ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 13, 1997 TAG: 9703130013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Here's how you can tell it's already spring, despite what the calendar says:
A press release shows up on your desk from Moscow, Idaho. It seems there was this horse, a very famous horse, an Appaloosa - the kind with spots on its hindquarters.
You like the look of jodhpurs, but alas, you are not the horsy type. In fact, the last time you rode a horse, you didn't walk right for three days. Nonetheless, the press release intrigues you.
The horse, named Red Eagle's Peacock, was foaled in 1953. Although it has been dead for 20 years, last month the Idaho-based Appaloosa Horse Club saw fit to induct it into its Hall of Fame, along with another horse called Booger Chief.
The boss won't send you to Idaho - you don't even bother asking - but there is a tenuous local connection. If you can find a woman in Ferrum named Suzanne Pabst, Peacock's last owner, you get to spend the better part of a day driving past forsythia, across rippling mountain streams, through the Dairy Queen-rich hills of Franklin County where spring is but an Oreo-cookie Blizzard away.
You find Suzanne Pabst.
A blue-ribbon horse
Pabst is a lot more interesting than beating a dead horse, so let's get this Appaloosa stuff out of the way:
Peacock was a son of Red Eagle, owned by an Idaho horseman named Claude Thompson. Thompson was instrumental in re-establishing the Appaloosa breed, which had been taken away from the Nez Perce Indians near the Canadian border as they attempted to flee the U.S. government in the 1870s.
Look up Appaloosa in a World Book encyclopedia, and you'll see a picture of Red Eagle's Peacock. I'm serious. That's how famous he was.
Pabst was a teen-ager visiting her uncle in California in 1959 when she first glimpsed Peacock, the 1956 National Champion Halter Stallion. Already a horsewoman, she'd bought her first Appaloosa at age 14 - against her father's wishes - waiting until dad was out of town to do so.
``You bought him, now you feed him,'' was his initial reaction. Pabst remembers baby-sitting weeknights after school so her weekends were free to tend to - and pay for the boarding of - her horse.
A midwife for animals
Fourteen years later, she married an heir to the Pabst Blue Ribbon fortune and began to live out her dream: to be a horsewoman on a Connecticut horse farm. She raised three children, showed and bred Appaloosas, and continued to study and read about Red Eagle's line. Eventually, she called up the owners of Peacock and made an offer they couldn't refuse.
Then she had him flown from California to her farm, where she bred him until he died of liver cancer in 1977. Her marriage ended in 1980, and in 1983 she moved her horse operation - along with a slew of other animals - to a 25-acre farm in Patrick County, between Woolwine and Ferrum.
``He was a crazy horse,'' she says of Peacock. ``He put on quite a show, a big bluffer. He'd act nasty all the time, but he wasn't. He knew he was famous.''
Pabst's plea to get Red Eagle's Peacock the Hall of Fame respect he deserves was well-plotted. She's currently breeding a descendent of his with the son of a more recent Hall-of-Famer, called Dreamfinder. ``So I'm getting the best of the past and breeding it to the current best,'' she says. Her hope is to produce yet another national halter-class winner.
But the Appaloosas are only a smidgen of what's interesting about Pabst's Old Spring Farm.
First, there's this goose. Pabst calls him Honky.
She bought Honky three years ago with the intention of serving him up for Christmas dinner - but he wormed his way into her heart before she got around to stuffing him.
``He's erroneously imprinted now,'' she says. ``The problem is, he doesn't know he's a goose. He thinks he's a sheep, or a dog - or me.''
Honky likes attention. He camps out in the middle of Virginia 40 on especially busy days, such as during the Ferrum Folklife Festival. Sometimes he likes to fly adjacent to the local school bus, even getting off at the correct stop in front of Pabst's house.
Pabst's flock also includes a handful of wild Barbados sheep - they jump 10 feet off the ground - a border collie, and a barn full of miniature Pinschers and Manx cats, which she also breeds to sell.
I like mine over-easy
At 55, she does most of her own veterinary work and all her own farm upkeep, with the exception of mowing grass. ``The calendar is my bible,'' she says. ``It has everything from my own doctor appointments to literally when somebody's due to have babies.''
Somebody, she says, meaning one among her menagerie.
Her latest enterprise is converting the house into a bed and breakfast - the only drawback being, she says, ``that I hate to get up and fix breakfast!''
Under renovation, the house offers visitors insights into both a working farm and the tough horsewoman who runs it. It's also got history: a 26-marker cemetery in the front yard has graves dating back to the mid-1700s, including a couple with Veteran of the American Revolution markers.
Pabst says the B&B part of Old Spring Farm will open for guests this fall. Sounds to me like the perfect excuse to get away from this computer and take a fall drive among the turning leaves.
I hope she sends a press release.
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Suzanne Pabst and her Appaloosa, Whata Dreamfinder,by CNBposed for this snapshot, which Pabst used for a Christmas card
photograph.