Nomad Farms

11/02/2025

It's Alex's birthday so Lauren will be offline and not returning most texts today.

Thank you for understanding!

10/28/2025

🎃Hidden Lakes Halloween Show 2025! .........
What a show! 11 horses, 13 riders, and tons of candy, costumes, smiles, and ribbons!..........
The spooky vibes were in full swing with some thick fog that stuck around until well into the Trot Crossrails division and made for some awesome photos! 😂.........
🎃 Leadline Queens Presley & Violet, Lucy & Martin, and Annabelle & Boogie tackled the thickest of the fog and rode beautifully!

🎃 Groundpoles was an interesting time with the fog still present and giving an added element of spookiness to the woods at the back of the ring, but everyone handled it so well! Melody & Wasabi + Boogie were so flexible doing pony changes and working through a challenging first show with graceful poise and incredible sportsmanship, Aubrey & Tata absolutely smashed their first under saddle show with ribbons in every class, Emma & Harley overcame some spooks and pinned 2nd in a competitive flat class!

🎃 Trot Crossrails girls were absolute rockstars! It was a fabulous moment when our three girls pinned 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in a decent sized flat class! Erin & Terra cruised around at Erin's very first hunter show with ribbons in every class, Remi & Georgia improved through every round and achieved their goal of perfect diagonals placing 2nd in the flat, and Sadie & TMac knocked their Xrails debut out of the park winning the flat and ending the division as Champions!

🎃 18" pairs Madison & Georgia and Alicyn & Spirit were champs in a huge division right before costume class chaos. Both girls rode so confidently in both their flat classes and made beautiful adjustments in each over fences class. Alicyn earned a very well-deserved 4th out of 19 in one of her over fences, and Madison pinned in all her jump rounds plus her hunter flat!

🎃 Costume class is the absolute highlight of the entire show year for our riders! Check out stories for individual photos of each of the 10 pairs! They all look stunning! Lily & Oliver, Annabelle & Boogie, and Aubrey & Tata even won costume awards!.........
Absolute hugest of thank yous to Leslie for these incredible photos and to Hidden Lake Farm for the most awesome day!

10/25/2025

Momma has a new favorite treat: Tasty Human. ⚰️🔮🧛‍♀️

10/24/2025

Our villain origin story will be in full swing if the weather targets us again. 🤣
Stay tuned. ✌️
Tails will be reporting live on the weather tomorrow in our Instagram stories.

10/23/2025

This is why our barn joined Pony Club this year. Time learning out of the saddle is so important. If you're interested in your child joining Pony Club, let us know!

Ask Dr. Holly Helbig what she worries most about for the future of the sport, and her answer isn’t about judging systems, prize money, or even veterinary shortages. It’s about kids.

“We’ve done this to them,” she said during a recent Plaidcast In Person event. “We’ve tacked up for them, been their grooms, enabled them. They aren’t getting the hours it takes to build intuition around horses.”

That loss of hands-on time—the small, daily habits that teach empathy and awareness—has become one of Helbig’s biggest concerns. And as both a veterinarian and professional trainer, she’s seen how taking those opportunities away doesn’t just change young riders; it changes the horses too.

Helbig describes herself as a “horse-crazy girl, not from a horse family.” She didn’t grow up surrounded by resources, but she found a way to make it work. “My parents went through bankruptcy,” she said. “Being a kid, not coming from a ton of money, I had to be scrappy.”

That scrappiness, she believes, is part of what shaped her success. “I didn’t have the money to pay a braider or a bunch of grooms,” she said. “You just jump in and do what you have to do. At the end of the day, I wouldn’t trade it. My relationship with that horse was stronger because of all the time I spent with him.”

Today, she worries that many young riders aren’t getting those same opportunities. “I think we’ve created a generation that can ride beautifully,” she said, “but hasn’t had the chance to really know horses.”

In her own training program, Helbig made sure her students stayed involved in every aspect of horse care. “My kids tacked for themselves at the horse show,” she said. “We had grooms, but they tacked for themselves.”

When something medical came up, she used it as a teaching moment. “Whenever anything happened in the barn, I’d scoop all the kids up and say, ‘Come look at this. What is it? Look at this ultrasound. Let’s look at this x-ray together.’”

Those experiences, she said, taught her students to see horses as living, breathing partners—not just show animals. “They learned to pay attention, to notice things, and to ask questions. That’s what builds confidence.”

📎 Continue reading this article at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2025/10/22/let-the-kids-tack-up-why-the-next-generation-needs-more-time-in-the-barn/
📸 Lauren Mauldin / The Plaid Horse

10/21/2025

🎄 Nomad Farms Merch! 🎄

Honor system! Leave cash/check in brown box on top of merch shelf or Venmo . Proceeds go straight to pony treats and massage therapy appointments that keep them feeling their best!

T-shirts: $25 Kids & Adult sizes
Black - Large logo front
Heather Blue - softest, more fitted cut, logo front
Blue - small logo front, large logo back

Ballcap: $35
One size fits all
(Lauren's fat XL men's size head fits in these- highly adjustable😂)

Black Full Zip Hoodie: $45
Kids & Adult sizes
Small logo front, large logo back

Navy 1/4 Zip Windbreaker: $95
Awesome high quality Duluth Trading Company AKHG brand. Adult sizes only.
Kangaroo pocket, elastic hood and cuffs, very windproof and water proof, great outer layer for riding, horse shows, sports games, rainy days, etc! (Hood fits over helmet!😍)

09/30/2025

🍁Lessons resume as normal this week.

09/28/2025

Wow, what a fantastic day for our riders at the Aubrey Meadows NTHJC show today!.....
Bryna & Waylon debuted in Crossrail Jumpers and found their calling ending the division as Champions! 👏 They have been working their booties off all year long to become confident in the canter divisions, and every bit of that work shone through today!........
Emma was going to make a last minute Crossrails debut on Harley but Harley decided the Brahman cows next door were *far* too scary to be her usual chill unbothered self, so we switched Emma to Wasabi who *also* decided those cows were demons.🤦‍♀️But Emma stuck it out for a *beautifully* brave round with a bit of walk, trot, and canter on Wasabi! .........
Madison was the resident pony squisher today and bounced back and forth between Harley for four rounds and Wasabi for three (due to the previously mentioned demon cows🤦‍♀️). By the third round with Wasabi, they were hauling *butt* and looked like a seasoned jumper team despite it being Madison's third ever time riding Wasabi!........
Lilah & Georgia made four technical rounds in Future Jumpers look like an absolute cakewalk and finished Champions with another clean sweep out of 20 riders! Her division took so long they left before it ended, so pictured is her massive bag of prizes instead. 🤣.........
Thank you so very much Aubrey Meadows for an awesome show! The facility updates are amazing and we're so excited for future shows!.........
Special mention to our riders who did not get to come out today as planned due to horses being a little stiff still from the hail storm. You're all troopers and we'll have better luck soon. 💙

09/25/2025

Lauren and the horses might be the machine, but Alex is undoubtedly the oil behind the well-oiled machine!

Horses and weather are master destroyers and we all wouldn't be able to enjoy the horses and the property without Alex keeping everything fixed behind the scenes!
(Let's just say the welder we bought for farm repairs paid for itself fairly immediately!)

Crazy that the storm was able to rip the front corner of King's shed right out of the ground, concrete footer and all. Alex has got it back right as rain though and now on to the next thing! Grateful for good weather today!