A Conversation With Matti

In 2007, young Matti Burns, then a student at the Pike School, had an idea. Her goal: to raise money for Windrush. The idea: the Hack-A-Thon for Hope. The members of her family’s Burnstock Riding Club collected pledges from their friends and families and then participated in a group trail ride. In the fall of [...]

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Tio Rides Again

Contributed by Hayley Barrett “Bucky’s trotting is like Secretariat,” Tio informs me between happy sips of a cup of Starbucks hot chocolate. “I want you to call this story ‘Tio Rides Again,’ okay?” Ten-year-old Antonio “Tio” Abbatessa has a lot to say. His conversation bubbles along, covering everything from riding in the Special Olympics to [...]

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Girls’ bake sale and letter spark outpouring for Windrush Farm

By Bethany Bray Staff Writer The Salem News Tue Jan 11, 2011, 05:58 AM EST HAMILTON — What started as a bake sale by Hamilton sixth-graders Mazey Loomis and Deirdre Burke has inspired a flurry of donations for Windrush Farm, a Boxford nonprofit that provides horseback riding as therapy for the disabled. The two girls [...]

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Windrush Board President Paul Spiers in NorthShore Life

Read the entire article…

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Horses for Heroes: A Place of Peace

Contributed by Hayley Barrett Horses have always carried soldiers into battle. Now the horses of Windrush are carrying veteran soldiers away from the trauma of the battlefield and toward healing and hope. Horses for Heroes, a privately-funded program, enables veterans to interact with horses as a way to build physical and psychological health. These veterans, [...]

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A Horse and Hero Journey

Trisha J. Wooldridge is a freelance writer who works with Massachusetts Horse magazine and volunteers for the Bay State Equine Rescue.  Her full article on Windrush Farm will appear in Massachusetts Horse with the October/November issue.  For more information on Trish, please visit her website  www.anovelfriend.com or her blog at novelfriend.blogspot.com.  She Tweets under @novelfriend, [...]

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EFL Program for Adolescents from ACCESS STARR

A group of adolescents from ACCESS STARR in Salem (an adolescent intensive family reunification program) attended a one day Equine Facilitated Learning (EFL) session at Windrush on Thursday. EFL is an educational approach that includes equine facilitated activities incorporating experiences of the equine/human interaction in an environment of learning or self discovery. To compliment the goals [...]

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Growing Up at Windrush

Contributed by Hayley Barrett For many horse people, the love of things equine arrives early. In Kate Wilhelm’s case, she was just a toddler, only 18 months old. Accompanying her mother, Carley, to an appointment one day, curly-haired Kate spotted a small figurine of a horse under a chair. She was allowed to keep it [...]

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Nina’s Story

Last February, my friend called me and said that she thought I should take my nine-year old daughter Nina, to Windrush Farm for therapeutic riding lessons. She had just been there to observe, since her daughter was volunteering there, and she couldn’t stop raving about it! She loved the feel of the place, the way [...]

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Teen Power

Anyone who comes to Windrush in the afternoon will notice a number of high school students helping out. Many are here to fulfill volunteer service requirements for their school. But some continue to volunteer even if they have already “put their hours in.” Jordan Dash and Carolina Rago are two teen volunteers who help out [...]

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