TACK & FARM

Our Tack & Farm section features an Apparel section to find both practical and fashionable riding attire. If you ride English & Western or Race, many sources are available in the Tack section.

Building a barn? Need an architect for your equine dream home? Find one in Barns & Stalls.

Have a hungry horse? Of course you do! Find a place to buy your feed and tuck your horse in at night in the Bedding & Feed section. Looking for a place to keep your horse? You can find it in the Horse Boarding section. Keep your horse happy and beautiful with resources in our Grooming section.

Traveling? Find a Shipping company or Horse Sitting service if your horse is staying home!

Running and maintaining a farm or stable is a continuous effort, and to help find products or tools you need, please see our Equipment, Fencing and Management Tools sections.

Seeking Services? Find financial and tax expertise in our Accounting section. Companies who will help protect your investment are found in the Insurance section. For those who want legal advice about purchasing, liability, and other issues, please look at the Equine Law section to find an expert. Build and promote your business with teams from Marketing / Videography / Web Design.

Do we need to add more? Please use the useful feedback link and let us know!

Ben Geisler of Aspen Saddlery (Photo courtesy of Shop Talk Magazine)

By Lynn Ascrizzi

Resilience. A capacity to flourish. Hidden strength. Attributes like these are native to the aspen tree: a lithe, adaptable species that announces spring with flowering catkins, reclaims burned-over, scarred landscapes and, in fall, lights up hillsides with bright-gold leaves.

The tree’s hardy attributes seem to be a fitting metaphor for Aspen Saddlery of Rineyville, Kentucky, a one-man shop owned and operated with single-minded dedication by saddlemaker and leatherworker, Ben Geisler.

The majority of Geisler’s equally hardy customers are ranch cowboys and horse trainers. “I make working saddles for working horsemen. They’re almost all rough-out, Wade saddles, made flesh side-out. The thing with rough out, is that it gives the rider more grip. It doesn’t necessarily scratch or mark. Over time, it will smooth down. It’s an honor for me to make something that helps another person make a living,” he said.

Geisler does not hire help. “It’s my work only. I stamp my name on every piece. You need to take ownership for everything you do. It’s both liberating and terrifying,” he said.

The Wade saddle, he noted, was first introduced in Oregon in the late 1930s. The style soon caught on with horsemen in nearby states and beyond. “Wade saddles first came into wide use in Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, California and Idaho — the kind of areas home to buckaroos. Saddles are very regional. They are, and always have been, regional. Between their saddle, tack and hat, you know where somebody is from.”

What makes a Wade a Wade?

“A Wade saddle fits lower on the horse,” he explained. “It has a slick fork with a prominent lip in the front and a large horn. It also tends to feature bars with a large surface area to help distribute the weight and to spread pressure more evenly across a horse’s back. It causes less stress on the horse. A Wade saddle is well suited to handle heavy, powerful animals out in range conditions.”

ENCOUNTERING A MASTER

For saddlemaker Geisler, 39, his charismatic role model since childhood has been legendary master saddlemaker, Dale Harwood. Geisler’s connection to the saddlemaker was linked to his paternal grandfather, the late Blair Geisler, a horseman and cowboy who ran a farm supply business in Idaho Falls, Idaho, where at one time, Harwood had his workshop.

“My grandfather knew Dale Harwood in the 1960s, before I was born. My first awareness of Dale was at about age 11, when my parents moved back to Idaho Falls in 1991, and I could visit Dale’s shop,” Geisler said.

“I met him personally. His shop never changed. It looked the same for years. Dale would always talk to my dad, Steve Geisler, a lariat rope manufacturer. When we’d go and visit Dale, he wouldn’t stop working. He’d hold one tool in his mouth, while he talked, but would never look up from his work.

“Dale is a man of small stature,” he added. “He has an old-world craftsman vibe. It wasn’t until I was in my 20s, that my visits became more personal. He was also a custom gun builder. He had high-level skills in woodworking and metalworking. I got interested in woodworking, so I’d go to Dale’s shop and talk a bit about making things from wood.”

In those early years, his interaction with Harwood was casual. “He wasn’t a mentor at that point. He was like a grandpa. I could go talk to him. He would occasionally teach me something in a casual way. He’s very free with his knowledge, but he’s not going to hold your hand. He expects you to figure out things for yourself.”

In 2006, Geisler earned a BBA degree in international business from Boise State University in Idaho. During his college years, he lived in Chengdu, in southwestern China, a region that borders Tibet. He went as an exchange student, from 2003 to 2004. He returned to the region, after graduation, in 2007 to 2008. “I learned Mandarin. In Chengdu, I saw a Tibetan saddle in an antique shop, bought it and sent it back to the U.S.”

When back in the states, he brought the antique saddle to Harwood. “He looked at it from the standpoint of how it was made and how the saddle would work for a horse. He was surprised that it looked like Native American saddles that he had seen,” he recalled.

“In 2015, Geisler and his fiancé, Brit Waters, a U.S. Army medical doctor who served in Afghanistan, decided to take the great American road trip during her post-deployment leave. “It was me and her, and her elderly dog, Roxie. By the time we got to Idaho, the dog had a ragged collar. We stopped at my dad’s leather shop. I got some materials and made Roxie a leather collar. That started the whole thing.”

Geisler and Waters were married in 2015. But earning a livelihood from leatherworking didn’t fully occur to him, until Brit made a timely suggestion. “Why don’t you go find your spirit animal? Make some leather stuff —make a few leather things?”

Ben Geisler of Aspen Saddlery

Soon, he began making and selling his leather goods and ordering more tools and supplies. He finished his five-year tour as an artillery field officer in the U.S. Army in 2017. He completed his service as a first lieutenant.

“Very early on, it all crystallized. I thought, if I’m going to be a leatherworker, I want to be a saddlemaker. It was central to my whole life — growing up around horses.”

Don Gonzales (Photo courtesy of Shop Talk Magazine)

By Nick Pernokas

Many of us, who have been in the leather business for a long time, started out with Al Stohlman books and Tandy Leather tools. Some craftsmen were even able to go to a Tandy store and take lessons. For the young person interested in the leather business now, it’s a brave new world; one unlimited by the brick-and-mortar walls of the nearest leather dealer.

Since ShopTalk! last spoke with saddlemaker Don Gonzales for the April 2019 issue, he has moved into a new shop in Moulton, Texas. The historic building was, by chance, home to a boot and shoe shop owned by Rudy Simper many years ago. With 2700 square feet, the property has room for a retail area, a shop, and just as important, room to record digital media. Although Don continues to custom make high-end saddles and gear, his foray into the digital world of social media is an important example to all of us in the leather industry.

Aided only by his wife Claudia now, Don splits his time between building leather products and teaching about the process. In addition, he has a podcast which seeks to preserve the stories of other craftsmen and the history they embody.

Around 2010, one of Don’s employees encouraged him to start posting on Facebook. His pictures of products under construction were a hit, and he developed a following of both potential customers and other leather craftsmen. After a while, his personal shop page had surpassed 5,000 “Friends,” which was the most allowed; so, he converted it into a business page, which has an unlimited ceiling.

After that, Don moved on to Instagram. He enjoyed it more than Facebook because so many artists and craftsmen were posting pictures of their work on it. Don uses it as a posting page because Instagram is primarily a platform for images. He doesn’t consider himself a marketing expert on social media, but he knows what works for him.

“I try to post two or three times a day on Instagram. Just a cool picture, “says Don. “It doesn’t always have to be a finished product that I’m trying to sell. Just an interesting picture.”

Don really likes to post “in process” pictures, like an unfinished piece on the tooling bench. This helps to educate people that think one big machine stamps out the leather carving.

“I like to pull that curtain back and show how things are getting made.”

Don thinks that social media is constantly changing, driven by changing algorithms. Even if you take a course in it, the platform will be evolving away from your knowledge. When Instagram “Stories” came out, Don didn’t use it at first and stuck with static pictures. When he did begin to utilize it, he found that he increased his viewership because people liked the 15-second video clips. He could use a screenshot of his latest YouTube video and then post a link so that viewers could go directly to the full-length video.

“We’ve been using Stories for two or three years now, and people seem to enjoy them.”

When Instagram added “Reels” to its repertoire, Don started using them for short how-to videos. Although they’re not as in depth as a YouTube video, they do encourage people to go to Don’s YouTube page to see the whole process. Reels can really increase your following if you use it right.

Don thinks that subscriber numbers can be misleading. He has 60,000 subscribers on YouTube, but he considers that a “vanity” number. The important number is the number of people that are actually watching your videos.

“Everything we do on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, points right back to DGSaddlery.com because we own that page. We don’t own those social media platforms. The goal is to turn eyeballs into email addresses. At that point, they’re your customer.”

by Nick Pernokas

The sweeping Alberta plains epitomize the West. As you travel the lonely roads east of the Rockies in this vast country, you feel that you could be in the background of a Charlie Russell painting. You wonder about the people who settled this beautiful country. You might stop in a little town south of Calgary to stretch your legs or get some gas. If that town is High River, you could meet a man whose great grandparents were very important to the taming of this soil.

In 1900, Steve Mason’s great grandfather, Levi Bradley, and his brother opened Bradley’s Harness Shop in High River, Alberta. A majority of their work was harness, but they also made saddles. Eventually his son, Lou Bradley, took over the business. When Steve Mason was in high school, his grandfather, Lou, gave him some leather stamping tools and he began to do some leatherwork. When Steve was 16, he wanted to learn more about leatherwork, so he sought out Matt Eberle, another saddle maker in High River. Unfortunately, the mentorship didn’t work out at the time.

“I was just sort of a dumb kid. He thought I knew something and I didn’t know anything,” recalls Steve.

When Steve got out of high school, he started cowboying, something that he’d always enjoyed. In 1989, his grandfather invited him to ride down to Sheridan, Wyoming, with him. Lou was going to King’s Saddlery to get some ropes for his store, Bradley’s Western Store and Saddlery. Steve told Don King and John King about his interest in leatherwork, and they invited him to go to work for them. For the next six months, Steve worked in the King’s repair shop. That was followed by six months of working downstairs in the saddle shop with John King.

After his apprenticeship with King’s, Steve returned to High River and went to work at his grandfather’s shop. A couple of years later, Matt Eberle came in the shop and looked at one of the saddles that Steve had built.

“He came upstairs and said, “Hey kid, I think you’re ready to learn something. Be at my shop at five.”

Matt ended up becoming a great friend and mentor to Steve. He taught Steve how to install an all-leather ground seat and the philosophy behind it. In 1992, Steve’s grandfather sold Bradley’s and shortly after that, Steve moved his shop out to his own house.

In the late Nineties, a Tincher Creek, Alberta based saddlemaker, John Visser, was contracted by Dale Harwood to build the Ray Hunt saddles. John hired Steve to help him. The next two and a half years became not only a steady paycheck for Steve, but a rewarding period of self improvement. John and Steve went to Dale’s shop in Idaho, to learn the fine points of what Dale wanted. Not only was Dale a great saddlemaker, but he was a master of efficiency. John and Steve brought a notebook back with them that they called the “Harwood Bible.” After that, they worked out of John’s shop.

by Nikki Alvin-Smith for Horizon Structures

If you are lucky enough to own a horse property, there is a good probability that you have considered adding ‘just one more horse’ to your equine population. The likelihood of temporary overcrowding of horses on your property doesn’t intimidate most horse buyers from going right ahead and adding another mouth to feed.

When you are a passionate horse person, the temptation to buy another horse is always on the horizon. There are so many reasons to buy another horse. Perhaps your present mount is not up to par and you are certain that a new horse would solve the training issue you are facing; your trainer doesn’t think your horse has the potential to go further in his career; placement of an emotional bid to take home a poorly fed rescue horse abandoned at the kill pen; a colleague offers an opportunity to buy their horse that you know firsthand offers a good ride; a ‘deal too good to miss,’ that pops up when you spend too much time browsing through social media platforms or even access to a so-called ‘free’ horse.

The additional mouth to feed and house may begin as a temporary notion, with the plan to sell off another member of the existing herd or be bought home as a horse in transition that will simply be trained up and moved on.

Wherever the extra horseflesh comes from and for whatever reason, one thing is almost certain – if there is an extra stall available on your property it is likely to be filled quickly.

If existing horse accommodation on the property is not a viable option for provision of shelter for the animal, then adding another structure to the property may be necessary.

The property may already be overcrowded with horses and the extra ‘new’ horse may just be another part of a pattern of overstocking the property.

What to do? Here are some budget barn building solutions to add extra stall space.

Renovate. Repurpose. Refit.

Begin by taking stock of all the existing structures on the property to identify any options to renovate or repurpose a building for horse stabling.

Rehabbing a cow barn or garage structure may be viable but remember to carefully consider the real costs of the retrofitting necessary to safely stable a horse. For example, a low ceiling dairy barn with concrete stanchions is going to take a massive amount of time and money to renovate. There is likely a need to excavate dangerous concrete manure channels, mitigate the likely uphill grade of the stanchion floors and elevate the ceiling height for the horse’s comfort and safety.