipping away, and that dusty halter left hanging as if they might still come back for it. If you’ve stood by an empty stall and felt that kind of ache, you’ll know what I mean.

If you’ve ever had a bond like that, here’s “When All That’s Left is a Halter".

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The dust on the halters told the story long before my heart was ready to admit it.

For months, I had walked by Cory’s and Gordon’s halters hanging in the tack room, tucked behind a mess of bridles and rarely used girths—buried as if I could bury the memories that came with them. Their nameplates had dulled in the time since they died. Gordon went first, then Cory five months later. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to touch them since the day I hung them there, no longer attached to the lives they had once belonged to.

Out of sight, as if that could ever make them out of mind.

Unfortunately, grief doesn’t care where you try to hide. It waits, quietly and patiently, until one day you find yourself standing right in front of what you’ve been running from all along. That day came this week, and I found myself standing in front of those halters once again.

I reached for Cory’s halter first. The leather felt hard, rigid under my hands, the nameplate dulled to a bronze I barely recognized, and it felt so wrong—so wrong—to have let it get so dusty. Seventeen years together, and still, I wasn’t ready for our time to end earlier this year. I had gotten Cory when I was still a junior — naive and hungry for ribbons, looking for proof that I could measure up in the big eq. Cory was everything I didn’t know I needed: stubborn, strong-willed, and absolutely uninterested in my agenda. He wasn’t the horse who would give me the perfect rounds I was desperate to prove myself with. He was demanding, quick to test me, the kind of horse who made me work for every single inch we gained. He taught me that victories weren’t about the ribbons; they were about the bond we built, one difficult ride at a time.

As a horse-and-rider team, we didn’t always sync, but as a horse and human, we couldn’t have been a better match. Cory led the way, teaching me to follow, grounding me through every curve life threw.

He never asked for anything in return—until that final day. I was going through the worst chapter in my life and I sat with him in his stall, petting him, whispering, “Cory, please don’t leave. I need you.” I clung to him, hoping that somehow my words alone could keep him here a little longer. But when he finally lay down for the last time, he gave me the look he’d given me for years—steady, patient, waiting for me to catch up to something he’d already understood. I knew he was telling me what I couldn’t bear to accept—it was time, somehow, for each of us to begin our next journey.

As his breath slowed, his head grew heavier in my lap, his warmth pressing into me one last time, as if he was holding on as long as he could for my sake. My fingers traced his face, over each groove I’d memorized over the years, and my tears fell, one by one, onto his coat. I tried wiping them away, but they kept falling, and I stopped, realizing that maybe this was the only way to let him go, carrying every tear he’d earned. To say goodbye not by hiding my grief, but by letting him go marked by the love he’d left behind.

Then, as I looked down, I saw a single tear in his eye, a glimmer in the dim light. It was as if he, too, was crying. As we made eye contact for the final time, in the thick of that wordless moment, each of us grateful for what the other had given, he shared a last life lesson with me: sometimes the best you can do is hold on and let go, all in the same breath.

Then there was Gordon, whose halter still looked almost new, the leather barely worn—a painful reminder of how little time we’d had together. When I found him online, he was labeled only as “Lot 765.” I remember the ad: “SHIPPING ON NEXT TRUCK! OWNED BY KILL BUYER!” The words hit like a punch to the gut, and soon, I’d rescued him, and he was traveling to me from Texas to Arizona. He was older, his body worn down by neglect, but I held onto the hope that with enough care, enough love, I could rewrite his story. So I gave him everything I could in those few short weeks, showing him he was wanted, giving him a name and a place to call his own.

Sometimes, though, no matter how much you give, it isn’t enough to fix the damage that has already been done. Gordon’s body was too far gone, and just a month after he arrived, I found myself beside him as he took his final breaths. I had wanted so desperately to save him, to make up for all the time he’d spent overlooked. In the brief time I was lucky enough to own him, he became a horse who had a name, who knew what it was to be loved, whose life and loss mattered.

Although I couldn’t give Gordon a happy ending, he left a legacy that proves he will never be forgotten. Since he died, I’ve rescued two more ponies, each one carrying a piece of him—a familiar nudge, a cautious gaze that slowly learns to trust, the quiet resilience that feels like his spirit reaching back to me. In small, unexpected ways, Gordon’s presence lingers, showing me that the lives we touch find ways to stay with us long after they’re gone.

I couldn’t make Cory live forever. I couldn’t save Gordon. That’s something I will carry with me for the rest of my life. But standing there in the tack room this week, holding their halters, I felt there was something I could still do to keep them close. My hands shook as I took them down, brushing off the dust, rubbing oil into the leather, polishing the nameplates and their names reappeared, one letter at a time. It felt almost like breathing life back into something I’d lost—bringing them close again, even if only for a moment.

As I hung their halters back up, I thought about the retired horses on my family’s property. They are now in their mid to late twenties, all creeping towards the inevitable, each gray hair a reminder of what’s to come. My mom keeps reminding me, “They can’t live forever,” and while I know she’s right, the difference between knowing it and truly accepting it are worlds apart. Each of them has been with me for so long, grounding me in a world that feels too chaotic without them.

I have autism, and from the time I was eight and started riding, horses were the first bridge to a language I understood. Before them, talking to strangers was a struggle—conversations felt like a test I didn’t have the answers to. But with horses, there was a language I didn’t need to practice or translate; it was already mine. I could speak endlessly about them, feel at ease, seen in a way I never felt with people. And it’s why the thought of losing them isn’t just about saying goodbye to a companion—it feels like losing the part of myself that has always felt at home in the world.

Sometimes I wonder if I should pull back, let go slowly of the horses I still have so the loss won’t hit quite as hard. But the truth is, I can’t. They deserve someone who will stay with them to the very end, who won’t turn away because it’s painful. These animals have given me everything, and no matter how much it breaks me, I’ll be there for every goodbye.

I realize I would trade every future two-minute round at Indoors, every dream I’ve had of winning a major medal final, for just two more minutes in the barn with the horses I’ve lost. Just two more minutes grooming them, hugging them, and breathing in that unmistakable scent of them. When you sit with a horse as they leave this earth, you understand what truly matters—it’s not the whoops from your trainer or a new high score. It’s not the feel of a victory gallops you swore you’d hold onto forever.

What stays with you are the moments when it was just the two of you, those times when words weren’t needed and their presence alone was enough to steady you. That’s what I miss most. It isn’t the eight-year-old Cory who carried me through my first Maclay. It’s those small moments, the ones you barely noticed at the time, that dig the deepest. It's the twenty-five-year-old Cory, standing outside my bedroom window in the early morning light, his steady gaze finding me as if to remind me that he was there, always there. I’d look out and find him waiting, his quiet company filling the spaces that felt too empty, his head nodding as if to say, I’m here. The way he’d turn his head just so when he heard me coming, the way he kept me company without needing a single thing in return—that stay with you.

In the end, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? So hold on. Hold on to every messy, beautiful, fleeting moment you have with them. Hold on to how they make you laugh as they nudge your shoulder for treats, when they press their head against your chest like they can read every corner of your heart. Love them fiercely, even though you know you’ll have to let go someday. Because one day, you’ll stand by an empty stall, wondering how time slipped through your fingers, realizing that the time you shared together was too short, and that even the bad rides—the rough days, the missteps, the moments you wished you’d done better—mattered more than you ever knew. You’ll realize they were never just rides; they were hours, days, years spent learning each other’s language, growing into each other’s lives.

Then, you’ll reach for their old halter without thinking, tracing over their name like you’re feeling for them in the past. The halter will become more than a halter—it will be the life you shared, every memory stitched into the leather, a testament to a bond that time can’t touch. It’s the piece of them that lingers, the last thing you took off before you said goodbye, the last thread of connection left behind.

You’ll remember the first time you buckled it on them—how proud you were, how many times you showed photos to anyone who would look at them. You couldn’t wait to tell everyone, “This is my horse.” That pride won’t fade, even after they’re gone; and the story of the two of you will forever be yours to tell.

Because love like that doesn’t vanish; it lingers, long after they’re gone, woven into the smallest details, like a halter you’ll never let go of.

When All That’s Left is a Halter - The Plaid Horse Magazine BY LAURA OWENS The dust on the halters told the story long before my heart was ready to admit it.  For months, I had walked by Cory’s and Gordon’s halters hanging in the tack room, tucked behind a mess of bridles and rarely used girths—buried as if I could bury the memories that came with [.....

Rocco was amazing at the Del Mar Summer Frstival 2, taking away the championship in the Adult Hunters yesterday after winning three out of four jumping classes. Thank you so much for your help on Saturday and to for filling in for her on Sunday!

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