November 22, 2009  |
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| bloodhorse.com >> Breeding >> Country Life Diary |
Country Life
Diary Preface
Those words of advice, and a large family who took over my farm chores so that I could write while the iron was hot, are the reasons this diary came to be. The idea, however, belonged to Edward L. Bowen, senior editor of The Blood-Horse magazine, who summoned me to his office four years ago this autumn with the notion that it might be time to update Humphrey Finney's Stud Farm Diary, published in The Blood-Horse in 1935. The prospect of once again writing for The Blood-Horse thrilled me. I owed this institution a game effort. The magazine was my first real employer outside of Country Life, when then-editor Kent Hollingsworth took a flyer on a sophomore English major from the University of Virginia. For three years after college, I worked full time. Ed and Kent both encouraged me to apply to law school at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Once again, I became summer help, and once again, The Blood-Horse paid me to write, thus enabling me to pursue an education in law, an insurance policy against the ups and downs of the horse business. With such motivation, and much to my surprise, I never felt the task of writing the diary to be a burden. Rather, it was a form of continuing education -- graduate school in the real world. I started writing drafts the night I arrived home from my meeting with Ed, on the floor of a house not yet finished, by a creek whose waters I could hear from the basement window where I worked. Thereafter, each month from 1989 through 1991, The Blood-Horse carried the Country Life Diary in serial form. This diary was a jealous mistress, but my wife Ellen never objected to the time I spent trying to get the words right. She might as well have hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the door of my study every evening. I am so very grateful to her for her understanding. My mother, meanwhile, often edited the monthly installments before I forwarded them to the magazine. It is appropriate that her hook rug, sewn on many evenings in front of the fireplace after she had put five children to bed, graces the cover of this book. From the beginning, I took Thoreau's advice, and wrote while the heat was in me. In the end, I hope my efforts warm you.
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