Windchase 25th Year Anniversary Party!

     This summer is the 25th Anniversary of the founding of Windchase.  We are going to celebrate this with a party, on Sunday, July 22.  We are inviting all current and former clients, students, boarders and friends of Windchase to come join us.  It will be a potluck cookout on the lawn, starting around 2:00pm.  Bring food!  RSVPs are appreciated.  We hope you can make it!

     In the summer of 1986, my Mom and I first came to see this lovely spot on the earth that is now Windchase.  I had lived pretty much all of my life up to that point on our small farm in Great Falls, VA, which is much closer in to Washington DC.  It was countryside when I was a kid, but by the mid eighties it had gotten to be more and more developed, and offered fewer and fewer places to ride.  I was feeling increasingly hemmed in and frustrated at a time when I was competing very seriously and trying to make an International name for myself, and I needed to have the open space to train and condition my horses.  One day when I had been kicked off yet another of the places I had formerly had permission to ride, I came home and said, "Mom, let's move!"
     Well, we Dawson's are nothing if not impulsive.  The very next day, Mom went out searching for farms in Loudoun County.  She hooked up with a realtor, who happened to be a fellow Event rider, and he took her to see a piece of property that he thought we might like.  She immediately fell in love with it, and a few days later took me out to see it.  Of course, I also fell in love with it at first sight!
     Mom had always been a country girl, raised on a farm near Charlottesville, VA, with a great love of the outdoors and the country way of life; I had definitely inherited that affinity for farm life and nature.  We both immediately felt a strong sense of connection to this piece of land.  We looked at a few other properties, but nothing else measured up; both of us had completely fallen in love with Windchase from the first moment we saw it.  And the rest, of course, is history!

     Within a week, we had negotiated a contract and gone ahead with plans to buy the property.  In August, 1986, we went to settlement to purchase the farm, and christened it Windchase.  During the late summer and autumn of 1986 we had the barn builders start on the arena and the stables.  We had our priorities right; get the barns built and worry about the restoring the house later!  We also had a crew working on creating the lake.  We commuted from Great Falls on an almost daily basis to work on the parts of the construction that we were doing ourselves; things like the dock in the lake, the water system in the stables, the retaining walls outside of the barns.   In the spring of 1987 the barns were mostly completed and we moved in.  The house was renovated in 1988.
     

     Windchase looked quite different back then.  There was pretty much nothing here but corn fields.  The area where the barns and the sand ring are was a hay field, and all the pastures and galloping field was planted in corn.  Where the lake now is, there was a swamp with a stream lazily meandering through it, and the lawn near the house was mostly shrubby woods.  The house itself was old and dilapidated, just over half the size it is now, and covered with awful old asphalt shingles over the wood siding.  My brothers took one look at it and advised us to bulldoze it down and start fresh - but fortunately we didn't heed that advice.   
     Mom and I had dreams and plans.  We spent many hours designing the stables, planning the renovation of the house, mapping out where to put the barns, pastures and fences.  We designed everything ourselves, envisioning what it would look like once completed. It has been one of the most rewarding and satisfying things that I have ever done in my life to make those dreams become a reality!

     I have great memories of those days. I was totally in love with this farm, and so excited about it, and I clearly remember saying to myself, "I wonder if in 20 years, I will be as excited about this place as I am right now."  And then thinking, "Yes, I am sure that I will be."  And I am here to tell you, now 25 years down the road, that if anything, I am even more in love with the farm than ever.  There's not a day that goes by that I don't ride around the farm and totally appreciate how lucky I am to be here at Windchase.  There is some special magic attached to the piece of land that is Windchase, and there is no place else I would rather be.   

     So like I said, we are throwing a 25th Anniversary Party.  On Sunday July 22nd, we will have a pot-luck cookout on the lawn to celebrate the  of the founding of Windchase.  All of you present and former clients, students, boarders and friends of Windchase are invited!  Starting around 2:00 pm.  Please bring food!  RSVPs are appreciated.