UTICA, Pa. — When veteran Tom Greenlee first laid eyes on Ellie at a horse auction in the fall of 2012, he knew she was special. Ellie, a shire horse, has one black leg and three white legs.
“Everybody wants the four white legs,” Greenlee said. This “imperfection” resulted in no one bidding on Ellie that day, but that also left room for Tom to swoop in and buy her himself.
“That horse, she’s our smallest,” said Lisa Greenlee, Tom’s wife. “But (has) the biggest heart,” the couple said at the same time.
This “imperfect” horse was Tom’s first and would kick off his journey into the shire world. Today, Tom and Lisa Greenlee run a shire draft horse operation, focused on breeding and education, and grow hay on 126 acres in Utica, Pennsylvania, in Venango County.
Greenlee Farms, formerly a dairy farm, has seen quite the transformation over the years, from building a new barn and arena to developing plans for public tours and equine therapy.
Their ultimate goal is to preserve and promote the rare shire breed; there are fewer than 3,000 shires in North America, according to the American Shire Horse Association.
“We are stewards of these animals,” Lisa Greenlee said. “God provided us with something beautiful, something to take care of, and if we make that choice to have this, we need to take care of them.”
Roots
The Greenlees both grew up on and around dairy farms in western Pennsylvania. Lisa grew up on a farm in Somerset County before moving to Venango County about 30 years ago for a job at a human resources company working with those who are intellectually disabled.
Tom showed dairy cattle in 4-H and helped out on his cousin’s dairy farm — now Greenlee Farms. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1996 after graduating from high school.
“I was just gonna go do my four years and come back home. But I spent almost 25 years in the army,” Tom said.
He started his military career as a special operations ranger. Eventually, he became a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, a role he held for 18 years. He was deployed three times: once to Iraq and twice in Afghanistan.
Tom wouldn’t get involved with draft horses until he got back home from his third deployment in 2012.
Lisa always wanted a horse as a kid, “but there was no room for a horse on a dairy farm,” she said. It wasn’t until 2002 that her dad bought two Percheron horses, kicking off her journey with draft horses.
Lisa looked after one of her father’s horses while it was recovering from an injury, visiting and taking care of it, at a farm in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania. It was at this farm that she was gifted her first horse, a Percheron, by the owner. A few years later, in 2005, she began competing with it in open shows and fairs.
This is how Lisa and Tom met at the Crawford County Fair in 2014 where they were both showing their draft horses.
Over the years, Tom and Lisa continued to run into each other at these events, with Lisa’s daughter Brier eventually showing Tom’s horses in competitions. They would finally get together as a couple in 2020.
A new journey
In 2021, Tom and Lisa bought their farm from Tom’s cousin. With them, the couple brought nine horses: six Shire mares, a Percheron, a paint and a Hackney-Clydesdale cross.
Their first order of business was to increase their herd and renovate the old dairy barn. The couple gutted the inside of the dairy barn and removed all the dirt. The Greenlees kept the roof of the original barn but redid the four walls and removed all the windows to reduce the flies.
The barn has 10 tie stalls and six box stalls, something Tom was planning for in case their herd grew to 16.
“When we first redid the barn down here, I said, ‘16 stalls, what do we need 16 stalls for? If we ever get to 16 horses, we need our heads examined,’” Lisa said. The Greenlees have 18 horses currently.
The couple also tore down the old corn crib and put up a hay/equipment barn. The Greenlees’ latest project was building an arena so they could train their young in the winter and early spring, when it is muddy in the pastures and cold.
They also use the arena to temporarily house foaling mares and their two mini donkeys via run-in sheds.
Showing off shires
The Greenlees have recently stepped back from showing horses competitively to renovate the farm, but every year they attend and compete in the State Fair of Virginia — a 10-day-long event held in late September.
“When we’re down there, they treat us like family,” Tom said. The Greenlees have been attending the fair for six years. This has allowed the couple to form close bonds with fairgoers; some of their horses have even been named after people the Greenlees have befriended at the fair, including a little boy named Stetson.
Stetson will often come over and help groom their horses; his mom calls the Greenlees’ his “fair parents.” The couple drives the draft horses competitively, but for the most part, they enjoy exhibiting the horses and educating fairgoers about the rare shire breed.
“Most people never see a shire, which is one thing, and then to have the ability to educate them about it is pretty cool,” Tom said.
Shires originate from England. According to the Greenlees, this horse would clean out the bogs, walking through sharp grass that would cut their legs and lead to infections. To solve this problem, shires were bred to have long hair on their legs to protect them from these working conditions; today, these long hairs are called “feathers.”
The State Fair of Virginia is the Greenlees’ favorite event to attend, but traveling and showing horses certainly has its challenges.
“I think a piece that people don’t understand is the amount of responsibility that we take when we go off the farm, because the amount of people and amount of stuff going on, something can go wrong,” Tom said.
In the past, there have been a few close calls: one time, a person, on their phone, stepped in front of their horses during a competition.
There have been instances of loud noises at events, too, but to deal with this, the couple exposes the horses to various sounds from an early age. Sometimes, the Greenlees will even decide to pull the horses from a hitch if they’re having an off-day.
“You’ve got to really pay attention because working with these big animals, you can get hurt doing everything correctly,” Tom said. “Lisa and I, we’ve been around them enough, and you just get a feeling. They have body language just like you and I do.”
“Out of 18 animals out there, there are 18 different personalities,” Lisa added.
Future
The Greenlees plan on attending the city of Franklin’s Light Up Night Electric Lights parade again; their first year participating was in 2024. In the parade, the couple drives their horses through town on a sleigh — the horses wear vintage sleigh bells that Lisa went to West Virginia for.
That first year, the excitement at the parade was everywhere, so much so that they had trouble keeping the kids a safe distance away.
In addition to educating people through parades and events, the Greenlees have plans to continue renovating the farm and, eventually, host wagon and sleigh rides on their property.
Currently, the Greenlees are participating in Penn State University’s equine grazing program and hope to host horse clinics to educate kids about horses.
The Greenlees are also interested in hosting equine therapy, particularly for veterans — something which has benefited Tom.
“After doing three deployments, coming back and messing with the draft horses and stuff, I was like, ‘yeah, there’s a level of it’s cool, calm and relaxed,’” Tom said. “You just enjoy going out for a drive and working with them.”
However, trying to do this has been challenging, as a licensed therapist needs to be on the farm’s payroll, in addition to other “red tape.” Nevertheless, it is still one of many future goals for Greenlee Farms that shines bright.
“When some people are like ‘oh, you got a great hobby,’ I (am) like, ‘we’re way past the hobby stage.’ I think that’s where the sigma of you guys raise horses (comes from), people think of it more as it’s a hobby thing,” Tom said. “We’re past a hobby stage. It’s a business to us, and that’s what we want it to be. You know?”
(Liz Partsch can be reached at epartsch@farmanddairy.com or 330-337-3419.)
