A way of life
Family farming culture celebrated at annual event
They spend years training some of the fastest horses there are to run to a full gallop and then skid to a full stop. To spin one way and then the other. To stand dead still and then gallop around the arena.
And they travel from all over the country to Columbus to do it.
Saturday’s reining competition at the Ohio Expo Center was just part of this year’s All America Quarter Horse Congress — the 51st annual gathering held by the Ohio Quarter Horse Association that features reining, cutting, roping, jumping and other competitions using one of the world’s most popular horse breeds.
Last year’s event drew an estimated 650,000 to watch the
competitions and shop among acres of a trade show that include tack and horse trailers and just about anything else one can imagine. The show runs through Oct. 29.
But as much as it’s a competition and a festival, the congress is a celebration of a way of life that has been waning in Ohio and elsewhere in the United States.
“We’re a culture,” said Chris Cecil Darnell, president of the Ohio Quarter Horse Association.
As with many — if not most — of the people at the congress, Darnell is connected to a family farm, in her case growing up on one near Wadsworth, in northeastern Ohio.
Horses haven’t been a major mode of transportation for almost a century, and farms in the United States number only about a third of what they did 80 years ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The farms that remain are bigger and are more likely to be owned by big corporations.
But people at the congress seemed eager to maintain their ties to the land and with their horses.
Jessica Batton, 16, again won the National Reining Horse Association’s competition in her age group, the top such competition in the world, said her dad, John. A sophomore at Fairlawn High School, she’s secretary of its chapter of the Future Farmers of America and she trains with her horse, Goodtime Chocoholic, four or five days a week on the family farm outside of Sidney.
In addition to the 500-acre farm, her dad works for the rural electrical cooperative and her mom, Kristen, is a registered nurse. Tough as it is, it’s important to keep farming, said Vicki Knasel, Jessica’s grandmother.
“It’s our way of life. It’s all we know,” said Knasel, who attended the same high school as her granddaughter. “There’s no better way to bring up a family than on a farm.”
The power of the connection between farm, horse and rider was written all over the face of Emily Opell, 16. The No. 5 reining horse rider in her class in the world, she was third Saturday to Batton.
As she talked about her hours of work in the saddle with her horse, Sonny, on her family’s farm in Ashland, Kentucky, tears streamed down her cheeks.
“You work with your teammate closer than you would on a basketball team,” she said.
Her mom, Tammy, echoed the others in saying horses and competing with them amounted to a lifestyle.
“Horses are magical,” she said. “They’re a dream.”