History
A Historic Horse Farm
Three centuries ago, William Penn found his promised land in the hills of Pennsylvania. With its wild-life, rivers and friendly climate, it was an ideal area to settle in for the pioneers that conquered North America. Though many things have changed over the years, the area remains as beautiful as it was in the seventeenth century. Like William Penn, horse owners have been attracted to this countryside and find it ideal to breed and raise their horses.
Mary Alice Malone, founder of Iron Spring Farm is among those who call this historic area home. Located on hundreds of acres of rolling hills and pastures, Iron Spring Farm is just an hour from Philadelphia. A large part of Iron Spring Farm is protected by a private land conservancy.
Originally owned by the pioneers that came with William Penn, the land was parceled out in 100 acre farms. Over the years, Mary Alice has purchased the land that surrounded her original farm and today Iron Spring Farm rests on nearly a thousand acres.
A Lasting Legacy
Over the years, Mary Alice has imported a number of stallions from Europe. The first were from Germany, then Poland and now she primarily focuses on horses from the Netherlands, both Dutch Warmbloods and Friesians.
One of the first Dutch horses she imported was Roemer, the stallion who would remain her favorite until his death in 1996. The Westphalian bred son of Pilatus x Cyrano x Flietner, Roemer was the leading sire of dressage horses in Holland for nine consecutive years. In 1990 he was designated as a Preferent stallion--one of only three living Riding Type stallions in the world to carry this distinction at that time.
As a competitor, Roemer gained prominence as both a world class jumper and later, under Mary Alice, as a Grand Prix dressage horse. A trailering accident cut his career short when he suffered a broken shoulder. But despite his early retirement as a competitor, he continued to build a lasting legacy through his sons and daughters. To date, Roemer has produced four approved sons, one licensed son, four Preferent mares, 111 Star mares, 27 Keur mares, 211 Stud Book mares and 75 First Premium foals.
He was honored after his death by winning the Get of Sire class at the 1996 Dressage at Devon Breed Show. In 2006 he was inducted into the United States Dressage Federation Hall of Fame.
The Next Generation
Iron Spring Farm celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2006. Along with the roster of top quality Warmblood horses offered in the past, Iron Spring is now offering Friesian stallions of equal quality to American horse breeders. There was a lot of excitement and preparation involved in making the Friesian breeding program as successful, robust and well known as the Warmblood program. Today you see Iron Spring Warmblood and Friesian stallions and their get competing and winning side by side in the best dressage rings and breed shows in the country.
Iron Spring Farm's mission to serve the American sport horse community can be seen not only through their evolving stallion base, but in their large band of brood mares as well. Even though ISF stallions breed to more than 250 outside mares each year, the farm also continue to breed and raise horses of their own.
"Our aim is to breed top quality athletes with our own horses and with the mares of our clients." says Mary Alice. "We hope to sell our horses primarily within North America. People should be able to buy European quality here in the United States."
One example of successful breeding of a world class horse can be seen in the Iron Spring Farm stallion Judgement by Consul (Nimmerdor x Purioso x Joost). Judgement along with his brother Ibsen, were the first two domestically bred and born stallions to be approved by the KWPN in the United States. While Ibsen died at a young age, Judgement has gone on to be a world-class Grand Prix Jumper competitor.
Judgement, with rider Beezie Madden, has competed in 10 Nations Cups, the World Equestrian Games and numerous winning appearances in Europe and at Spruce Meadows. He is the most successful American bred jumper competing today, bringing home over 1.5 million dollars in prize money and earning the KWPN Crown predicate.
As great as the last 30 years have been, the next decades promise to be just as exciting. With Iron Spring Farm stallions producing over a dozen approved sons and literally hundreds of sport champions, First Premium, Star, and Keur offspring, the sons and daughters of Iron Spring will have a significant impact on the sport horse world for many years to come.
