Sustainable Horse Keeping
We pride ourselves on our Green Horse Keeping principles and strive to be a model for Best Management Practices. We are a pesticide- and rodenticide-free zone, using only approved botanicals for vector control, dedicated to protecting the watershed and the inhabitants that share it with us.
We are fortunate that our neighbors, Green Gulch Farm, enjoy the benefits of horse manure to enhance their composting efforts, and we get to enjoy riding through the farm and celebrating how it changes with the seasons.
“There’s nothing like ‘delicious aged horse manure’ to kick start your garden.”
~ Wendy Johnson,
Master Gardener and author of Gardening at the Dragon's Gate
We have partnered with Green Gulch Zen Center’s organic farm since 1997. Originally the stable manure was stored in a bunker behind the stalls at the Dairy, getting picked up mostly by a farm worker who would come with a tractor to pick it up. It was a smelly situation and drew flies, even when the bunker was kept tarped. Currently Ocean Riders hires our morning feeders to collect all manure from stalls, paddocks and pastures, and take directly to Green Gulch’s compost field each day where it is ‘seasoned’ before enriching the fields where their organic vegetables and flowers grow.
