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| Kala Bishop practices a jumping position as her teacher, Faye Miller, watches. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz) |
The opening of the Meadow March Riding Center on Littleton County Road in January marked more than the start of a new riding program for owner and director Jennifer Combs of Oak Hill Road. It is the culmination of a dream fostered in a young girl’s heart years ago. “I always had a huge passion for horses, which is kind of ironic since I was born in Manhattan. My parents are city people and somehow they ended up with a country daughter,” Combs said in a recent interview. She started riding at a very young age at the Fairfield County Hunt Club in Connecticut, where she was exposed to all types of riding, including hunt seat, polo, and field hunt riding, under the tutelage of Emerson Burr, whom she remembers as a wonderful man who really cared about kids and wanted them to enjoy all aspects of riding. “It was a great place to grow up.”
Combs arrived at her current situation in a fairly convoluted fashion, getting into and out of riding in fits and starts. She started riding and showing as a youngster, and later moved on to instructing. She graduated early from high school and went to the Potomac Horse Center in Maryland, which prepares people for jobs in the horse industry, and where she both taught and evented. When selecting a college, she considered only those schools that had barns, and when she went to Connecticut College, she brought her horse with her. She soon found that it was hard to manage both schoolwork and riding, so she sold her horse and concentrated on school. For some time after that, she did not ride at all, except for an occasional ride on a friend’s farm here and there, a situation she found frustrating since in her mind, she was always a “rider who just wasn’t riding now.” For a long time she ran her own video production company in Cambridge, after which she took a year off, moved to Maryland, and got back into riding again. When she married, she once again putting riding on hold to “have kids and do that whole thing.” She and her husband, Al, moved to Harvard 10 years ago, to an old home with an even older barn that was very nearly falling down. They began fixing up the barn, and when her older daughter and then her younger daughter both began to develop their own love for horses, she started buying ponies, began taking—and eventually teaching—riding lessons again, and has now expanded into the riding center she has long dreamed of.
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| One of the Meadow March horses, Sunny, eyes visitors. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz) |
Planning and building
It took a year for Combs to finalize the plans for Meadow March: a year in which she talked to veterinarians, farriers, consultants, instructors, and others to ensure a safe and well-thought-out design that would support her vision. With Al in charge of construction, it took another year to bring her plans to fruition, and she opened her doors January 2. “The response has been wonderful,” Combs says with a smile. The center features a wing for school horses and a wing for boarders, with beautiful wood stalls, washing stations, and tack rooms. The boarding wings lead into a large, airy, well-lit indoor riding ring, overlooked by a heated lounge area with windows into the ring for viewing. A corner for young children to play in while siblings or parents ride and a lecture room attest to her commitment to children and to learning. “Kids need a place to play and I also want to offer lectures on theories of riding, barn management, and like topics. I want to sponsor field trips, start a Kids Club, have competitions, pizza movie nights, and I’d like parents to come and help out.” She is also passionate about safety, and the center was built with this in mind.
Meadow March is the convergence of many passions—her love of animals and kids, her deep desire to teach others, and her longing to share the joys and lessons of her own childhood riding experiences. She envisions it as a community of riders, a place where people, especially children, can learn and share their love of horses with other like-minded people. “Companionship is a lot of it. I have a 10-acre farm where I live, we have a ring, we have all the ponies and my kids still wanted to ride with other people. We’re still looking for more folks to ride with. I think that is a big part of it. It’s fun to have someone to say ‘Whoa, did you see that?’ to. It is also empowering for a child to experience that uncritical love from animals. It is a good alternative to school, video games, etc. It gives kids another place to go and provides some great life lessons.”
While Combs wants Meadow March to be a family and community-oriented environment, she also stresses that the center focuses solely on hunt-seat riding. “We do not do dressage; there are many other fine places that do that, and we wouldn’t board a horse for people who aren’t interested in our lesson program; it is all integrated.” Combs admires all kinds of riding and is quick to mention other riders in town who are accomplished in their own particular areas of expertise. “As a business model, we have chosen to focus on hunt-seat riding, which I love, but there are many, many other ways to enjoy riding and there are many other excellent riders and barns around here who offer alternatives.”
Combs is a certified instructor herself, and she has two other instructors, Fay Miller and Shauna Riley, onboard already. Lauren Stevens, a well-known local trainer, will take on the position of head trainer April 15. Combs runs Meadow March with the help of her business manager, Betsy Griffin.
One of her goals is to provide a riding experience for those who do not own their own horses. Some riding students will have their own horses, either trucked in or boarded on site, but, she says, “There are lots of kids who don’t own their own horses and they are looking for a place to land.” Having school horses available makes riding accessible to those who do not own their horse. Students who decide that they want to, can try out horse ownership with a part-lease or full-lease, and perhaps some day buy a horse and board it there.
Meadow March is still in its infancy, and Combs has many more plans for her creation. She reels off a long list of ideas and plans, some of them already in the works, such as their new website. Others will take a little longer to realize. “By the spring we will have a full-size outdoor riding ring with lights and speakers, a pony ring, and I want to clear a bridle path for trail rides. I want to offer lots of programs and clinics.” The Nashua River Watershed is offering a program this spring in her lecture room on environmentally responsible horse ownership, and coming in April is a video clinic with Lauren Stevens.
Combs’s eyes shine as she describes her plans and looks around at her brand-new facility. She says simply, “I want to offer people what I experienced as a child.”