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The Besleys, making a business out of their love for Clydesdales

November 21, 2019   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

“The Clydesdales are a family hobby that has turned into a business,” says Dave Besley. “It started out as a hobby. We [with wife Lana] ride one or two of them a little bit. The riding part of it is becoming more popular with the Clydesdale breed.”

What began as a hobby has become a business, as he observed, “Our focus is breeding horses that hitch. We show them online but, ultimately, we’re breeding them to become hitch horses. We do some of the training ourselves and also partner with friends of ours, in Paisley, who are third generation trainers.”

At the home farm, Mr. and Mrs. Besley work on the basics with the horses.

“We get them green broke, so they’re wearing harnesses and pulling simple wagons and, if we see they’re good enough to go on, we send them to Gregglea Clydesdales in Paisley.”

Currently Melancthon Township’s deputy mayor, Dave says the versatility of the Clydesdale holds it in good stead: “They all make it to do something somewhere. We sell them to folks that want to have a team of horses for a sleigh or farm wagons.

“Occasionally,” he told us, “we have an exceptional athlete. We have four or five out there. It’s a relatively small community among Clydesdale farms and it’s amazing the amount of travelling some horses do, long drives all the way to B.C., sometimes down to the States. They all travel by truck or trailer. If any are sent overseas, they are flown, of course.”

The fashion for riding these rather large horses is “just something that’s more and more popular in the last five years. They do very well. They can jump and they’re able to do dressage. The mounted police in Toronto use them. The Clydesdales are pretty flexible in things that they can do.”

He said Lana “had a pony as a child and I had a pony as a child but I got into it about 20 years ago. That was the happiest day in my father’s life when the horses went down the road and he was able to use his tractor on the farm. He liked the horses but he didn’t think they were as efficient as his tractor. 

“Lana’s grandfather and uncles were Standard Bred people: they used to race horses.”

Any farm that is breeding animals to sell takes some of those animals to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, staged at the beginning of November for 10 days. The Besley Clydesdales were no exception.

“Our youngest junior stud colt won his class,” Mr. Besley was pleased to announce. “He won Reserved Champion for the Royal and our senior filly was fourth. Our yearling filly was third best bred and owned; that means she was born and bred in Ontario. We just had the three horses down there.”

That may sound like a small number but, as he noted, “If you have any kind of marketing game at all and if you’re breeding horses and selling horses, you have to be there. There’s people who come to the Royal from all over Canada and the States. Winning at the Royal – it doesn’t get any better.

“When I was dairy farmer I used to show cows there,” he commented. “A couple of my family members bought my share of the farm, so, I was out of the dairy business. I had started breeding Clydesdales three or four years before but, then, since I got out of the dairy end, I got more serious. 

“When we left the family farm, we moved to a farm up near Dundalk,” he explained. “It’s wonderful up here. We’ve had a tremendous influx from the Mennonite community but they’re wonderful neighbours. We help each other out – they’re just wonderful neighbours. 

“The land became so expensive around Elmira and their expanding families needed more farm land. They’ve taken the farms where the buildings were in bad shape and they repaired and rebuilt them. They take care of the land. They’re great stewards of the land.”

In addition to his political involvement, real estate has become Mr. Besley’s other business. “Once I got out of dairy farming, I was in a search for something to do. I was manager of AI (artificial insemination) building on a cattle farm – I did that for a year; I was a truck driver for a year, and we took on a large flock of sheep…

“Then, one day, my wife said to me, ‘You would make a fabulous real estate agent – you should sell farms. So, I got my courses and I’m going into my sixth year and I just absolutely love it . 

“I sell a lot of farms to the Mennonites and I also do a large percentage that is residential as well. I have good connections with the Mennonites. I really do enjoy this. There aren’t a lot of people with farm experience.”

Others in the Besley family are still in farming. “My brother continues to farm as a cash crop farmer and he has Besley Country Market, south of Shelburne.”

Dave Besley is confident about what he wants. “I just want to carry on doing what I’m doing as long as I possibly can. I have all kinds of friends who have retired but I’m having lots of fun and I just want to keep doing it. And I’m going to carry on showing horses – raising and breeding them.

“I’m having a wonderful time.”

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