New Leaf LLC

08/11/2026

Fully agree with this as we need to go back to a little bit of"old school" horsemanship!

Copied:

I’ll let a horse flip itself over in a controlled environment before I spend all day feeding it treats for “accepting touch.” And before everybody loses their mind, no, I’m not intentionally flipping horses over. I’m saying I’m not going to panic and physically save a horse from every bad decision it makes. Sometimes a horse needs to learn from the consequences of its own choices.

If a horse decides it’s going to pull back, throw itself around, fight pressure, or turn a simple request into a full-blown production, I’m not interested in spending six hours convincing it that everything is okay. I’m going to stay calm, stay fair, and let the horse figure out that fighting the pressure isn’t getting it anywhere. Horses learn through pressure and release. They learn cause and effect. Sometimes the best lesson is simply, “Well… that didn’t work.”

I think we’ve gotten so caught up in making horses comfortable that we’ve forgotten the point of training is to prepare them for an uncomfortable world. Not every interaction needs to be softened, padded, and followed by a cookie. If I need to touch your ears, I’m going to touch your ears. If I need to handle your feet, I’m going to handle your feet. If you need to load in the trailer, we’re going to work through loading. I’m not asking you to love every second of it. I’m teaching you that you can handle it.

And there’s a massive difference between being fair to a horse and letting the horse dictate the rules. I’m not going to hurt you, I’m not going to ask you to do something you physically cannot do, and I’m not going to put you in a situation you’re not prepared for just to prove a point. But I’m also not going to let you learn that throwing a fit makes the pressure disappear.

Because eventually the real world isn’t going to care about your horse’s comfort level. The farrier isn’t going to spend three weeks getting emotionally prepared to pick up a foot. The vet isn’t going to ask if your horse is comfortable with being handled when it’s injured. An emergency certainly isn’t going to stop and wait for a desensitization session to finish.

That’s why I care more about teaching a horse how to handle pressure than teaching it how to avoid pressure.

Good horsemanship, to me, isn’t about making a horse believe the world will always be soft and pleasant. It’s about teaching them that when something is uncomfortable, they don’t have to panic. When something is scary, they don’t have to fight. When they don’t understand something, they can stop, think, and trust the person handling them.

I don’t need a horse that has been bribed into tolerating life. I want a horse that has been taught how to handle it.

There’s a difference between training a horse and babying one. And sometimes being the good horseman means letting the horse learn that its own bad idea was, in fact, a really bad idea.

07/09/2026

Few more pics

07/09/2026

The day they all look forward to! Woodstock trail ride!
(Unfortunately don't have a lot of pics, ran out of phone storage🙄) But everyone was fantastic, went swimming, ate lunch at the Woodstock Inn, cantered through the woods and even went trail blazing!!!

07/09/2026

Yesterday (day #2) of adv camp, we took a trip to Laurel Racecourse to learn a little bit about thoroughbreds and the sport of horse racing! Stopped for a McDonald's snack and then came home and practiced "jockey position" on our own OTTB with an exercise saddle! ( More pics of that to come)

07/07/2026

Love advanced camp week! Day #1
Lesson, saddle fitting clinic, and swimming in the river!!! Sorry I missed some of you for pictures....
(I'll try harder tomorrow)

02/09/2026

OK!! Summer Camp!
UNLIKE previous years, we will just be having FUN FARM CAMP this year with one week of horse camp for advanced riders only! Of course, we will still have pony time, but our focus will be more on farm activities, sports and games. ANNNDDDD most importantly...... what all the kids look forward to.....RIVER TIME!! This may include, tubing, kayaking, rope swings, or just floating in the water. Boys are welcomed!!

DATES OFFERED: (limited spots available!)

Advanced riding camp: July 6 - July 9, 2026

Farm camp #1: June 29 - July 3, 2026

Farm camp #2: July 13- July 17, 2026

Farm camp #3": July 20- July 24, 2026

MAN Camp (ages 9-15) : AUG (dates tbd) depending on interest

See website for registration

New Leaf Acres is a unique equestrian facility… …a place where self-discovery and the connection between horse & human can be explored with renewed confidence.Schedule a Lesson! New Leaf Acres is here to help guide each and every one of our clients in a positive direction using the encouragement...

02/03/2026

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1465725542223389&id=100063578709140&mibextid=Nif5oz

Before you get into horses or decide you want to keep them at home instead of boarding, especially in winter, take these things into consideration:

Winter is not cozy barn vibes and hot cocoa. Winter is survival mode

• Water freezes. Constantly. Buckets, troughs, hoses, automatic waterers. You will be breaking ice multiple times a day or running heaters that can fail, short out, or spike your electric bill.

• You are hauling water. In the dark. In the cold. Sometimes multiple times a day. Snow, ice, mud, all of it.

• Mud season is real. And it is relentless. Everything is wet, slick, heavy, and filthy. Your boots, your clothes, your horses.

• Hay usage skyrockets. Horses eat more to stay warm. That means higher feed costs and more frequent hay deliveries, which can be delayed by weather.

• Your pasture is basically unusable. You are feeding hay full time, managing sacrifice areas, and trying not to destroy your land.

• Blanketing is not optional for many horses. That means on, off, change weights, fix straps, deal with ripped blankets, soaked blankets, and frozen buckles.

• Ice is dangerous. For you and your horses. One bad slip can mean a hospital visit or months of rehab for a horse.

• Vet and farrier access can be limited. Weather delays happen. Emergencies do not care about forecasts.

• You still have to go out there. Every day. Sick, tired, holidays, snowstorms, freezing rain. There is no calling out. In fact, even if you hire people, they will probly call out, leaving it to you anyway in bad weather.

• Your equipment suffers. Frozen gates, snapped hoses, dead batteries, tractors that will not start, heaters that quit at 2 am.

• Your time commitment doubles. What takes 20 minutes in summer can take over an hour in winter.

• Your costs increase while your enjoyment often decreases. Less riding, more maintenance, more stress.

None of this is to scare you. It’s to make sure you are informed.

Horses at home can be amazing. They can also be exhausting, expensive, and unforgiving in winter if you are not prepared.

If you are thinking about it, plan for worst-case scenarios, not best-case Pinterest versions.

Winter does not care how much you love horses.

This is shared with respect for the work, not frustration with it.
Jaks Stables

01/30/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18CLRC2R1B/

Horse industry : the math is not mathing

I have had a bunch of clients inquiring about horses lately, coming for trials, asking us to arrange shipping and ending up bailing out because they couldn’t afford the board at the place they intended to take the horse to. Or for people to complain because board is now $900 or $1,000 or $1,200 and that it’s insane and the trainers are just price gouging.
So here is the actual break down.

Client math :
Shavings : $150/month
Hay (Florida prices here) at $18/a square small Bale : $270/month (2 to 3 flakes AM/PM)
Grain : $150/month
Barn help salary ($15/hour for 30mn/day) : $225/month
Total : $795
So with a $1,000/board that’s a $205/profit per horse x 20 horses boarded = that’s $4,100 for the barn owner to work all day with horses and have a dream job.
Then clients thinks wait a minute, I will buy my own farm and I will have 2 of my own horses and I will have 8 boarders and the boarders will pay for my horses and I will pay no board. Genius.

Now here is the barn owner math:

All the above and actually more in labor… but for the sake of the discussion let’s keep those numbers
Then comes all the 4 digits invoices that keep on showing up to maintain said farm.
So for me this month at my farm it has been
$1,200 to replace 4 tires on my dually
$1,600 for pads, rotors, brake fluids, alignment and oil change, and DEF on said dually
$500/payment on tractor because my old tractor died last year (RIP Johnny).
$1,200 to buy new rails for the jumps (I bought the last batch 5 years ago).
$160 for a Tire for my Gator
$118 for a new battery for the hydraulic jack of my 2+1 trailer (I know I could buy a crank one and save money but this is the best money spend, I hate cranking)
Those are just extra bills for this month.

But there are more over the past couple of months: Bookkeeper, mowing guy, w**d killer, seeds for the pastures, refill for the fly spray system, motherboard for the sprinkler system to water the ring, sprinkler heads, drain guy company to unglog the pipes because apparently p**p and sand going down the pipe is not productive to good drainage (who knew?), culvert replacement to prevent flooding, loads of road base to fix driveways and potholes, washer (hair and dirt clogs drains)… broken boards, broken stall doors, leaky hose, I could had so many more to this list. It never ends…

I currently have 9 horses at my farm, so with all the bills just from this month each horse would have technically cost me more than $1,325. And I also have more than one person working for me, so my payroll is way higher than the client’s estimate quoted above. At this point I still haven’t paid myself, I haven’t paid my mortgage or rent. Let’s not forget the insurance…
And I’m “lucky” that besides the tractor everything else is paid off (so truck, trailer, gator payments). So if you factor those other expenses ($4,000 mortgage, $1,400 truck payment, $800 trailer payment, $1,300 insurance) so about $835/horse.
So just to cover the running cost of the farm it’s about $2,160/per horse per month with a big fat $0 in the income column for me.

So do me a favor when you write your check for the board this month, do it with a big smile.
If you are considering having a little hobby farm and board a few horses to offset the cost of everything, DON’T DO IT… it’s a trap. There is not such a thing as getting anything free with horses, you will just give the money to the drain guy and the tractor dealership instead of your lovely barn onwer/trainer. And you will need to add a $30 Tylenol maybe a $30 Lexapro budget for all the headaches and anxiety that having a horse farm might induce.
Don’t get me wrong I love my farm and wouldn’t picture any other way to live. But the proceeds of the horses’ sales is what is keeping the dream of a once little 10 year horse crazy girl who dreamed to work with horses alive.

I would like to dearly appologize to my fellow professionals who like me put their head in the sand and pretend that these numbers don’t exist, and again I would like to tell all of you we are boarding to go hug your barn owners/trainers. Well ask them first about the hug thing (I’m personally not a hugger and it can get very awkward and uncomfortable), maybe go for a high five!

09/28/2025

Implementing the tools we’ve been building at home + riding gritty when things got squirrelly! So proud of these kids (and their horses)!