January 12, 2025
January comes each year, renewing the land of sunlight one minute more each day. Resolutions are made, new habits adopted, sprouting life begins to incubate below the rigid ice of midwinter. As students start conceptualizing their next endeavors for the new year, they may ask themselves “What can I learn this year? Who can I become? How will I evolve?”
With the start of the new year upon us, a local cooperative horse barn seeks a new member to join their time-tested system of care and commitment. While horse ownership isn’t always attainable to everyone, engaging with horses, the outdoors, and a vibrant community of animal lovers can be a valuable experience that can generate exercise and inspiration as well as peace and tranquility.
Beyond the opening for horse boarding at Lilly Bay Barn on South Bay Road in Olympia, many opportunities lie for those seeking to get close to nature, close to a horse, and close to a community. Horse leasing and riding lessons are available with the benefit of a covered riding arena for visiting during times of winter weather. The Chehalis Western Trail is accessible from the facility for miles of riding, walking, or biking.
Lily Bay Barn members communally lease and care for the facility and distribute labor amongst their nine members. All horses are kept in immaculate conditions with time to graze in individual pastures during daylight hours and are moved to cozy box stalls for the night. Walking through the barn before the horses are brought in for the night, you’ll see members working hard to keep all of the horse’s areas clean, children gathering apples and pears from the orchard to leave out for the horses, a barn cat brushing by your pant leg, a pair of eagles perched high in a large pine tree, and maybe even a horse and rider heading out to the trail.
The bond that holds the community at Lilly Bay Barn together is a love for horses and a love for kindness. Most members of the co-op have been committed for many years, spanning as long as twenty years. Each person involved with the barn, whether they board a horse, help around the barn, take free compost for their garden, or just ride there, is treated like a friend and is welcomed and nurtured to ensure the safety and comfort of everyone, human, horse, or critter alike.
Lilly Bay Co-op Barn exemplifies the change that many of us would like to see in ourselves, in our communities, and in the world. The power of working with your hands or caring for something other than yourself can be immense. By incorporating cooperative practices into our lives people can learn to look out for one another and to help one another in times of need. Maybe in 2025, Lilly Bay Barn, or any of Olympia’s many cooperative groups, will start the evolution within you that you wish to see in the world.
