The golden hoof farm1/21/2024 ![]() ![]() Once a leader could be persuaded, however, the others usually followed without any trouble. Several river crossings were necessary, and Lorraine reported the ponies weren’t always keen to enter the water. Recent erosion of the river banks has meant scouting new paths compared to the last time any riders came through here. The route for the first day took the team up into the uninhabited Glen Banchor following the river Calder and several of its feed streams. Jennifer Speirs (below) also rode each day of the trek. Her pony was Lochy, an inexperienced four year old, and this would be his very first expedition into the Scottish Highlands. Team Leader (left) was Riding Centre manager Lorraine Duncan. Here she is riding Aimee (right) one of the Centre’s reliable Highland ponies. Fiona set off from Newtonmore Riding Centre with four friends on a drizzly Monday morning. ![]() Alice salvaged the cooktop from a 1930’s Banquet wood cookstove, and everything else we used came from scrap at the farm.The GOLDEN HOOF was a five-day trek over the highlands, inaugurated in memory of Cameron Ormiston and destined to become an annual event in aid of Cairngorms RDA (riding for the disabled). The glaze on the bricks was leftover from a downtown Denver loft renovation we did together in 2006. The granite cobbles, simmer burner left of the cooktop, the door to the fireplace, and the handle to the pizza oven door were recovered from debris after the Stareks lost their home in the Four Mile Fire in 2010. Most of the stone and metal on this project came from previous projects we built together. We also fabricated a funky steel slide gate that will allow smoke to be diverted through the pizza oven to smoke smaller cuts of meat. We designed the firebox for smoke to travel over and through a vertical stone chamber behind the firebox and enter the building near to the ground inside the old stone building, making it a smokehouse for large cuts of meat and hides. The stone building behind the oven and firebox/cooktop is one of the original structures on the farm, likely dating back to the 1850’s. We collaborated on this smokehouse, outdoor kitchen, and pizza oven project starting in Spring 2016. Karel and Alice Starek have been friends and clients for 18 years now and recently established the Golden Hoof Farm in Boulder. ![]()
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