Far from Kentucky's majestic stables, Jonathan Sheppard runs his operation out of a late 19th century dairy barn converted for racehorses. 

Inside the main barn, a cluster of thick leather and brass halters hang from an overhead hook.  A chestnut filly gets a foot trimming with very little fuss. A veterinarian administers vaccinations.   Off in a corner a mash of hot oats is brewing in a steel kettle.  Horses poke their heads out of adjoining stalls, while a pair of crescent horned goats wander at will keeping both animals and humans company.

The morning after a dazzling snowfall two grays are led out to an adjacent field joining a mob of other fillies.  The grays-- Forever Together and Informed Decision-- dig and pick at hidden shoots of grass, then suddenly wheel around and gallop off, white plumes steaming from their nostrils in the frosty air.

They are owner George Strawbridge’s champion girls.  But here’s the thing: thoroughbred trainers just don’t turn out two champion-level animals together.  The risk is far too great.  But for Sheppard, it is yet another of the natural approaches that sets him apart from other top American trainers.

“I just think we use too much stuff.  Too much of everything,” Ellen Lea says, considering the world’s dependence on fossil fuels, and the environmental damage that dependence creates.  “There’s got to be a bottom to everything, but not solar energy.  I really feel like the carbon footprint is important,” she explains, “I feel like this is doing my part.”  Lea is part of a fast-growing contingent of land owners who have made the leap to alternative energy.  In a couple of months, engineers from Penn Renewables of Quakertown, PA will begin installation of panels that will convert the house, the barns and the stables to solar energy.
The original part of the house at Willow Lake Farm was built in 1713, and was probably heated with wood or coal, or a combination of both.  Kerosene lights and candles provided the ambience for the 18th Century farmers who settled here. 
Lea’s great uncle purchased the farm in 1934, and she grew up here. “Twenty years ago my mother said ‘what do you want me to do with the farm?’ We had a family meeting,” she explains, at which she and her siblings discussed the farm and what it meant to the family.  “They all have fabulous memories of living here,” and didn’t want to see the farm sold to developers, who were enthusiastically offering huge sums of money for 165 rolling acres in this southeastern corner of Montgomery County. The siblings decided that Lea should take over the farm, and purchase it from the estate.
“Mother decided to put a conservation easement on it,” Lea says, and provided in her will for as much land as Lea wanted to be carved out of the easement.  She retained 26 acres, and the rest is part of the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association’s portfolio of conserved land.  Lea and her husband, Dr. Dale Schilling, a large animal veterinarian, breed thoroughbred racehorses.  From their sunroom they can watch their yearlings in a gently sloping pasture that sits just across a small pond.  Even swaddled in a thick blanket of new snow, the farm is a stunning expanse of pastures, streams and thick woods.

Sally Addington of Polk, Pa., vividly remembers watching Craig Cameron’s Extreme Cowboy Races on television. The races’ emphasis on horsemanship and speed mesmerized her, and the tricky series of obstacles for horse and rider to navigate only made her more eager try her hand at this up-and-coming discipline.

“I thought, ‘I can do that,’” Addington said, so she applied to compete at Equine Affaire in Columbus, Ohio, in 2007. “I had a real big head thinking I was going to win this thing. But my horse decided he didn’t want to go through the obstacles. So I ended up placing 13th. It was an eye opener for me and I’m glad it happened because I needed to be taken down a peg or two.”

The next year, she missed the deadline to apply for the Extreme Cowboy Races, but in 2009 Addington applied and was accepted. With a new attitude, she set off for Ohio with the goal of placing in the top 10 and establishing a better bond with her horse, Ghost of a Chance, an 11-year-old grade gelding.

“It was just he and I time. Every moment was spent together, talking to him,” she said. “He’s got such a large vocabulary of words, and he does know them. He’s my best bud. We had a beautiful ride in the semi-finals, and at that point I didn’t even care if I made it to the finals.”
When scores were posted, Addington was third going into the finals round, so she made a new goal to make it into the top five. Cameron requires all riders to ride the finals round bareback, so Addington removed her saddle and anxiously awaited her turn.

“Then someone told me to put my saddle back on because there was going to be a run-off for first place,” Addington said. “I started crying because I knew the worst I could do was second place. I went into the run-off and won.”

Later in 2009, she competed in another Extreme Cowboy Race in West Springfield, Mass., winning that competition, too. By now, Addington had garnered enough attention on the Extreme Cowboy Race circuit that people began asking if they would see her at Equine Affaire in Pomona, Calif., in January 2010.