Black Acres: Behind the Name

Choosing a farm name can be tricky, but we had a good starting point! In 1978, my parents purchased this property, which at the time was a renovated Victorian farmhouse with a woodshed attached. On the property was a an old bank barn, with a smaller barn attached. A few large sugar maples stood proudly along the driveway and around the house, but other than that, the property boasted little more than 24 acres of open fields and thick woods. Because my parents obviously had little foresight into my future at the time, they took down the large bank barn instead of investing in it's refurbishment, and left little horse crazy me with nothing more than an imaginary field of make believe horses. But I thought they were beautiful! And in my mind, they were everywhere! The rest is history, so they say....I'm sure you can put the pieces together from there.

But why the name? My father James Noonan, who unfortunately was not with us long enough to see the real horse farm come to fruition, always adamantly referred to his dream country property as "Blackacre". You see, my father was a lawyer... a very good one at that.... and Blackacre is a legal term. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Blackacre refers to "a fictitious piece of real property —used in the study of property law". So really... the reference isn't anything super exciting or inspiring, but arguing with my father was nothing less than an amusing hobby to him (again, a lawyer) and a frustrating exercise for anyone who tried to keep up. So Blackacre it has always been! When it came to adorning my new equine endeavor with a name, we landed on Black Acres, after a lot of discussion and some creativity from a friend. The tweak allowed for a new twist on something inherently symbolic, while maintaining the integrity of what has always been.

So we move forward with a beautiful facility, a name that looks optimistically towards the future while still fondly acknowledging the past, and a passion to create change!