Horse-and-carriage hobby a challenge for Cape woman, 82

CAPE ELIZABETH – A horse and carriage is not a common sight these days. Unless you live around Mary Lou Sprague, that is.

A lifelong horse lover and owner of Cape Elizabeth’s Spurwink Farm, Sprague, 82, has challenged herself to drive 700 miles during 2010 with her Morgan horse pair, Lady and Missy.

As of Nov. 15, she said, she had logged 685 miles, leaving her a good driving day or two away from her goal.

“It seemed like something good to reach for,” she said. “I have an odometer and a speedometer on my carriage so when I go driving I can tell exactly how many miles I have been driving.”

There is no particular rhyme or reason for the 700-mile goal, Sprague said, other than it seemed like a reasonable benchmark.

“Last year I road 250 miles and I thought, I could do better than that,” she said.

Sprague said she typically drives three times a week and usually for between 8 and 10 miles and never alone.

“I think it is wonderful,” said Becky Deering, an employee of Spurwink Farm who has accompanied Sprague during much of the driving. “To be able to do what she does at her age is great. I hope when I am her age I will still be healthy and happy like she is.”

Sprague has had Missy and Lady for three years, after purchasing them on the Internet from a farm in Tennessee.

“I like Morgans because they are quite reliable and they don’t forget,” she said. “They aren’t so big that it is hard for a lady to handle them, unlike some draft horses.”

Spurwink Farm, where Deering has been working for the past nine years, has approximately 45 horses, although most of them are not driving horses.

Spurwink Farm offers horse boarding for horse lovers to take advantage of the trails on the 400-acre piece of property. The farm also hosts a number of special events such as a pancake breakfast on the second Sunday in July and a Columbus Day carriage drive weekend, as well as a number of equestrian events.

“I’ve always loved horses,” said Deering, who began working at the farm to feed and care for the horses while still in school. “I’ve always been around them.”

Aside from overseeing the farm, Sprague has been supportive of a number of causes in the area, including Waynflete School and historic preservation in the greater Portland area, including Cape Elizabeth. In 2009, Sprague was named one of the Portland Press Herald’s 10 Women Motivating Women award winners.

“She will do anything for anyone,” Deering said. “She is wonderful. She is always happy and smiling.”

While most of Sprague’s drives have been on the Spurwink Farm property and in and around Cape Elizabeth, Sprague has taken several road trips with her horses. The tough part, she said, is the preparation.

“It is a lot of work to transport two horses and a carriage all that way,” she said.

While people are becoming more acclimated to seeing a horse and carriage traversing roadways alongside motor vehicles, Sprague said, places devoted to carriage driving are evaporating quickly.

“What drivers are finding is there are fewer and fewer places to drive your horses,” she said. “Everything is being built up and developed. You have to look carefully to find those rare and beautiful places for driving horses.”

The carriage, then, can be quite a draw around town.

“It is not something you see everyday,” Deering said. “When we go to get ice cream on Route 77, people stop us all the time and say what beautiful animals they are.”

Sprague took advantage of two such places earlier this year. This summer, Sprague took two trips to Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor along with her husband Phineas and Deering. There, she took in the 35 miles of carriage trails within the national park that were originally constructed by John D. Rockefeller between 1913 and 1940.

While there, she and Phineas met a couple from Vermont who told the Spragues about Shelburne Farm, a 1,400-acre working farm overlooking Lake Champlain in Shelburne, Vt. The two couples met up there during the Sprague’s subsequent three-day trip to Vermont.

“It was very beautiful, with Lake Champlain right there and looking over at the Adirondacks,” Sprague said. “That was an exciting trip. I had never seen such a place in my life.”

As winter rolls in and Sprague finishes her 700-mile challenge, she will put the horses away for the season, before getting them back out in March to get them in shape for driving again.

Sprague is not sure if she will challenge herself with a similar goal next year.

“I’ll have to see what my goal is for next year,” Sprague said. “This has been an unusually sympathetic year for driving. The weather has been good.”

Mary Lou Sprague, owner of Spurwink Farm in Cape Elizabeth, has challenged herself to ride 700 miles in 2010 behind her Morgan horses, Lady and Missy. As of Nov. 15, she had logged 685 miles. Staff photo by Michael Kelley