Round Meadow Ranch and the Woodruff Family

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34 – March/April, 2017

by Susan Winslow

Like many horse crazy youngsters, when Ann Woodruff was five years old, she begged her father for a horse. Unlike most Dads, who either pretend they have temporary hearing loss or try to evade the question long enough for their daughter to lose interest, Ann’s wonderful father said okay. Ann was presented with a sweet Quarter Horse mare that they kept at a local barn near their home in Watkinsville, Georgia.

Unfortunately, the sellers neglected to mention that the mare had been bred to their Tennessee Walking Horse stallion. A few months later, Ann’s family was presented with a four-legged surprise. Ann recalls, “It was April Fool’s day. When they called from the barn and told my Dad our horse just had a baby, he thought they were joking. Then, we got to the farm and there they were – two horses for the price of one!” They kept both the filly and her mother, and Ann won her first ribbon that year. Little did her father know that with that first ribbon the family was embarking on an exciting new journey that would eventually include ten horses and a slew of show ribbons and trophies. Ann kept her original Quarter Horse mare and filly even after moving on to 4-H and local competition on the Saddlebreds she campaigned throughout the Athens region as a teenager. She laughs when she says, “My father was such a great sport about the horses, but I have a feeling he thought it was the best day of his life when it was time for me to go to college and we got rid of the last one!”

Ann went off to the University of Georgia, and the horses were given to family members or sold. Ann took a break from riding to focus on her studies and then her career. Ann met her husband, Buck Woodruff, in Atlanta and they’re now parents to Harrison, Lillian, and Carolina. They are also doting grandparents to Carolina’s son, Tripp. Horses have always been in the Woodruff family. Buck’s mother was an award-winning breeder of Arabian horses and Buck grew up on horseback. Although they call Atlanta home, Buck and Ann spend a great deal of time at their 400-acre ranch in Whitefish, Montana in the rugged Bitteroot Mountain Range. At Round Meadow Ranch, the family bought five ranch horses for trail rides, and that’s where their daughter, Lillian, fell in love with horses, and their journey to the show world began, once again.

Click here to read the complete article
34 – March/April, 2017