Most Americans clock in for a 40-hour workweek guided by routine and predictability. For Anne Morgan, who manages a farm of 150 Standardbreds and Thoroughbreds, the clock is irrelevant. As a former trainer and now a breeder and boarder, her work is never confined to hours. As days blur into nights, her schedule bends with the needs of her horses and her “routine” is anything but routine. Anne is a resident of Stillwater, New York, a town just outside of the illustrious Saratoga Springs in which the harness and thoroughbred tracks operate. “I was raised mostly here, but we did live in Europe when I was a kid. My parents were not horse people. When we came back from Europe, we moved across from what is now Skidmore [College], formerly Rosenheim’s, which was a thoroughbred farm. So that’s when I really started,” said Morgan. “I was about 10 and by the time I was 12, I was begging to ride. I was breaking babies for them all through high school and college. I worked at the track a little bit and wanted to be a trainer. “I worked for some great people. I worked for T.J. Kelly for 10 summers and then I got my trainer’s license and Timmy, my husband, and I met at the harness track. And of course, he was in the harness business and I was in the thoroughbred business.” Anne and her late husband found property together and built their own farm. Today, it is comprised of five horse barns, three hay barns, a shop, covered and uncovered round pens, and 18 paddocks including five large paddocks. “There was nothing here when we bought it and everything that you see, we built. We started out with nothing and then, [Timmy] had a great foresight, so I can’t take any credit for that. He could look at something and set things up. Now our kids are also part of the business.” Anne’s farm, Mill Creek Farm, houses 150 horses ranging from foals and broodmares to standardbreds to thoroughbreds. Whether a horse is recuperating from an injury with time off or a scheduled vacation during a break, Anne takes them all in when she can. “I’m primarily thoroughbreds, but I still own a bunch of standardbreds. I love the standardbreds. We have Coraggioso here, I think he still has the trotting track record at Saratoga,” Morgan said. Not only does Anne handle shipping semen for Coraggioso, she handles the live breeding process of numerous thoroughbreds in addition to the complete foaling process, boarding, and the regular duties of having a large-scale operation. Her breeding operation extends into sale-prepping her yearlings. “We are actually going to consign in the October sale here at Isaac Tipton, which this will be our first year doing that. We haven’t done that before,” Morgan said. “It’s kind of a big revolving door. If you start in January, we’re foaling mares. As mares foal, some go to Kentucky, some get bred in New York, so everything kind of gets replaced. You foal 15 and the next 15 are in the foaling barn. It’s just a big rotation. We prep yearlings for both August sales and we prep weanlings, so we do sales prep as well. It’s like a big revolving circle of life as we like to call it here. “We also make our hay. We bale about 20,000 bales a year. With the harness business, we ship semen for Coraggioso and collect him and all that. We have a thoroughbred we have stay in here that we have to breed natural. Our grain is made at a mill for us specific to our needs and that was my husband’s recipe, it’s got extra Vitamin E and selenium in it because we’re very deficient.” From daily chores to careful planning and execution, the day-to-day at such an operation can be daunting, but Anne said the key to success is organization and planning. “It’s all about being organized at the end of the day. Some days we’ll get up in the morning and have a plan and sometimes by 10 a.m. we’re at plan Z, so you know you have to be able to handle change and adapt and overcome. “You have to have a lot of initiative. My big advice would be to go work on a farm and learn as much as you can. The other thing is don’t ever think you know it all. I’ve been at this a long, long time and I learn something new every single day.” With the mare rotation in play, breeding and foaling, it’s important to keep organized and ensure all the proper steps are taken. “We have what is called the Jockey Club Information Systems Horse Farm Management and it keeps all of the records. Sam [daughter] stays a lot on top of all of that and between the pair of us in the office, we make sure what comes, what goes, and all of it goes into that system and it keeps it forever. Greatest invention on the planet. Doesn’t matter what breed it is. It keeps all the breeding dates, the foaling dates, who they were bred to, when they were bred. It has everything. I could not do it without it.” While Anne makes her job look easy, it wasn’t the career path she was always aiming for. “When I was younger and went to school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. And then I got the bug of training. I galloped horses for many, many years and I wanted to train so I trained for a while. My husband was pretty heavily into standardbreds so we didn’t have many thoroughbreds here at the beginning. Standardbred breeding was a big deal back then. In the late ‘80s, it all kind of went by the wayside for a while and that’s when he made the transfer process more over to the thoroughbreds because of our connection.” While the changes to the farm were made in the ‘80s, the farm didn’t take off to its current size until about 1998. “There were two big changes in 1998. A farm went out of business and they asked us to take over their people so we did. When all those people moved in, they started to see what kind of products we put out as we were sending babies out. They noticed how well behaved they were, how they look. Our theory has always been we don’t care if they are worth $5 or $5 million. They all get treated like they are worth $5 million. So once you put that product out and get the reputation, that’s when it started to really snowball. “And then in 2013, we had a gentleman come in that had a stallion, he was very wealthy and he wanted to stand the stallion and he wanted to buy 50 mares to breed to him. And he did. And we got really big then as well. He got out of the business after a couple of years,” Morgan continued. “It’s a tough call trying to make a stallion, you know. But in the interim, you know, I still had my reputation from the track. And, you know, we still had all the clients from when we first started to get big. So, I have clients that have been with me for 35 years. I’m like the sixth generation of following their mares. And word of mouth is everything. We don’t advertise.” As someone who has made the switch from one industry to another with ties to both communities still, and plenty of horses of both breeds, Anne has insight into the differences between the industries that most wouldn’t see from the outside. Besides the difference in temperament in the horses with standardbreds having more of a level-head, Anne said the big difference is the incentives to breed thoroughbreds. “If I have a foal that’s born, I’m the breeder. I sell it and it goes to Saratoga and it races, if it wins, I get 40% of what the horse wins. So if it’s a $100,000 purse, we get 60% on the thoroughbred side, so it’s $60,000. I get 40% which is $24,000 as a Breeders’ Award.” Anne owns many thoroughbreds, none racing as of now, but many mares. She owns several standardbreds who currently race with trainer Claude Huckabone, Jr., but has had horses with Mark Beckwith and Frank Salino over the years. “I love standardbred racing. I enjoy it. I love the people. I love the hands-on. Not to take anything away from the thoroughbred business, but we enjoy it so much because we’re so much hands-on with the thoroughbreds. When we go over to the standardbreds, it’s a little bit more relaxing and a little bit more laid back. It’s not so stressful. And I love the fair circuit. I like the sire stakes, too. We spent one summer racing one in the Excelsiors one year and we had a ball.” She helps draw people into horse racing with tours, educating about racing and horses to people from 4-H, the National Museum of Racing and more. Whether it’s shoveling snow, bailing hay, handling the books, or trading shifts for the foaling process, Anne said that her operation is a team effort, and in addition to her employees that have been with her for a long time, she has her son Michael Little and daughter Samantha Little to help her with the farm on a daily basis. “My husband used to say to me all the time, he goes ‘you don’t care if it’s a Shetland pony, a Clydesdale, a thoroughbred, a standardbred, you just love horses.’ And I’m very, very lucky to be able to do what I do. “The horse business is not a job, it’s a way of life. There’s no such thing as 40 hours a week. It’s a lifestyle, not a career. They eat before we do, everything gets done for the horse before we do anything for ourselves. They come first. If you’re sitting down for Christmas dinner and somebody gets cut or somebody’s hurt, somebody’s colicking or whatever, they come first. “We all work. We work at it and it’s all about the horse,” Morgan concluded.