We discovered this 120 year old farm on the banks of the Black River and spent the next three years replacing roofs, building stalls and fencing in paddocks, doing equipment repairs and making our own hay. The old barn had been badly damaged by the hurricane the year before and needed a lot of attention as well. So we were busy moving forward when the next article regarding Orlovs came to our attention. This article had been written by a woman who had purchased an Orlov stallion while in Russia and had fallen completely under the magic of the Orlovs. We were able to contact the author, Judith, through the magazine. It is here once again that our Orlov dream took another great stride forward. As luck would have it, not only did Judith have experience importing and exporting horses to Russia, she speaks fluent Russian and has long standing relationships with some of Russia's premiere horsemen. We spent the next few years on long, long telephone chats and our friendship grew. With her invaluable help and wonderful contacts she located a group of first quality mares that might be available for sale. We felt that once again fate had taken a hand in our dream. We mortgaged the farm, and began the long and anxiety filled journey of importing horses we had never seen in person. Gubernia, an 18 month old filly and Kromka, a four year old mare in foal to a champion Orlov stallion arrived on the farm on a dark night in November. They had been 20 days in transit. On March 24th, 2008, Korifey, the first registered, purebred Orlov trotter to be born in North America arrived at 2:30 pm. This little bay filly represents the future of Black River Orlovs, and what we hope will be the future survival of her breed.
