Farm Work

Long, long ago, all of the Aegean was covered with tiny bay horses—from Greece to Italy. As the years progressed, people who lived in the Mediterranean found great use for these tiny ponies because they were a hardy breed that didn’t need to have horseshoes. It is for this reason that many historians speculate that Alexander the Great used these horses in his conquests of greater Europe to carry supplies without the necessity of bringing extra metal and blacksmiths to give them horseshoes. However, as the times grew more and more lean in the upcoming years, the people of these ancient times began to eat the ponies for sustenance. After many years of being used as a hard-working labor horse and a source of food, these little horses became isolated to the island of Skyros in Greece, where they lived on a mountain that is counted as one of the tallest mountains in Greece. When overpopulation of cities forced people to move to outer islands and create a more agricultural lifestyle, these horses, whose species had already been decimated by the past centuries, became even more threatened. The new residents of Skyros began to release their sheep and goats onto the same mountain that the horses lived on, which of course meant that the Skyros horses were sharing their food and habitat with other animals that lived in the same manner that they did. In addition to the sheep and goats, farmers also grazed their larger horses and mules on the mountain as well. By the time that there were less than 200 Skyrian ponies left in the entire world, the origins of their lineage had been so sullied by interbreeding with these mules and other horses that it is hard to tell what they may have actually looked like before the farmers ever began releasing their animals on to the mountain.

Even now at The Silva Project, the Skyrian horses have a range of appearances—some are dwarves, some are large; some are black, some are brown; some have blue eyes, and some do not. However, despite the evidence of their turmoiled past in terms of inter-breeding, they are a wonderful species that have quiet dispositions and work very well with the small children who ride them. They themselves are small, usually not standing more than 11 hands high, the smallest being about 9 hands, but perhaps the most amazing thing about them is that they are the only ones in the world. This makes them truly special, and I wonder sometimes if the 3 to 6 year-olds that ride them are aware of the privilege that they have to ride such a rare species of horse.
The average day for me as a barn hand consists of mucking out the fields and paddock in which the horses live, feeding them their hard feed, tacking up horses for the lessons in the afternoons, leading horses for the lessons in which the children are very small, putting hay in the pastures, and cleaning the barn area. Although this is a lot of work, the horses and the general situations are funny and often comical. The waste from all of the fields is put into a burlap sack (you have to wrestle with it for quite a while before you can actually fit your shovel of poop into it) so that it can be used as fertilizer in the kiwi orchard. This is dirty work, indeed, and sometimes I will come back in the afternoon to find about an entire flake of hay under my shirt and the joints of my elbows and knees almost black with dirt.

The animals and people here are delightful as well. Many of the horses are playful and so comfortable that they will lay down in the field or are allowed to roam about the barn area. The children that ride at the farm are also very cute, many younger than the age of six. I personally find this a very young age to be around horses (almost too young) but they seem to get along just fine and enjoy their time.

However, I never let the hard, dirty work that I do get in the way of finding a way to respect the animals, environments, and people that I come across. From the top of one of the paddocks you can see the ocean and a mountain with a city situated on the side, and that is when I truly realize that I am in Greece (albeit scooping horse poop into burlap sacks). I take a deep breath of the Mediterranean air and never question whether what I am doing here is helpful or what the BN program would define as “service,” because I have no doubt of it when I look into the eyes of one of the horses and know that I am perpetuating a lifestyle which saved them and will keep them alive for many years to come.