Touchstone Farm

                                    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