Credit: Courtesy 
Wisdom Horse retreats let groups ranging from school children to corporate teams work with their peers and horses on life skills. Credit: Courtesy 
Stepping Stone Farm in Temple. Credit: Courtesy 
The interior of the barn at Stepping Stones Farm. Credit: Courtesy 
A retreat participant leads Chili around the rink in an unmounted exercise.
Stepping Stones Farm in Temple, which has a long history in the Monadnock region of hosting equine therapy, camps, and lessons, is taking on a new focus, creating “Wisdom Horse,” where groups can seek therapeutic guidance or team building through a rural retreat and with the help of horses.
Wisdom Horse Founder and owner of Stepping Stones Farm, Isabella “Boo” Martin, said that the retreat center partners with a variety of types of groups —corporate teams, veterans, families, at-risk youth, first responders — and leads them in unmounted, ground-based sessions with horses, in a practice called equine experiential learning.
Launched as a new business in the spring, Wisdom Horse is a continuation of the kind of work Martin has been doing with horses and people for decades on her land.
Owned by Martin, the farm has been through several iterations. Bought by her parents in 1965, Martin said she fell in love with the land, having been brought up on it.
She began offering lessons at “Pony Farm” as a way to put herself through college, and in 1975, she purchased 28 acres along with her friend Gene Robinson. Martin continued to offer lessons, and Robinson hosted a retreat ministry under the name Dove Retreat Center.
Martin later became interested in the therapeutic value of riding and formed Horse Power, an organization that provided equine therapy. Later, Pony Farm and Horse Power were merged into a single nonprofit, Touchstone, which continued to operate on the property through 2020, before moving to a new location in Lyndeborough.
Martin, who still owns the original farm, has rebranded as Stepping Stones Farm and continues to find new ways to help people connect and learn about themselves through horses. Stepping Stones and Wisdom Horse will have a new focus for Martin — creating a space both for private short-term rentals and for retreats for groups ranging from school children, for wellness, and for corporate team building.
As an option for those retreats, participants can also access equine-assisted team-building or therapeutic exercises. Though Martin said the model she works with now is different from the therapeutic riding she used to focus on during the Horse Power days.
The model she works with now focuses on unmounted work with the horses, and is less about the day-to-day care of the horse and the skills of riding, and more to do with emotional learning and connection, Martin said.
“In the past, we’d have people take a two or three-hour lesson, and the majority of it was horse skills — picking feet, bridling, saddling, how to turn, how to ride. But of the 10,000 to 15,000 people that came through these farm gates for those sessions, maybe only a handful ever really got a horse and were able to use those skills,” Martin said. “In retrospect, we would have done much more for people if we helped them learn how to be in life — to show up in the world, communicate, and form relationships.”
Martin said the focus of Wisdom Horse is more closely aligned with that vision, focusing on developing communication, collaboration and empathy.
“I’m just thrilled about this work,” Martin said. “This stuff just really works.”
Martin said when she first began her path with equine-assisted therapeutic models, it was still in its infancy — she couldn’t even get a degree in the subject, because it didn’t exist. But, Martin said, that was nearly 40 years ago, and since then, the field has grown. Martin said she was there from the beginning and would like to continue to have her family farm be central to the continued understanding of the field.
Stepping Stones Farm and its retreats will have a different focus than some of her previous work with equine-assisted therapy, Martin explained.
As part of their mission to be a leader in this field, Stepping Stones is hosting the Horses & Healing Symposium at the farm from May 15 to 17.
The event includes a total of 20 speakers, giving talks on 30 different topics, and demonstrations of carriage driving, vaulting, and equine-assisted therapeutic experiences. The symposium will offer advice on marketing and branding, creating programming, attracting specific demographics, how to create a foundation, fundraise, and transform existing farm or riding facilities into a nonprofit.
The symposium will bring practitioners from four countries to the farm and include the New England premiere of the feature-length documentary “Rescued Hearts,” produced by Dana Croschere and Krisanna Sexton of Live Wild Films. The film will be screened at the Peterborough Players on May 16. Attendance at the symposium is not required to attend the film screening. Tickets are available at wisdomhorseexperience.com/events.html.
Martin said the symposium would give voice to “the best and brightest” of the field and keep Stepping Stones at the forefront of having those conversations.