Friday
at lunch!!!
Dear Session 5 Moms and Dads, and any other PF farm family
members,
I am
writing first and foremost to say a great big “SOOOO SORRY” that Becky and I
have not written sooner. I swear your
children are dear and wonderful…and everyone is all smiles….We just plain got
swept away with the accreditation process of the American Camping
Association. Our big day visit was
yesterday and it took every extra minute to get it all done!!!
Before I
tell you about the visit and the results, let me say that you have lovely
children. They have come together nicely
as a group. We have some truly tiny ones
and they have led the way of being terrific.
Our Room One and Two kids are amazing as several of them are only 6,7
and 8…Amazing children, all. Up in Tree
House, we have equally great kids who are just having a blast doing things
together and being silly, happy go-lucky kids. All the troops in between are
equally great. I see” Roommies” doing
funny bag skits, fashion shows, games and Treasure Hunts doing the evenings,
while picking up their rooms for the big race to the Cleanest Room Finish Line
for Connolly’s Ice Cream. In short, it
has been a sweet, nice, happy, cooperative and gentle group. I love seeing each of the quiet ones come out
of their shyness, only to be funny and silly. I do want to see kids being silly
in this day and age of serious! These
kids have surely done this…
I think you
will be most pleased to see how well they are riding in the lesson groups. We have had a lesson every morning and… wow,
have I seen good concentration and focus.
The kids who could hardly steer are zooming around the ring as a group,
while those who had barely started jumping can now do a course with some turns…Meanwhile,
the more experienced ones are doing in and outs with two strides on the third
jump. I hope you will like what you see
tomorrow.
Speaking of
tomorrow, we hope you will arrive right at 10AM. We promise to have everyone
packed with suitcases ready to load up if they are leaving. For those staying, they too will be
ready…AND, for those staying, PLEASE do not feel like you have to come to see
the Parents’ Riding Exhibition. We will
love them in your stead and then they can strut their stuff for you next week
at your exhibition. Andi and I are planning on taking the kids who are staying
over to a fun fair in our local town so they will have plenty to do. They will have a special dinner and a good
relaxing movie. The next day they will get to sleep in and then have Brunch and
get to have a carriage ride with me with a pair of ponies. Following that, we will greet the last group
of campers for 2012. Where has the summer flown…OMG, as the kids say…I am so
sorry to see it all end for the summer.
I love camp the best of all the year.
Now, for
what they have done this week. Sadly, we
have had two strikes against us…First, the weather has not been our friend. We
had a couple of nice days in the beginning of the week and then we have had
weather reports of thunderstorms throughout the rest of the week. Thunder and lightening are not friendly to
kids on ponies out on the trail, so sadly we were not able to do this
together. We had them ride and ride
lots, but not out a mile or two from the farm. They stuck close by and did
Driving, Vaulting, Pony Dress Up, Pair Jumping, Catch Riding, Bareback, Treasure
Hunts and Jumping Courses. When they
were not on their ponies, they painted rocks with ponies on them in arts and
crafts, made bracelets with their ponies’ names on them, learned about them, or
just hugged & petted them. In short,
this really is a camp for kids who love horses, pure & simple. They sure
seemed to love it all.
Just to be
fair, we did several non-horsey things…All group swims and lots of singing,
complete with one guitar played by a camper.
We also had our lovely evening Vespers where each room read poems, or
stories, or adlibbed a version of why I love my pony. It is all so sweet to see how grateful the
kids are and how much they love to talk about their time here. Combine this
with rest hour and gentle good night stories, it makes a pretty dear picture!
However….This
group’s finest moment was in preparing for the ACA visit…Man, did they knock my
socks off. You would have been so proud…But I should not start here. Let me start at the beginning.
Every three
years as part of the summer camp community of the American Camping Association,
each camp is asked to voluntarily submit to a process to become accredited with
a site visit. Prior to this visit,
members of the camp management must attend a training session for a day and
learn how to prepare for the visit. Once this is done, the team of the camp
must take each section of the Accreditation book and start in on preparing the
standards laid out in the various parts of any camp. Sections include
everything from food prep, to refrigeration, to nursing staff and medication
dispensing, to programming and free choice, to transportation, to insurance and
worker’s comp, to job descriptions, to staff training, to ethics and integrity,
to camper forms and evaluations, to bunk beds and car first aid kits and
electrical outlets, and dumpsters, and camp fires at camping trips, to teaching
the kids things, to diversity…..the list simply goes on and on.
We had 297
standards to which we had to comply.
Many of the sections had multiple sections. Many of the standards needed written
documentation of our policies and practices. We needed a score of 80% or better to become
ACA accredited. We were shooting for a
100% score. While I knew this was
‘shooting the moon’, I also wanted the triple play. We had previously gotten
100% for our Horse Power program for therapeutic riding and a 100% for the
regular riding program through the respective national associations. I wanted
to get 100% on ACA too so we could win the Trifecta!!!! So, with much ado about
a lot, we mushed forth for the last 6 months to get ready.
Thursday
was the day that everything had to be organized and ready…with the farm in tip
top shape…and every kid lined up, blade of grass clipped and flake of hay
swept…To the credit of Becky, who led the charge, to the staff who wrote and
thought and planned, the kids who worked to make the farm sparkly…it got done.
When I walked the barns and offices, tack rooms and riding rings on Thursday
morning, it was a true beauty to behold.
I felt like the general making his rounds…There was not a wrinkle out of
place or a cobweb to be seen. It was
amazing and dazzling. The amount of care and love and pride that this group
took in being the ones to present the farm was just amazing. I was touched and
teary.
By 8AM
sharp, all was in place and the troops dressed to do their best. When the accreditation visitors arrived, you
would not believe the welcome the kids and staff gave them. From beginning to end, your children served
as ambassadors of Pony Farm. We had room guides, lunch guides, info guides and
general beautiful kids, through and through.
The visitors were dazzled.
Following the introductions, we had Community Meeting and the lessons for
the day were laid out and the Afternoon Activities were explained. The visitors
were part of this and enjoyed seeing the kids eager to get to their morning
rides. We then saw all the rooms, the
Infirmary, the Kitchen and Food Storage areas, as well as Recycling and the
Business offices. While the kids tacked up, we looked at the gas/flammable
storage areas, the workshops and Pool safety equipment. Then, we went to see each group ride and work
on learning new skills. I was a proud “Camp Momma”. Wow, did they shine, as did all the barns. It
was pretty darned amazing.
We then had
lunch all together and each group of kids had a lunch table hostess with
friends. They were alone with the
visitors and were interviewed. The staff
joined in…As the kids went to their Rest Hour and Afternoon Activities, four of
us went up to my Dining Room Table to do the paperwork, which we will display
for your tomorrow. It is simply
inspiring and daunting.
They went
over every single page of nearly 1,000 pages of work, all carefully typed and
detailed. It took from 1PM to 6:30PM to do this process. As they say, “No stone was left
unturned.” We read and reviewed and
hashed out every procedure and thought we ever had.
By 6:30PM,
we were all crossed eyed but happy. WE
had done the whole thing.
The joyous
results are that your children attend an ACA Accredited camp which has a 99.9%
rating….We missed a 100% by one simple sentence. We missed one section of one question that we
did not think even applied to us…So, Moms and Dads, we are proud to our
toes. Like in the Olympics, on the
Gymnastics Team no one gets a perfect 10 on each of the floor exercises, the
balance beam, the rings and the parallel bars, we got 10s on everything except one
small detail. We will now be accredited with the ACA for the next three years.
Your dear
children were part of this experience of joyous success. We are grateful to them for doing such a
superior job of helping present what we do so beautifully…and so well. I am proud of our staff beyond all words that
they do such a superior job. A score of 99.9% is unheard of…and we got that!!!
So, as I
write this, I am about to fall asleep in my soup, I am a happy camper…along
with the rest of the community. We are proud to tell you this and will be equally
proud to have you watch the festivities tomorrow. Let’s hope it does not rain.
See you
soon and with a big smile, Boo
