Equestrians of the Carolinas

Mark and Sandra Myers

Founders of the Black Cowboy Festival

Mark and Sandra Myers both descend from generations of African American farmers and sharecroppers in South Carolina. In 1991 they purchased land in Rembert, South Carolina that was once a plantation and still houses the cabin where Sandra’s three-times great grandmother, who was enslaved, lived and raised 10 children. The property is now the site of their home, farm, and their annual Black Cowboy Festival. This year will be the 26th anniversary of the homegrown African American cultural festival that draws people of all races and from all over the United States. Mark and Sandra Myers are committed to sharing the gift of horses with the youth of their community and with anyone who is open to learning about the history of Black horsemanship that they are seeking to recover and reclaim.

“Mark always had this dream of owning horses and being a cowboy,” Sandra says. “As a kid, he watched Bonanza on television, and he loved that way of life but he didn’t see African Americans on TV as cowboys; you didn’t read it in the history books. But we knew there had to be other African Americans doing what we loved doing. So, we started travelling and researching – we went to Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, different places – and we met many other African Americans who were horsemen and ranchers and cowboys.

“Mark’s desire was to educate our people, and at first, we were just talking about people back home, back here, who didn’t know anything about African American cowboys, but we soon learned that there were people everywhere that didn’t know! The main focus of the Black Cowboy Festival is horsemanship—not just jumping on the back of a horse and being able to ride, but the skill that Black cowboys had during that cowboy heyday and even today,” continues Sandra.

Why horses? Sandra answers: “When you gain a relationship with a horse you learn how to be patient, how to take care of the animal, a sense of love and communication, things that carry you through your life not just with horses but with people. But the festival is not just about horsemanship, it is about a whole lot of stuff that has to do with our heritage and culture. We wanted to create a resource for education, and at the same time we knew that we would need to pull people in and entertain them, that it had to be about more than horses but also other aspects of African American history, as it relates to art and music.

“Everybody, anybody, any nationality is invited to come and join us in this event,” says Sandra. “A lot of times when people hear 'Black' they think it is just for Black people, but we say Black Cowboy because if we don’t say it, people who don’t know about Black cowboys will think about white cowboys, because that is what they have always seen. As African Americans whose history has been stricken from them, we want to enlighten, not just our people, but anyone who is not aware of our history.”

The 26th annual Black Cowboy festival will take place from May 25-28 in Rembert, South Carolina, beginning Thursday with educational workshops, followed by a fish fry. On Friday there is a trail ride and line dancing classes, and at night a Western dinner and a live band. Saturday has a full day of horse showing in multiple disciplines, including gaited horses, jumping, rodeo and games, and ending with a Motown jam party. Sunday concludes the festival with church and brunch.

For more information: www.blackcowboyfestival.net

Make Grass Greener Inside the Fence

by Lauren Allen

The cost of groceries has skyrocketed, and horse owners are paying high prices when it comes to feed and forage for their four-legged babies. The feed budget is not a place where costs can be cut easily, but Reed Edwards has some advice to help keep the grass greener inside the fence. Edwards is a horse trainer and award-winning grower of hay and pasture based at his own FoxPipe Farm in Laurens, South Carolina.

“What hasn’t gotten more expensive in the last couple of years?” asks Reed Edwards. “Fertilizer tripled a year ago, and fuel is doing the same thing. When you are a hay producer, fertilizer and fuel are two of your biggest expenses, and that raises the price of the hay bales. Even though I am a hay producer, my focus is just as much on the pasture, so I don’t have to use my hay!”

Edwards won first place in the “Mixed Annual Grass or Other Hay” category in the 2022 Southeastern Hay Contest held at the Sunbelt Ag Expo in Moultrie, Georgia last October. His winning entry was an alfalfa and novel endophyte fescue mix, a combination of grasses and legumes that he likes for the way the two complement each other during the growth and drying processes. He says that the grass helps add spring to the alfalfa and lets air in during curing to dry out the stem without over-drying the leaves. Many horse owners, particularly breeders, have been warned against feeding fescue because a type of fungus called an endophyte in the cells of this grass can cause reproductive issues. However, Edwards points out that the term “novel endophyte” fescue means that the typical endophyte in the grass has been replaced with a new or different organism that does not have the same negative implications for horses. Endophytes and fescue are mutually beneficial because the endophyte helps the cool season grass resist extreme heat and drought.

In the Carolinas, Edwards says that as far as growing pasture or hay, what types of crop work best is more about the division between East and West than North and South. In the eastern parts of the two states, the soil is sandy and the temperatures are warmer. In the west, there is more clay, and cool season grasses like fescue and orchard grass survive since it is not quite as warm in the summer.