By Diana Bezdedeanu
Portraits by Addie Beguelin
When the late Jessica Halliday, an Area I eventer and founder of JH Eventing at Baile Hill Farm in Sutton, Massachusetts, learned her colon cancer was terminal, she knew exactly who she wanted to carry on the farm’s legacy: her close friends Lauren and Steven Daugherty. Founded in 2016, Baile Hill Farm was the culmination of Jess’s dream, home to her training and sales program.
Lauren recalled the weight of that moment vividly. “Jess was one of my best friends. I had my personal horse boarded in her barn at the time and as she was preparing to pass, she said to me, ‘If you feel like this place could be your home, I want you and Steven to run it after I’m gone.’
“She passed on October 26, 2021, and we were in here the next day to make sure the barn continued to run smoothly,” Lauren continued. “It was a little chaotic at first. Her clients all felt like family because going through such a tremendous loss bonds you together. Over time, I’ve filtered in what I’d call ‘my’ clients. Now, it doesn’t feel like Jess’s old barn—it feels like ours.”
Lauren and Steven officially purchased the property in January 2022, embracing both the responsibility and the opportunity to make Baile Hill their own. Coincidentally, baile means “home” in Gaelic—a fitting name for the farm that had carried Jess’s dream and now stands as the Daughertys’ own.
“We chose to keep the name to honor Jess,” Lauren explained. “Everybody here is in a program with training rides, lessons and showing. We currently have 14 boarders, a few leasers, a handful of lesson kids and eight of our own horses, including some project horses, leased-out horses, retirees and my daughter’s pony and her foal. It is busy!”
Finding Her Footing
Lauren’s love for horses began long before taking the reins of Baile Hill. “I begged my parents for riding lessons when I was 5 years old. They thought it was going to be a phase. My mom said, ‘Well, just do it and you’ll get it out of our system,’” Lauren said. Growing up in Concord, Massachusetts, Lauren spent every spare moment at nearby Arrowhead Farm, quickly earning the reputation of a barn rat. She trained through Nashoba Valley Pony Club, progressing to the HB level and developing a competitive streak that carried her through high school. As captain of the Patriot IEA team, she rode many different horses, eager to ride anything and everything she could get her hands on.
Her first horse, an off-the-track Thoroughbred she acquired when she was 14 years old, tested her patience. “I was totally over-horsed at first; he was quite feral with me,” Lauren admitted with a laugh. “He knew exactly what he was doing and I couldn’t get him to do anything properly at the beginning. I really learned how to stay on, and eventually I was able to get him into a frame and jump him around well. I had him for about four years until I went away to boarding school and then my Pony Club instructor took him on.”
Lauren’s first introduction to eventing came one year at Hitching Post Farm’s event camp, where she rode an ancient pony named Rowdy. She immediately knew this was the discipline for her. “Being able to gallop and have a bold horse under you—that is the best feeling in the world,” she said. “Over the years, I’ve really learned to love dressage; it’s foundational. It’s so detail-oriented, and I am so not a detail-oriented person. But when you break it down to the basics, it makes everything else better.”
Adversity continued to shape Lauren’s early riding life. A broken back from a riding accident during her senior year of high school, coupled with a torn ACL from soccer, forced her into long hours of physical therapy. That experience led Lauren to pursue a degree in exercise science and psychology at Roanoke College. While in Virginia, she found an internship at Healing Strides of Virginia, a premier PATH International therapeutic riding center. There, she earned her advanced level therapeutic riding certification and founded the first integrated U.S. Pony Club, blending able-bodied riders and riders with special needs. Yet the thrill of eventing never left her. While in Virginia, Lauren bought Copper, another off-the-track Thoroughbred. Lauren and Copper spent multiple winters in Aiken, South Carolina, where she trained alongside Jess, as well as five-star eventer Ryan Wood.
Learning to Manage
After moving back to Massachusetts in 2016, Lauren worked for Jess full time before stepping unexpectedly into a barn manager role at a large therapeutic riding program. “I loved managing that barn,” Lauren said. “I was able to bring in a new herd of horses, develop the property and work with an amazing group of people.” However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the program shifted, and Lauren and two friends decided to branch off to start their own venture, Wildflower Stables, offering both recreational and therapeutic riding lessons.
Nine months after launching Wildflower, Lauren found herself balancing a whole new role—motherhood. “When you own a barn, you don’t really get maternity leave,” Lauren said. “Thankfully, I owned the business with a couple of other people, so I was able to take a month off and hide in Vermont for a little while with Steven and our daughter, Lilah, for which I will forever be grateful.”
Despite already running a business, Lauren stepped in to carry on Jess’s program at Baile Hill after her passing. The early months were grueling. “I was at Wildflower three to four days a week, eight hours a day. It was an hour commute each way. I’d bring Lilah with me, come back to Baile Hill to feed and do night check, teach in the evening—nursing Lilah in the ring with me in the middle of winter. It was absolutely crazy. Nobody should ever do that.”
After about a year and a half of that pace, Lauren admitted she was beyond burnt out. “I hadn’t slept in months. I had a really big barn at home and a really big barn at Wildflower, with lots of clients on both sides. But you can’t please everybody. I realized I had to make a decision, because I was constantly pulling myself in different directions. Obviously, I had to choose where my house and family was. Once I made that decision, it was so peaceful because I could finally fully commit myself. And ever since then, it’s been amazing. We have a full barn and incredible clients, some of whom even moved with me.”
Now fully focused on Baile Hill, Lauren balances teaching, showing, and training youngsters, including two 4-year-old off-the-track Thoroughbreds she brought in from Second Call Thoroughbred Adoption and Placement in New Jersey back in March. “They’ve been an absolute blast,” Lauren gushed. “I love working with babies. It’s especially fun to go from riding a Fourth Level horse to cantering around on one of the youngsters. I took one to his first dressage show a few months ago to get him used to the ring and he was amazing!”
Lauren’s development as a rider and trainer is guided by a diverse team of mentors. “I absolutely love to learn and have an amazing lineup of trainers: Kevin Hadfield has been my consistent dressage trainer, Rob Waine comes over from England a couple of times a year for in-house dressage clinics, Booli Selmayr is my main jumping trainer, and Lainey Johnson is fantastic for breaking down the biomechanics of the horse and rider,” Lauren said. “Each of them brings a different perspective and I’ve been able to add all of that to my own teaching toolkit. It’s been incredibly helpful.”
Balancing Baile Hill and Family
Baile Hill Farm is both a full-service equestrian boarding facility and a thriving cut-flower farm. Alongside caring for horses, Lauren shares her love of blooms and beekeeping by selling fresh bouquets and honey from her signature baby-blue farm truck and she welcomes the community to the farm with seasonal bouquet-making workshops.
Balancing family life with the farm’s demands is no small feat. Lauren credits her husband for unwavering support. “Steven’s not a horse rider, but he loves them, cuddles them and keeps an eye on everything. We have a high-octane lifestyle—14-plus-hour days most days—but we make it work somehow, often switching off who gets to parent and who is doing farm work.”
While Lauren and Steven prepare to welcome a son in April, big-sister-to-be Lilah is also discovering the joys of the barn. “She’s our main motivator. She’s already been to plenty of horse shows, has a wall of ribbons in her bedroom and is loving every moment. She’s a little chicken whisperer too,” Lauren said. “She’ll bring them up to the second story of her playhouse and read them books. She named our Connemara foal that we bred earlier this year—Waffles Maple Syrup—who seemed to acquire more names the longer he was in his mom’s belly!”
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance wasn’t the only challenge Lauren faced. She also carried the emotional weight of caring for two of Jess’s most beloved horses, Quinn and Chico. “Quinn lived in the paddock right next to my house,” Lauren said. “It always felt like she had eyes on us with him. As long as he was around, she was around.”
Chico, one of Jess’s longtime lesson horses, now aged, faced a number of health challenges that eventually required a difficult decision. “I was sitting out on our patio next to Quinn’s paddock, talking to the vet about when it would be a good time to put Chico down, when out of nowhere this black-and-blue—Jess’s cross-country colors—butterfly appeared and flew right around Lilah, then landed on Quinn. I knew immediately that it was Jess, letting us know it was OK to put him down.”
Less than an hour after Chico’s passing, Quinn suffered a catastrophic stifle injury in the paddock after being kicked by another horse, so he too was put down that same day. “I suspected Jess was involved in the timing of Quinn’s death, and it gave me a lot of peace during a devastating time,” Lauren said. “It was also sad because it felt like Jess finally left the farm when Quinn passed—like she tapped out and said, ‘You’re good here. You don’t need me here anymore. You’ve got this.’”
Though the business may have changed hands, Baile Hill Farm carries the promise of a friend whose lifelong dream of building a barn that feels like home is now being fulfilled.
Follow Lauren at @bailehillfarm on Facebook & Instagram and visit bailehillfarm.com
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