HAGEN, Sask. – Sandy Berge is no stranger to selling her purebred Morgan horses to American customers, but she received the surprise of her life last fall when a new customer showed up at the farm near Hagen.
She had been talking to a Kentucky horse breeder for a year by telephone before he decided to drive to Saskatchewan to pick up four of Berge’s horses.
“So they get here, and it’s like, ‘wow, you’re Amish,’ ” she said. “It never occurred to me.”
The man had spoken with an accent, she added, but so do a lot of other Americans. The fact that he didn’t correspond with her by computer, which most of her customers do, also didn’t raise any eyebrows.
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Once there, however, the customer, his wife and another Amish couple made themselves at home. The couples had driven north with a non-Amish friend from Colorado and the five Americans camped out in the Berge’s farmyard for three days, sleeping in their horse trailer.
Berge said she and her family learned a lot about the Amish culture and the compromises that group has made to function in modern society while continuing to stay true to their religious beliefs: they don’t use electricity but have accepted solar-powered cell phones; they don’t drive automobiles but will accept rides from those who do.
Berge said she discovered that her family and the Americans also had a lot in common – that in the end they were all just down-to-earth country folk. The time spent with the two women was especially rewarding.
“The women were very quiet, for the most part, when we were in a group situation, but when I got them off by themselves, they were very chatty and very much like me, very easygoing.”
Between Berge’s Amish customer and his friend, the Americans left Hagen with eight horses: five from Berge and three from a neighbour.
It was one of the more interesting experiences for Berge in what has become a rewarding career breeding Morgans.
While Berge grew up in Saskatoon, she was always fascinated with horses, working at local riding academies and the racetrack whenever possible.
“Wherever there was a horse, I would spend time with it.”
In 1985 she married Richard Berge and moved to his farm near Hagen. Buying a horse was at the top of her to-do list and she took inspiration from the 1972 movie Justin Morgan had a Horse, which chronicled the foundation of the Morgan breed. She had watched the movie as a child and remembered Morgans as elegant and flashy, yet calm and sensible.
The Berges eventually found a pregnant black Morgan mare in Alberta named Nicola of Willaway. Berge didn’t really want the foal and was even more disappointed when it turned out to be a colt: “I wanted a girl.”
But a local Morgan owner urged her to keep the colt and not geld it.
“He said, ‘you just hang onto him, treat him like a horse and he’ll do good for you.’ “
The colt was Boogie Beam and while Berge didn’t know it yet, he was to become her herd sire.
When he was two, Berge bred him to a neighbour’s mare.
“It went OK. They had foals the next spring and it was like, ‘oh, this isn’t too bad.’ I made a couple hundred dollars.”
She started advertising Boogie Beam and eventually bought two mares to produce her own foals. By 1998 she was up to four or five foals a year but still considered Sable Morgans to be more hobby than business. But 1998 was the turning point because that was the year she discovered the power of the internet.
Berge had originally set up her website as a brag book with lots of photos of her Morgans and her three children, but in 1998 that new exposure resulted in a sale to Michigan.
“That’s when I realized, ‘whoa, this could be a little bit more than a hobby here.’ “
Last year she produced 12 foals and sold 15 horses. This year she has 18 mares, which will all be bred. Sable Morgans sells horses across Canada and the United States and plays a valuable role in the finances of the Berge’s 800 acre grain farm.
“It enables us to stay on the farm and live this kind of a lifestyle because without the horses we probably wouldn’t be farming. It would be real touch and go.”
For the future, she will continue to produce 10-14 foals a year.
“I never see myself getting really large because I like the hands on and I don’t want to turn into a horse puppy mill sort of thing with 40 babies that I can’t handle. A large part of my sales is because my babies are handled and they’re used to being around people and they’re used to being around kids and people can take them and work with them from there. They’re not starting with an untouched horse.”
As for the horse that started it all, 19-year-old Boogie Beam became sterile a few years ago and is now living a life of leisure on the farm.
“He can just run with the girls,” she said. “He’ll live here till he dies.”
