The ranch on Sonoma Mountain, east of Petaluma California is the culmination of a lifelong dream to live in the countryside and own Arabian Horses. The dream was sparked by a lady at the Campbell Branch Library in Detroit Michigan, many years ago.
I was 9 years old at the time and went there on a Saturday morning on my first school summer vacation in the USA. My family emigrated from the island of Malta to Detroit in 1952. With my limited English, at that time, I asked the librarian for a book to read. She took me to the Children's section and started asking me questions as to my interest. When she mentioned horses, I said "yes" and she handed me a copy of Walter Farley's The Black Stallion. As a very impressionable child I read the story about an Arabian horse put on a ship to travel across the Arabian Gulf and one of the passengers was a boy named Alex, traveling with his father. The boat was shipwrecked and the adventure of the boy with the horse, stranded on an island, instilled in me such a romantic image of the Arabian breed that it stayed with me all through childhood and up to the time of my retirement from business in 1995.
That is the year when we moved to Shara Ta Jebel ranch outside of Petaluma California, to test out the childhood dream. Several years later and breeding our mares with champion stallions giving us beautiful foals, the enjoyment of working with these horses is indescribable. The dream of the child translated to adult hood just fine.
As we train and ride the horses, I am always grateful for the gift of owning these beautiful creatures. Each time I climb into the saddle for a ride in our pastures or at one of the parks with trails. I always think of that librarian at the Campbell Branch library who introduced me to this life with horses.
There are many beautiful horse breeds in the world and there are people who swear that the breed they have is the best. As for our ranch we fell in love with the Arabian breed and find them to be superb, and a great joy to associate with them.
M Caruana