One of the labors of love I am most proud of, but which is mostly unknown to people who know me, is the incredible ranch and equestrian facility that was created upon a patch of ground that had once before been the home of "the largest llama herd in the U.S."
The place of which I speak is none other than 11330 Mount Vernon Road, in Auburn, CA. It had several other addresses associated with the property since it had been multiple parcels and over 50 acres at the time of the llama ranch.
It had been the family property of my then fiancé, Craig. His father was a fanatical animal collector, and his animal of choice was llamas. In high school, Craig had been an intern and worked for our neighbors, Carole and Greg, who owned an adjacent ranch and quietly had been managing a performing and retirement ranch for chimpanzees.
Craig's brother, Hayden, became interested in training and performing with large animals, and later was able to break into that business, starting his own ranch in Acton, CA, which he called Serengeti Ranch. While there, he managed to acquire an elephant, Suzy, who was the elephant featured on the kids' show, "One Saturday Morning," in the 1990's. He also had a tiger, Asia, which was resident at Marine World, Africa USA in Vallejo for a time, and a young lion cub he kept at home in Acton, by the name of Khan.
But, before really settling in Acton, Hayden was suddenly diagnosed with cancer, and the doctors didn't want him to be around the animals while his immune system was compromised. However, he felt that the animals were his reason for living, and so, the elephant, the tiger, and a few other unusual animals secretly were smuggled onto the Auburn property. There was even a pygmy hippo, who, though I never met her, I was told was incredibly ornery. I have this vague memory that she had been called "Petunia."
I was occasionally regaled with the story of how, one morning when Craig and his friends went out to feed all the animals, Petunia had disappeared from her enclosure, which included a shed and some open space with a pond. Without wanting to alarm Hayden and certainly not wanting to alert authorities that there were unpermitted animals on the property, Craig and his pals began an all-out search around the nearby countryside, looking everywhere they though might appeal to a pygmy hippo, and coming up with nothing.
Eventually, I am told, Craig finally called his brother, who asked him "Did you check in the pond? Because, hippos like to submerge themselves." Craig made haste back to Petunia's enclosure, only to discover that she had been relaxing in the cool water of the pond for the entire day. Case closed.
So, when Craig and I decided to get more serious about that ranch, he lived part-time in a leaky travel trailer on the property; the parcel with the family home having been sold off about 10 years earlier to a separate owner. There was no way I was leaving my cute little vintage dream house for a travel trailer! But, Craig, having no real means of self support, did, in fact, have ideas. So, he decided to try to build a house. I was a civil engineer, so he asked me to design the house.
Though I explained I was not qualified to finalize his designs, I certainly could do some concept designs on my AutoCAD and he could take them to a structural person or a contractor and get them finalized. I was, at that point, working full time for the Army Corps of Engineers and helping Craig try to run his other brainchild, The Horseshoe Bar Grill, a restaurant that he conceived of and talked his father into funding.
While Craig had ideas, he had no actual work experience nor education, so even getting it passed by the county was a monumental feat, but then, running it was also not intuitive to him. He had a friend who had some chef experience, (the same one who had helped in the search for Petunia). But, I was there after work every evening, helping with the cash register and accounting, and usually, behind the bar pouring the wine.
Even though Craig and I were new at that time, I was very much invested in the restaurant myself. It was only about 4 months after the place opened, the morning that Craig got up and went in to clean and discovered that his own father had changed the locks on him the night before. Craig's dad was not a man to risk doing business with, and he had loved the fact that he had a stake in this beautiful restaurant that the entire community wanted to dine at every night of the week. And, he had simply kicked Craig out. They had nothing in writing, and so it was.
So, the project to build the house at the ranch became the focus of everything. The llama ranch, the house at the ranch. The place had no name, we just referred to it as "the Mount Vernon property." The house, which was initially designed to be a granny unit, but as the concept grew into reality, Craig realized he may never get around to building a second, larger home, so he sought my ideas on how to maximize the square footage and still be able to call it a legal "granny unit," (the term ADU wasn't yet in use).
Craig and I spent long hours researching styles and ideas at Barnes & Noble, and other big box book stores. We both really liked the salt box style of the upper Atlantic region. The scale of those homes, though, was difficult to get 1200 square feet into, and also have vaulted ceilings, loads of windows, and a single story. We finally chose a quite unusual modified U-shaped home with a single story bridge where the kitchen connected the living area with the private bedroom area. There were two separate lofts accessed by spiral staircases, one loft in each of the two taller sections in the home, and the county allowed Craig to get away with calling them "plant shelves" so they added usable square footage that was not legally a part of the 1200 square feet.
While our contractor hated us, I thought it was wonderful. We did stained concrete floors--another thing that wasn't yet being done in residences, but we had them in the restaurant, and we loved them. The staircases were custom made precisely for the spaces they were installed, and they were lovely.
And, once the house was nearly ready to occupy, Craig approached me, (we were living in my beautiful little "forever" home on College Way), and asked me to leave my home and join him on the ranch. I was not excited. I had been deeply involved in livestock and horses and had lived on a 120-acre ranch before. I was not thinking in terms of taking care of a ranch, and besides, we had no livestock; no horses. There was nothing there but a run-down old bunch of barns and fences with oak trees crashed upon them from 10 years of disuse and neglect.
But, Craig convinced me. He made promises about finishing the house that never really got done--such as carpeting the lofts so we could actually use them, and hanging curtains, and pouring patios outside so we could live in something other than a dustbowl. After a while, I just began doing the things myself. It was becoming my home. We were engaged. So, I helped by designing the back patio and paying for the concrete. I carpeted the lofts so we could use them, and we moved our bedroom up into one of the two.
And, I searched high and low, and found the most perfect raw silk curtain panels for all the gigantic windows we had put into the home. I loved those beautiful curtains so much, and never have I been able to find them again [1]. I purchased 16 of them; four for each of the large banks of windows overlooking the creek side of the home, plus one for each of the smaller side windows one each side wall of the house. And, of course, the amazing curtain rods that went with them.
Creating things in Craig's world--yes, for me, but also for Craig--became a theme. It happened so slowly I don't think I realized how consistently it was happening. As soon as we moved in, Craig talked me into buying horses. We bought two young horses; registered quarter horses. He promised to get them trained.
Once we had the horses, on 20 acres of land, all of which was cross-fenced for llamas and which included three barns of different sorts, we began wondering what we could do there. Craig had, as always, no visible means of support. I had not yet come to realize that his pattern and his modus operandi was to go to each of his divorced parents when he needed money and seek to try to convince them to loan it to him. He had inherited a lump of money from his grandfather just before his dad had taken the restaurant, and with that, he had taken my advice and bought a rental in Roseville, which was a major fixer, but which (my favorite investor secret) had a second unit, so it paid him a small additional amount every month. I already owned rentals, so I was often leveraged by Craig to help with his rentals.
And so, lingering one evening at the 4-stall run-in loafing shed that was just up the hill from the house, we started talking about how we could do more with the property. I had dreamed since I was a young girl about having a ranch where I had people come to ride, and where I could board people's horses, and we could offer events. After a few off-the-cuff ideas, I shared that with Craig. He was unsure.
I went deeper into the idea, and I laid out how it would work. I had already, at 37 (10 years his senior) owned several businesses and saw how it all came together. "And," I said, I want to call it 'Stage Stop Ranch,' for the beautiful old barn that was a stage stop." The old barn farthest from the house was over 100 years old and still standing well. It had been a stage stop in its early life, and that was an amazing and little-known claim to fame. Craig began seeing what I was saying. We agreed, and the next day, he went and got our business license.
One of the things that needed to be done was to turn all of the areas for animals into "horse space" when it was more recently "llama space." However, there was one barn that was actually used to house Suzy the elephant while Hayden had been recovering. This barn became The Elephant Barn, and redesigning it was my job. I think we were both very pleased with how we were able to reconfigure it and turn it into an 8-stall, drive through (for the tractor), barn with paddocks, with an open center area for grooming. The Stage Stop Barn was used for hay storage, and the most northwestern pasture was "the Hippo Pasture" as that had been where Petunia had laid low while passively leading Craig on a wild goose chase.
I had two wonderful Tuffshed-style sheds designed for use as tack rooms and delivered to the ranch. Once was for use by our boarding clients, and one was for use by me, as I also opened a riding school. One of my very first clients was a 4-year-old little girl who is now in her 20's, but who was simply in love with horses. In addition, I had several other very young kids, and in that timeframe, my program was wonderfully known for specializing in giving the youngest kids the chance to try riding lessons.
Once we had a small group of girls at the ranch, they quickly became friends and decided to start a club they called, "The Stage Stop Wranglers." Craig and I both adored that they were so happy at the ranch, and we looked for ways to support them and create things for them to do.
One of the Wranglers, at their T-shirt making day in the barn.
The community of Auburn and even farther than that were familiar with all that I offered, and, several times a year, I had girl scout troops come in for a "horse badge" event. We were the place for pony birthday parties, too. These were some of my favorite. The dogs--my dog Joy and Craig's dog Wylie--would always be there in the crowd of kids, looking for snatches of dropped birthday cake.
I hired a few young people who wanted to get a start in teaching kids to ride and working with horses. Amber Dickinson, Brittany Haney, and Samantha Finney were our wonderful young instructors. Samantha and Brittney in particular really understood riding and training. Amber began to find her stride when she discovered Natural Horsemanship. Each of those women, now, nearly 20 years later, has gone on to find a life in the horse world, each in their own ways.
We had our share of not-so-great run-ins with some bad trainers. You know, the worst thing I had to learn about trainers is that they are always broke, and so they are always looking for a quick buck. We had more theft of our equipment when some of the bad trainers had access to the ranch than in any other time.
We were also happy to get to know one young man by the name of Stephen Allen who was--as trainers go--one of the most honest. At only about 20 years of age when we met him, he was already gaining some success in the reining world. Over the years, I saw him get stuck a time or two, and even leave his own barn for a time and work in an english pleasure barn. But, I know he's a solid reining trainer now, 20 years later. It feels good to know I "knew him when," and believed in him then, too.
And, when the rodeo lost its venue for the Rodeo Queen competition, we had just built the biggest indoor arena in the region--pilots used to tell us that it lined right up with the approach to the Auburn airport and that they used it to sight in. And, naturally, we offered it to the community and the rodeo board to host the riding portion of the queen competition.
The therapy program Ride to Walk came to us in need of a new home for their horses, and the use of a safe arena. I spent literally months working with them to come to a suitable answer and find a way to house them at our facility so that they could use the arena and not be interrupted, but also not interrupt our lesson and training schedule.
Towards my last years there, we added Clydesdales to our stable, although Craig bought them without consulting me, and they were 2,000 pounds of unruly and untrained horse. We took them to Woodland Stallion Station and to a trainer there who put 90 days training on them before we went and drove them. They were still a handful, but a manageable one, at least. The trainer had previously trained for the Budweiser team.
I offered workshops and trainings presented by me (Effective emergency handling of horses for CVMA personnel in evacuation situations; and others) and also created opportunities for our budding trainers and instructors to offer workshops on what they were enthusiastic about, such as several Natural Horsemanship workshops which I helped Amber prepare and present.
We loved the parade events in Auburn. We always took the entire complement of lesson horses and every lesson kid who wanted to go. The last year I was there, we also had the Clydesdales and the beer wagon they pulled. Then, after all the tack was put away, and all the horses home, we'd always have a big party in front of the Stage Stop Barn, and we'd all be laughing into the night. Kids would be running around, playing hide-and-seek in the dark. It was just exactly what my childhood dream had looked like.
All of these huge, wonderful, events congealed in only the space of four years, from a rag-tag, dis-used, neglected 20 acre parcel, to an equestrian facility with a capacity to house over 80 horses comfortably, and in indoor, lighted, riding arena, trails, and a lovely home.
For me, it came to a crashing halt in 2003. Many things had been revealed while living there with Craig. One was that he hadn't ever intended to marry me, and was, in actuality, using me for my income. I had come to realize perhaps as early as two years before that there would be an end to this beautiful life I had put every bit of my creative energy and very much of my actual income into. There was--looking back now--a voice in there somewhere that told me that it would end, because he had no intention of doing anything else.
But, like his father with the restaurant, I feared that he would try to literally "lock me out;" out of the home I designed; out of the barns that housed the horses I loved and owned; out of the life that I, personally, had created for us to share and so that he could claim he had a business.
In 2003, after more than a year of his disappearing for days at a time, and calls from women I didn't know claiming I "needed to just leave," Craig did just exactly what I feared. Unknown to me, he went to the family court and claimed that "he feared for his safety" and was given a temporary restraining order. I was at home, folding laundry, and a deputy knocked and told me to leave. It was New Year's Eve, 2003.
I was not allowed to return to the ranch for 18 months to check on my horses; to collect my furniture; to pick up my saddles and gear. By the time I was allowed, Craig had sold some of the horses. Where they ended up, I never found out. Sadly, some of them were registered, and the registration papers were in the files I had, so they were permanently separated from their registration papers.
The community of people I had created at the ranch, suddenly, I was a leper. People I had come to love suddenly wouldn't return my calls. These many relationships forged out of long hours after my workday as an engineer, coaching parents on how to deal with challenges of the daughter's horse, or days spent in the saddle with these folks, helping them with confidence issues, or just riding together. These many relationships, no longer there, at all.
You would think that somebody who would treat another so poorly would at least have the decency not to ever contact that person again, but Craig felt perfectly fine calling me to ask me how come he couldn't sell the ranch. As some people know, I have been a Realtor since 2003, and was an investor long before that, and, though Craig will never admit it, his mentor in all things real estate (and business, though he often wouldn't take that advice until it was too late).
As the years have passed, I have watched other realtors try to sell my beautiful ranch, and never know the odd, sad, but also beautiful story of how it came to be all that it is today. I have needed to put this on paper for so long, mostly just to say, in some way, if not actually out loud; I DID THIS! Craig worked very, very, concertedly to erase any memory of me from the ranch. But, it's life, and it's lifeblood, those are infused with my vision, and I still own that. The home I designed and furnished with wonderful blonde maple cabinets, the sweeping banks of windows on the back of the house, I will remember that I was responsible for their concept and the reason they are now enjoyed by others. The vast library of intellectual property I created in the form of copyrighted contracts; newsletters; training manuals; flyers; and web sites; those are mostly forgotten now. I happened across a copy of the first Stage Stop Ranch EXPRESS, the newsletter I prepared for the ranch's clients and to promote the ranch at feed and tack stores.
If you've read to the bottom of this, thank you for sticking with me. It's a faithful story of a time in my own life, and I needed to release this info. There is certainly LOTS more, but I've tried not to state things in other than factual terms, nor name names when the info was less than flattering.
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