A year ago, in April 2010, a fire swept through a broodmare barn at Indiana Stallion Station, and despite the valiant efforts of the farm’s staff, more than a dozen horse perished, including some broodmares with their newborn foals. In the tragedy’s aftermath, owner Joyce Baker was uncertain if the operation could recover from the physical damage or, more importantly, the emotional trauma that results from such a horrific event.
The answer began to appear the following day in the Anderson Herald Bulletin, a daily newspaper serving the community of 60,000 just northeast of Indianapolis. Reader after reader penned notes of sympathy to the farm, many in the form of personal notes to Joyce and her staff, who are well-known in the community not just for the horse farm, but for their involvement in the local 4-H chapter and for giving riding lessons and a variety of other community-based activities.
A few months after the fire Maria Vorhauer, farm manager at Gayle Gerth’s Dana Point Farm in Pennsylvania, added an unexpected helping hand to the Indiana farm’s recovery process. Perusing websites as she researched the Hoosier State’s new owners and breeders incentive programs that had sprung up from Indiana’s approval of alternative gaming at racetracks, something about Indiana Stallion Station caught Vorhauer’s eye. She and Gerth decided that was the place for two prominent stallions owned by Dana Point—Action This Day and Domestic Dispute—who now stand at Baker’s refurbished facility near Anderson and are leading a renaissance for Indiana Stallion Station that seemed out of reach in the charred rubble of a year ago.
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