Tammy, the farmer wanna be moves to the country for the sake of horses and her sanity! The year was 1989, the dreams were big and the wallet was small. I owned 3 horses at the time and my monthly horse board exceeded my house payment, with this in mind it was time to look for horse property. Trying to stay somewhat close to the city so I could also do my freelance television work I purchased some land and a manufactured house, in a rural community called Acton. The goal was to bring the horses home as soon as the barn and pastures were built. Having saved and successfully retrained and placed a beautiful thoroughbred, Bold Weather, a grandson of Bold Ruler who had been injured off the race track, I had experienced the rewards of rescuing horses. It was in my blood and I imagined saving more. All that I needed was the facility. Canyon Creek Farm was the name of my ranch but starting the rescue business took 16 years along with a lot of blood, sweat (equity), and tears. This is the story of how Canyon Creek Farm Horse Rescue finally came to be in 2005.

This is the ranch in a view from the back of property in December of 1989. The little yellow house on the hill was home. The land was just being graded for the arena and the pad for the barn. No one had any idea how long and hard the process was going to be so with this is mind it was a good thing I started when I was very young and full of energy!

This is the view that I had from the house. We are breaking ground for the barn and arena. The barn seemed to go up instantly but completion of the rest of the ranch, the fencing, arena, shelters and all the needed utilities would come years later. All my neighbors and friends made frequent comments about how I would never be finished, regardless, comments like these that I knew to be true, didn't seem to curb my enthusiasm. I ran hoses for water to the barn for years and the high costs of installing the utilities set this project back for many years to come.

By far one of the most important and expensive necessities to any farm is secure fencing. I researched environmental materials as well as safe fencing for the horses. Knowing how destructive horses can be and how difficult fencing is to maintain I happened upon an innovative product, the concrete fence post. It was a great product but the installation consisted of special metal hardware and precision as to the height and location of each post. Because of this I and my then partner, Steve ended up installing nearly each and every post ourselves. It took literally years to fence the entire property, but being young and having more energy than money installing our fence became a full time job. White vinyl fencing was not our first choice as it was then an expensive and short term solution. I grew up around black 3 and 4 rail fencing in Kentucky, so having had experience with this it was the best choice.. Once installed we wrapped the fence with a Diamond "H", non climb wire mesh designed for horses. The posts are still standing strong 17 years later and the rails have been replaced where necessary. The wire mesh has held up as well.

Installing fence
	Installing the fence posts required more work than we expected. The company who manufactured the fence is unfortunately no longer in business but we spend many days learning about installation as we hoped to help him distribute his products.

Barn is up and the back pasture is nearly complete. Almost time to bring the horses home. Secret, my thoroughbred mom and her filly Stormy, were still being boarded at Upper Middle Ranch enjoying the grass paddocks and costing mom a fortune. I hoped to someday have grass pastures as well the only thing standing between me and that dream was water!

More progress as a few trees are planted.