PrintAfter 30 years spent managing and showing Welsh and Dartmoor stallions, Shull can’t envision a future without ponies.
Hershell Shull leads me into a field of yearling ponies. Soft roans, fuzzy bays and winter grays look up as we walk toward them, their tails swishing, interested. A few take a first step in our direction, and within moments they’re all ambling as a herd: not rushed, just eager.
Immediately I find myself shifting my camera behind my back—nibblers, I bet— but when we’re surrounded (Shull first, then me), I discover that the ponies are polite. Mannered, even. They nuzzle, don’t bite, mostly just watch as I reach out to scratch one on the crest. The others don’t push. Shull, surrounded by a fan club, is rubbing chins that have been raised in his direction. I lift the camera to snap a few shots, all the while wondering: Can these really be pony yearlings?
“Did he call them over for you?” Hetty Abeles, owner of her family’s Farnley Farm, asks when we’ve walked back downhill to the barn. I explain that it wasn’t necessary; the ponies saw us and walked right over.
“Well yes,” she says, “that’s pretty common. They come to [Shull], and he doesn’t need a bucket of grain, never has. Sometimes he calls them, and they come when he calls. He has different noises he makes. When he’s dealing with a foal, it’s hard to make them follow the mares when they’re young, and he can sound just like a mare whinnying to them. They turn right around and follow him.”
Shull smiles and nods modestly. In the small paddock beside the barn, two ponies have been watching us eagerly from the gate.
Learning From The Best
Thirty years ago, Hershull Shull moved to Farnley Farm in White Post, Va., without any idea what he was in for. He’d been working on a cattle farm in Berryville, Va., when family friend Ed Simpson let him in on a job opening.
“Ed’s the cattle man here at Farnley. He’s been here over 60 years,” said Shull, 49. “He knew I was interested in animals, and he said Farnley was looking for a stallion manager. I didn’t know a whole lot about ponies, but I was very lucky coming to Farnley. I’ve had the best teachers in [Joan Dunning] and Mrs. Abeles, and I just took a liking to it.”
In 1936, Dunning and her first husband, Alexander Mackay-Smith, voyaged to England and brought several Welsh and Dartmoor ponies back to Virginia via cargo passage. Over the next few decades, they made additional trips, bolstering the stock that would establish both breeds in the United States. Dunning’s eye for conformation and temperament, evident in stallions like the venerable Farnley Lustre (Gretton Blue Boy—Cui Glitter, Rebel Revolt), soon made ponies with Farnley-prefixed names the rage in hunter rings, favored for their floating movement and kid-friendly demeanors.
“I only knew it was a pony farm, but I’ve really been privileged to become part of their tradition,” said Shull. “Mrs. Dunning always said, ‘We’re like family here.’ ”
Shull, too, brought his family along when he moved to Farnley. His wife, Karen, accompanied him when he accepted the job.
“We met at the Shenandoah Valley Baptist Church in Stephens City [Va.] when we were about 15,” said Karen, 49. “We got married in that same church on June 8 about three years later.”
Both 19 when they moved to Farnley, neither had much horse experience, but they hung on every piece of advice Dunning had to offer.
