Anam Cara Farm & Stardust Organics

Pamela Rickenbach is owner, founder and director of Anam Cara Farm in Canaan, Maine, a sanctuary for retired, disabled and homeless workhorses. She is also founder and director of Stardust Organics, offering organic soil treatments that regenerate overworked, distressed soil.

For seven years, she has been assisted by her work partner Cliff Atwood.

In her teenage years, Rickenbach lived in the Bolivian Amazon. She farmed there in her twenties. At 30, she moved to New York and worked with National Geographic editor Harvey Arden, author of “Wisdomkeepers,” recording the stories of North American tribal chiefs.

During the interviews, she met Chief Phillip Whiteman Jr. of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. He told her, “Horses are the creator’s universal tool for activating the imagination and spirit in mankind.”

Rickenbach attended and graduated from the Nature Lyceum on Long Island, steeped in organic land care and soil restoration. Wanting to learn to farm with horsepower, her teacher Glenn Battin pointed her toward a job – no prior experience necessary – at 76 Carriage Company in Philadelphia, owned by Linda Kramer. She started driving carriage horses and giving tours in that revolutionary city.

In 2009, she started the Blue Star Equiculture educational farm in Palmer, MA, for retired carriage horses.

In 2010, she returned to help Kramer by driving carriages on the weekends. “At the time there were four different carriage companies. As we came in from different routes, the tourists went quiet. These horses were mostly off the farms, plow horses, not special breeds. What struck me is how really touched people were by them,” she said. Seeing the horses “sparked a cellular memory of what horses are to us.”

Rickenbach noted that “in the mid-1800s, Percherons, Belgians, Clydesdale and Shires – all former war horse breeds, named for their country of origin in Europe – were imported to help in the building of America.” For example, Clydesdales (or Clydes) were named for the Clydesdale district by the Clyde River in Scotland.

In 2023, they moved to the 27-acre Anam Cara Farm. They home 15 draft horses, one cow and three steers. The lead mare, a 19.2-hand Percheron cross named Piper, is teamed up with Mario, who just turned 20. They home three breeds currently on the Livestock Conservancy’s Conservation Priority List: Clydesdales, Suffolks and Shires.

Feeling good around horses has a scientifically documented component. “Horses’ hearts have five times the electromagnetic fields than humans (brain being electrical, heart being magnetic). A human being has a 10-foot electromagnetic field. A horse naturally has a 50-foot range. You step into that field, the horse can read everything about you,” she said. “They are incredibly sensitive. If you are not in coherence, the horse’s field starts to immediately influence your electromagnetic field. If you are stressed, getting into that field chemically starts to influence you, and that stress starts to melt. High cortisol levels start to drop. That’s why we feel so good around horses. They help us regulate our nervous systems.”

(According to “The Power of the Horse’s Heart” by the PTSD Association of Canada, this is called bidirectional healing.)

When she first returned to America after having lived decades in Bolivia, she experienced a profound culture shock and despaired. Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, she was put on different medicines, but none of it helped. “Once I got around the horses, it all made sense to me. I was stable. When I was finally working with horses and working in soil, I found a way back to myself,” she said.

Her Clydes Blue and Star were rescued from herds being bred in Canada for the Japanese meat market. According to Rickenbach, Athol, MA-based Barbara Graham rescues as many horses as she can from that meat market.

Blue, Star and Maize, also rescued from the meat market, now reside at the farm in Canaan, a name synonymous with a land of rest and blessings.

She teaches kids and adults beginning driving with their Clydes, with an emphasis on connection and safety.

In 1969, Ed Wilman, along with Battin from the Nature Lyceum, developed the biological soil treatment system designed to restore fertility in compromised soil, break down compaction naturally, stimulate deep, resilient root systems, restore microbial balance and rebuild soil damaged by chemicals or overuse.

“These formulas were passed on to me to help me support the horses,” said Rickenbach. Two years ago she was able to offer the results of their lifework as Stardust Organics soil products.

“The more I work with horses, share history with them, the more I believe they are our angel helpers. They are helping us arrive at heaven here on earth,” she said.

For more information, access equiculture.online.

by Laura Rodley