Sweetwater Farms in Brewster on Cape Cod was established by us in the late 1970's for the purpose of owning, breeding & competing with Appaloosa horses of Quality & Excellence. We continue striving to pair stallions & mares well suited to produce foals of Quality, with Physical & Genetic Correctness. We continue breeding Appaloosas of quality and excellence-as we have since the late 1970s.
Although technically empty-nesters, our farm & our primary business, Sweetwater Forest-well known as Cape Cod's Family Campground since 1958, passed a major Milestone in 2018 as we celebrated 60 Years of same family ownership and management, with the next generation now managing the office and outside crew, both essential parts of the operation.
The Silver Stirrup Studio was a well built post & beam barn, brought to Sweetwater Farms to be as a shop for creating the many hand crafted items, gifts, collections & show outfits from the mid 1980s until an injury reared its ugly head in 2003 & all but froze time in the studio, just as it neared its grand opening as a fully stocked Tack Shop, with an inventory to suit most levels of competition with affordable prices for most budgets as well.
My Art was selected to be hung and juried by one of the oldest Artisan Guilds in the USA-the Cape Cod Artisan's Guild. I was accepted by the CCAG as a Multimedia Artisan, with many works featuring horses and seascapes, done on glass, wood, leather, and other unique "canvases," which soon became known as one of my specialties.
Its been an honor to have my art featured on the covers and within the pages of magazines about horses, long before the computer age, and Photoshop, made images created by those with natural talent less noticed the majority we know see, often created and perfected on computers.
Not long after what was to be 4 years of bed rest, one of my all time favorite stallions & equine pals, Breezin' Bull passed at nearly 30 years of age. At that time, while stuck in bed, at the start of what was to be a 20 year journey through hell and back, a strong desire to sculpt this wonderful stallion into more than a memory for my mind continued to nag at me. Although I'd done a 24" doll, in scale, out of Fimo & a 1:9 scale mare & foal on a mount also out of Fimo, much more information was needed before I could proceed in attempting to capture a horse in resin, who's essence was truly unique, carried by a body that was also as correct. Yet, once I began investigating the World of Model Horses-I was hooked!
Where the world of Model Horse Collecting would lead was surprising.
My project of sculpting my beloved Breezin' Bull, who's sister had already been done by Breyer in the mid 1980s, and capturing the regal, confident essence of this majestic stallion, without losing his gentle, careful attitude-always willing to trust and please, was a goal which moved almost exponentially, into learning what I could about Models, how they were made, and much more.
Soon model tack, dolls-riders & the props used to create I consider to be dimensional art began arriving with the makings for creating tack-from the simplest to the most complicated types made. Now, a section of our Tack Shop, The Silver Stirrup is devoted to Model Horse Enthusiasts of all skills, with full sized quality horse show & work tack & apparel for today's competitors sharing the shop. It made sense to combine an out let for our online Model, Live Horse Tack & Full Sized Apparel with our Fenton Sales having a site of its own...
Although sold, prior to selling The Secret Pardon we paid to have frozen semen of this wonderful stallion Certified via the ApHC's Semen Retention Program, which entitles breeders to register foals born when a mare is bred with frozen semen after a stallion has been sold but was collected during their ownership of the stallion with the fees paid prior to the sale of the stallion the semen was collected from.
Pardon My Moonshine is a 2013 colt sired by The Secret Pardon. His dam is Im Kiddin Again, a colored Appaloosa and producer of 2 Bronze Medallion Winners, with only 3 registered foals.
