Alec Hogg, Columnists, Features NEWS

A visit to Summerhill’s School of Excellence

Published by charl on June 22, 2010

BY ALEC HOGG, Mooi River. - Since moving to Mooi River five months ago, locals have continually warned us to watch out for winter. So we’ve prepared well - injecting “think pink” insulation into the roof and stocking up on enough firewood to keep our two Jetmasters burning 24/7. Just as well, because one day last week Mooi River’s minus eight degrees apparently made us the coldest place in the country.

So what to do about the mares who’re already looking big enough to pop? Do we bring them in at night and blanket them? Or, as we see next door at Summerhill, leave the ladies to their own overnight devices in the paddocks?

Not for the first time, the advice of my good friend and neighbour Mick Goss has been invaluable. By their rude health, our mares are showing us they agree with him.

Mick is quite a student of this industry, as you’d expect from someone whose farm has raked in five successive National Breeders’ Championships and is a shoe-in for the 2010 title. This season, Summerhill’s progeny have won three times more stakes in SA than the nearest rivals. Mick says it’s been a perfect season for his stud and that a repeat is unlikely. I’d bet against that modesty if there were any bookmaker crazy enough prepared to price it up.

But back to my question about what to do with the mares in winter. Mick referred me to various studies internationally where he says breeders had proven without doubt that thoroughbreds much prefer the outdoors to being under cover. He likes to quote the case of the American stallion Niniski who, even during snowstorms, stood outside rather than in his accessible stable.

Goss says all Summerhill’s horses spend the cold Mooi River winters in unsheltered paddocks because it’s the way nature intended and, besides, it’s what the mares and their offspring want. From the look of our four, it’s pretty healthy for them as well.

Talking of Summerhill, over the weekend we popped over to see how Mick’s great passion, the farm’s School of Management Excellence is coming along. Anyone who engages with him for even a few minutes cannot fail to appreciate the one-time lawyer’s obsession with education. Drive around the precinct and you’ll see Summerhill’s crèche and Prep School (with 65 children) that have been established for some years. The farm also has a Mentoring Class which has provided the grounding for the 36 overseas scholarships earned by employees - one of whom we were fortunate enough to lure to our Graceland.

But the cherry on top for Mick is the school he’s been dreaming about for years. As we saw on Sunday and the photos prove, that fantasy is rapidly turning into reality.

To my admittedly untrained eye the project, due to open next year, looks to be around half way completed. The thatched structure houses a 44-seater theatre at the one end and a conference centre on the other. The better looking half of the Goss partnership, Cheryl, is due back this week from Indonesia where she has secured seven entirely handcrafted Javanese houses that will be brought back to SA and re-assembled alongside the stone-cladded buildings. Cheryl’s imports will become the treatments rooms for the Spa and a shopping area for visitors and outside patrons of the centre.

But the real focus at the School, the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, will be on training horse managers. Students will be drawn from the SA thoroughbred industry including his farm employees. He has already has three applications from abroad. I had the chance to look through the curriculum and almost signed up myself. Subjects range from Practical Horsemanship, Nutrition, Veterinary and Farriery through to Racehorse Training, Stallion Management, Pasture Management and Equine Dentistry. Attention is also given to Enterprise Development and Life Skills. A Grooms School will be run in parallel with the Management course.

Summerhill’s funding of the project has supported by a substantial endowed from Goss’s long-time partner, erstwhile ruler of Dubai the late Sheikh Maktoum al Maktoum, after whom the school will be named. As the school is only in session for half the year, a major challenge, he says, will be to recoup part of the running costs from elsewhere.

Over weekends the conference centre could be used as a wedding venue in collaboration with the Goss’s popular Hartford House hotel. It’s the kind of place that’s sure to attract a lot more than the betrothed to this beautiful district. Not too many, though. Those who live here wouldn’t want fleets of Gauteng Gas Guzzlers contaminating the clean mountain air which, surely, plays its part in producing such magnificent thoroughbreds here. - alec@moneyweb.co.za.

Photo credits: Summerhill.co.za (1;2); Renee de Jong (3,4 and 5).