Hooray for Filmmakers and Fell Ponies!

In 2023, a short film was released called Tails of Cumbrian Heritage. Produced, filmed, and edited by Abbey Wilkinson and Georgia Costin, the film recently won a national award from the Royal Television Society. A news release reported that “The jury said this was a clear and powerful film, making an impassioned argument for not losing touch with your roots.” (1)

The co-creators were students at the University of Cumbria. The leader of their degree program said, “Their close connection has resulted in this award-winning creation that is now recognised for its excellence. The film brings together all of their talents from photography and producing film to science, natural history, conservation and story-telling.” One of their talents was flying a drone to get footage! The program leader also said, “Long-serving colleagues can not remember the last time someone from our university won a national RTS award like this.”

After a field trip on the fell, the co-creators were invited to a local pub to hear farming families talk about the ponies. About the film co-creator Abbey said, “I knew instantly that we had to tell their story… to give the farmers a voice in a way that hasn’t really been done much this way before.”

The pony breeders in the film, Libby Robinson and Samantha Smith, said that the Fell Pony is Cumbria’s best kept secret, and they were working to change that. Their work with the co-creators of this film and now with the film’s award-winning recognition, certainly helps advance that cause.

Hooray for film makers and fell breeders and Fell Ponies!

To watch the film, click here.

1. https://cumbriacrack.com/2024/06/26/watch-fell-ponies-on-film-scoops-major-award/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR0hsg9aiZw0PlwTkDOX160-gn_9odkPz2j65uh-wXtY7Vo2nUMeFjh2z1Y_aem_I7BcrVCAS1galTIrcbMmtQ

© Jenifer Morrissey, 2024

Introducing Globetrotter Moth, Fell Pony Stud Colt

Eight months after first meeting on a fell in Cumbria, I am pleased to welcome Globetrotter Moth to Willowtrail Farm.  This Fell Pony colt’s import journey only had a minor bump, though for me any bump in that journey is a major event!  I’m told he’s a seasoned traveler now, but I think he’ll be happy to stay put for awhile!

It occurred to both Moth’s breeder and me that Moth embodies so much Fell Pony history, for me personally and for the breed.  Moth’s breeder is Libby Robinson.  In the 1990s, Libby exported my very first Fell Pony, Sleddale Rose Beauty.  A lot of water has run under the proverbial bridges of Libby’s and my Fell Pony lives since then.  We have been in touch for more than twenty years because of our connection through Beauty (I bought Beauty from the person who imported her).  A circle of sorts will be completed when I breed Moth to Beauty’s daughter and granddaughter after he becomes a licensed stallion. 

Fell of course is the local word for hill in Cumbria, and the Fell Pony takes its name from those hills that have influenced its characteristics over centuries.  The first fell that I walked on, thanks to Bert Morland of the Lunesdale stud, was Roundthwaite Common.  It was also there that I met Moth last summer at his mother’s side.  I saw dozens of handsome Fell Pony colts on my visit to the breed’s homeland in 2022, and it was Moth that most caught my attention.

On my first trip to Cumbria, I made a point to visit both fell-running and non-fell-running herds to understand the breed’s origins both on and off their namesake hills.  One of the fell-running herds I visited was the Greenholme stud, and I’ve been the fortunate recipient of Potter family hospitality on every trip I’ve made to Cumbria since then.  I’m pleased to finally have some Greenholme blood in my herd; Moth’s father is Greenholme Jasper.  Also on that first trip, I met the multi-supreme champion stallion Murthwaite Look-at-Me who is found in Moth’s pedigree.  Sadly I never managed to cross paths with Tom Capstick of the Murthwaite stud.  I am pleased to now though have some Murthwaite blood in my herd through Moth’s dam, Murthwaite Happy Feet.

Libby’s prefix, Globetrotter, reflects her personal journey with Fell Ponies.  Long before she began to breed, she was using Fell Ponies in her work at a living history museum, in a carriage business, and in competitive and recreational riding and driving.  To have a herd of her own, though, she found land more affordable in France, so she emigrated there in the late 1990s.  After nearly twenty years there, she called me to share an idea she was mulling about helping the Fell Pony breed.  She wanted to bring together the ponies’ long history both of working with farmers and packmen and women and also running semi-wild on the fells.  I admired her idea but I felt she really needed to be in Cumbria to accomplish her vision.  She must have felt similarly; I have admired her courage since she gave up all she had established in France to return to Cumbria to start the Fell Pony Heritage Trust.

I didn’t know until last year that one of Libby’s lifelong ambitions has been to raise Fell Ponies on the fells of Cumbria.  After her return from France, she found a way to fulfill that dream by homing her herd on Roundthwaite Common and bringing forth multiple crops of foals.  I was taken not only with Moth but his 2022 half-sister Globetrotter Molly whom Libby has retained.

In addition to Moth being a traditional Fell by being born on a Cumbrian fell, his pedigree reflects current and historic happenings in the Fell Pony breed.  A current factor is dispersal sales of fell-running herds as breeders age and the logistics of keeping Fells on the fells become increasingly challenging.  Both of Moth’s parents went through dispersal sales.  Greenholme Jasper went through the Greenholme dispersal in 2021, and Murthwaite Happy Feet went through the Murthwaite dispersal in 2015.  Happy Feet went to France to join the Globetrotter herd and returned to a fell in Cumbria a few years later.

One historic happening that is reflected in Moth’s pedigree comes through his mother’s line.  The Inspection Scheme and Grading Up were used in the breed’s past to bring true-to-type but unregistered ponies into the stud book.  Moth goes back to the inspected mare Foggy Gill Judy.  Judy is represented in 5-10% of modern day Fell Ponies.

Another historic part of the Fell Pony breed’s past is traveling stallions.  Stallions would be walked or ridden or driven through parts of Cumbria each season to breed mares at farms where no stallions were otherwise available.  Last summer I met or saw pictures of several sons of Greenholme Jasper at different farms, reflecting that the Greenholme stud had allowed him to be ‘traveled’ for a few years before selling him at the dispersal.  A Jasper daughter is also being imported to the US.

Moth has arrived with his winter coat intact.  Like Cumbria, cold weather has lingered here too, so he will be glad to have it and then lose it as our weather warms.  I am very much looking forward to getting to know Moth and watching him grow into his role as my new stallion. 

A community has certainly made Moth’s presence here possible.  Thank you Libby for allowing Moth to come to the United States.  Thank you Paula and Gwen for enabling my trip to Cumbria last year, for I vowed I wouldn’t import a pony I hadn’t first met.  Thank you Tina, Tracy, and Jackie for looking at pictures and videos of Moth and bolstering my hopes for this young pony.  And of course thank you Bruce for traveling to Cumbria with me, helping me evaluate Moth there, enabling my Fell Ponies to live on a fell-like hill in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and so much more!

© Jenifer Morrissey, 2023

The Drover's Boy by Irvine Hunt

One piece of the Fell Pony’s working heritage is as a pony put to a trap to take the family to town on market day.  Of course that same pony might, on other days of the week, be a shepherding pony or a sledge-pulling pony, or a pack pony carrying hay to a flock of sheep. 

Another piece of the Fell Pony’s working heritage, through its ancestors, is serving as packhorses moving goods from Cumbria to numerous points across England during the packhorse era.  During part of that era, their routes were often shared with cattle and their drovers, also making their way to markets, often outside Cumbria.

My interest in the Fell Pony’s working heritage led a colleague to recommend a book to me.  My bookshelf is heavy with books on this topic, but this one was different because it was fiction.  Nonetheless, I was assured that it was set in Cumbria and historically accurate, so I took a chance.  I’m glad I did.

The Drover’s Boy by Irvine Hunt is a reasonably quick and definitely enjoyable read.  At only 166 pages, it was one of those books that asked for excuses to be made to continue turning the pages.  The book describes an often-overlooked type of droving: of geese.  I look forward to studying the packhorse history of the area where the story is set and then rereading the book again.  A fell pony makes a short appearance in the story, as a driving pony taking a family to market. 

I love learning about the working heritage of Fell Ponies.  It isn’t often that historical fiction brings that heritage to life, so I am thankful for The Drover’s Boy and author Irvine Hunt.  The story painted a portrait in a way non-fiction often doesn’t; I admire authors who can paint such a portrait with words.

© Jenifer Morrissey, 2023