By Kristen
We left Naas this morning and drove about two hours
southwest to Cashel and the surrounding countryside. As Shauna, our guide at
Punchestown, had mentioned yesterday, “Oh, you’re going to western Ireland? That’s
the real Ireland.” While this might not be a completely fair statement—Dublin and
the east coast are of course very authentic and critical parts of the country—I
understood her sentiment as we headed out of Naas and toward the central part
of the nation. The slightly-rolling hills gave way to broad valleys between
rugged hilltops and small mountains. We drove through a handful of light rain
showers and could see other lines of rain blurring out the distant lines of
hills. Rather than the ridges that we see in western New York state around
Alfred, the Irish hills and mountains seem to be more random and overlapping,
coming almost to a point rather than a rugged rounding top.
Victor Stud is tucked away well off the beaten path outside
of a village called Golden a few miles from Cashel in County Tipperary. I
imagined it was going to be another breeding station similar to the Irish
National Stud, but instead the owners have managed to find a different niche to
fill in the Thoroughbred breeding industry and instead run what is essentially
a nursery for boarded mares and young horses from owners all over the world.
The owner Tom does have a handful of his own mares whose offspring he then
sells, but most of the residents are boarded by owners who may not have the
land to raise a foal to the best advantages in life. I was excited to hear
about his less-common way to make a living in the industry since we encourage
our students to find a niche in the horse world and fill it rather than become
one training farm among dozens.
Victor Stud follows the same theme I’ve noticed in Irish
horse-rearing and turns its mares and young horses out as much as possible—none
of the horse boxes were occupied and instead we walked right across the
enormous and lush pastures with Tom, who encouraged us to “snuggle” the foals
as much as we liked to help socialize them. Because his babies are handled
every day, they were quite friendly for the most part and tolerated lots of
petting. Tom also grazes beef steers alongside his horses, a common Irish
practice to help the pastures develop and recover. Horses tend to damage grass
and eat too selectively to foster ideal growth while the cattle help keep
things evenly-mowed.
Tom led us all the way to the top of his farm to show us the
panoramic view, pointing out six counties that could be seen from the hilltop.
In this part of the country, the hedgerows are starting to phase out to stone
walls, and a small herd of yearling fillies watched us moving about the field
from over such a wall with a beautiful backdrop of pine trees and distant
mountains behind them. Alongside them grazed Tom’s hunters, a handful of
absolutely impressive draft crosses with the look that they could jump the
moon.
He pointed out his practice fences on our tour of the farm,
a series of absolutely terrifying-looking obstacles that he used to train his
hunters. During the hunting season, Tom rides about five hours a day and rotates
between two horses, five days a week, thundering all around Tipperary with the
local hunt clubs leaping over hedges and walls up to seven feet high. After
seeing some of his “schooling” jumps (including banks, ditches, stone walls,
spreads, and so forth) I was completely okay with the fact that we would not be
experiencing any live fox hunting here in Ireland—these people are completely
mad in a way that I totally respect!
From Victor Stud we headed back into Cashel for lunch and
then up the hill to the Rock of Cashel, a compound of stone ruins of various
chapels and castle-buildings. Our firsts glimpse of the Rock had been
breathtaking as we approached the village with the hilltop and buildings stark
above it; as we walked up the hill in the cold wind we were struck with a
sensation of fortitude: these buildings, though now in various states of
disrepair, had been here for over seven hundred years. Our brilliant tour guide
filled us with information about the various rooms and buildings, alluding both
to legend and fact and bringing the cold stone to life for us as we walked
around the hilltop. From the cemetery outside the larger chapel, we had a
breathtaking (literally breathtaking in the intense winds!) view of the sunny
valley below, once an immense oak forest but now neatly-divided farm land for
the famous Tipperary dairies, bordered by the mountains and hills in the
distance.
We are continuing the sightseeing tour for the next few
days, moving away from the direct study of the equine industry, and our first
stop at Cashel was a perfect beginning!
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