Canadian Samantha Brown balances international travel for the family business along with life and her barrel racing aspirations.
Samantha Brown’s regular commute is a 10-hour drive. She spends half of her month traveling to the Midwestern U.S. states from her home in Rockwood, Ontario—about 90 minutes from the New York border, just outside Toronto. Brown and her dad, Don Salzsauler, own Flax Farm, a premium animal-bedding company. Besides the 24/7 family business, Brown and her dad own racehorses, mares and foals. Brown also owns three dogs and is a fitness instructor and a wife—oh, and she’s seasoning her 1D barrel horse for rodeos. How does she fit it all in?
The Family Business
Salzsauler is a consummate entrepreneur. During Brown’s lifetime, he’s owned multiple businesses, including a racehorse farm that has raced more than 150 Quarter Horses; an embryo transfer company based in Weatherford, Texas, and Brazil; and now, an equine bedding company.
His entrance into the bedding business came by chance. Two years ago, Salzsauler and Brown received notice that the company that supplied the bedding they loved for its dust-free properties was shutting down. The product is vital to the health of their then-50 racehorses and 20 mares and foals, so the father-daughter team flew out to Manitoba, Canada, and discussed taking over the business.
“We made an arrangement with them and started our company, Flax Farm, basically from scratch,” Brown said. “We were users first, and then we couldn’t live without the bedding, so we figured out a way to keep it going.”
The challenge, of course, is running that business from Rockwood. Brown and Salzsauler have a couple employees at the factory, but Salzsauler has to fly three hours one way to visit the facility. Brown’s job is sales and administration, and she visits their clients on a regular rotation—the first stop is in Illinois, an aforementioned 10-hour-drive away.
“About 80 percent of our clients are U.S. customers; 20 percent Canadian,” Brown said. “I travel a lot—usually every other week, and i make phone calls and visit existing customers. dad takes care of things at the factory, and we make it work that way. it’s not ideal. obviously, people like to drive five minutes to work, but that’s not how it is.”
Brown maintains fairly regular hours when she’s at home, starting at 8 a.m. and finishing around 5 or 6 p.m., but when she’s on the road, her hours are long every day.
The Racehorses
Brown and her dad still own racehorses, but they’ve scaled back since taking over the bedding company. They have a stallion, about 20 mare and foals, and three racehorses. To add to the challenge, their racehorse trainer is in Michigan, where the horses stay most of the time. The mares and foals—and Brown’s barrel horses—are at Brown’s place. on race weekends, the trainer hauls the racehorses six hours to Canada for the races.
Brown enjoys caring for the horses when she’s home. When both she and her dad are gone, they employ help, but she takes pride in spending time with her horses and dogs every day.
Family and Hobbies
In her “spare” time, Brown is a fitness instructor, and she also trains and competes in fitness competitions.
Brown’s husband, Jeremy, is a third grade teacher in their town. In the summers, he travels with her to barrel races and other road trip adventures. While he’s not passionate about horses like Brown, he enjoys training for and competing in marathons and triathlons. Brown says their shared love of fitness gives them something they can do together.
“Fitness competitions are more of a hobby, a fun little break from work and horse-related things,” Brown said. “At the end of the day, if we can get to the gym and I can ride, then it’s been a good day.”
Barrel Racing
Brown started out riding English at age 10, but she switched to barrel racing by the time she was 14. She loves the diverse sector of people who barrel race and the fun atmosphere at competitions.
“I wanted to go fast, and I wanted pink shirts,” Brown said with a laugh. “When I was 14, I got my first barrel horse—she was really sweet, easy to ride. She babysat me and taught me the ropes.”
At age 18, Brown moved to Texas to work for one of Salzsauler’s companies—the embryo transfer facility in Weatherford. Through business relationships, Brown got to visit some horse farms in Brazil for a week and rode some top-notch horses while she was down there.
“They had tons of trained, beautiful horses, and they said ‘Just go pick one, whatever you want to ride,’” Brown said. “Every 18-year-old horse-crazy girl’s dream come true.”
Brown returned to Brazil every year to barrel race in the summer. One day, her dad decided to purchase some barrel horses from Brazil. They were shipped from Brazil to Miami, Florida, and then back to Texas. Two went to a woman working for the family, and Brown fell in love with another, A Real Fighter. Brown called him “Little Guy.”
“He was my open, finished-product horse I could hop on and go with,” Brown said. “I went to a bunch of rodeos and barrel races over the years with him in Texas. He was a fantastic little horse.”
Then, on a visit back home in Canada, Brown met Jeremy. He lived just a half hour from where she grew up, and a year and a half later in 2007 they married, and Brown was back to living in Canada. She says for a season the horses took a backseat while she focused on work and life—plus, there weren’t many barrel races close by like there were in Texas.
Another one of the horses Salszauler imported from Brazil for Brown was still located in Texas. Two years ago, Brown shipped the horse to Canada and wanted to put the mare on barrels, since she was out of a seven-time Brazilian Congress Champion barrel horse. Brown sent her for training, but the mare never ran quite fast enough.
Then last summer, one of Brown’s friends, Brandi Hoppe, told Brown she had a horse for her kids, but the horse was too fast for them and they couldn’t keep up. Brown told her she had the perfect slower horse for her kids, and the two women decided to trade.
FF One Easy Effort had been sitting in a field, but she was a former racehorse and a 1D barrel horse. Brown went to ride her with Molly Powell for a few days and worked with the mare all last winter. They began going to barrel races this spring.
“It’s like reliving my 18-year-old days again,” 32-year-old Brown said. “She is so cool, she’s so fun to ride and so different than what I’m used to. It’s like learning from scratch all over again. We are having so much fun.”
Doling Out the Time
So how does she do it all? Although she professes a preference for flexibility, Brown also says she carves out time slots for the things that are important.
“Once you have a love for something like barrel racing, it sticks with you,” Brown said. “It’s one of those things that if you love it, and you’re in it for the long haul, you will figure out a way to get back to it, even if you have to leave it for a little bit for now.”
Even though her schedule is full, Brown rides just about every day when she’s home.
“Every single day I get to ride my horse, as much or as little as I need to on the barrels,” Brown said. “Even if it’s just 15 minutes, even if it’s just walking, I feel like one of the only ways you can get with a new horse is doing that.”
Though “Claire” has been seasoned, Brown is working to connect with her, so they’ve been competing at local barrel races and jackpots.
“I feel really lucky—there are a lot of little jackpots within about 90 minutes of my house, so we’ve been going to those to get our timing together,” Brown said.
Brown does have aspirations for competing at and qualifying for bigger rodeos, so she and a girlfriend plan out longer trips to haul their horses during the summer.
When Brown is away on business, she has another friend exercise her horse. Though Brown’s friend is an English rider, she keeps Claire legged up and loose. When Brown leaves, it’s typically Monday to Friday. It’s a big challenge when she has a barrel race scheduled for that next Saturday, but she does her best to make it work.
“I can feel unprepared, since I haven’t been there, especially when I’m used to riding every day when I’m home,” Brown said.
The unpredictability of travel makes day-to-day life a bit of a struggle as well. But Brown enjoys working with her dad—something she’s done since she was 18.
“Being out of your routine on the road is definitely challenging,” Brown said. “It’s a strain on your relationships with friends, your spouse, your family— paired with a 24/7 business you’re responsible for, the stress level is high. But it’s also the most rewarding type of work. Family businesses, they either work or they really don’t. My dad and I have something really special. I don’t think a lot of people have that, being able to work with their family.”
Advice
The only way Brown can do everything is by having a workable schedule. Brown says she has blocks of time for work and blocks for other things in her life—otherwise, tasks and goals fall through the cracks.
“At the same time, the balance is really hard,” Brown said. “I definitely don’t have that part figured out yet. You just have to treat it like a pie chart, and you fill it up until it’s full. Some nights, I don’t get much sleep and I get home late and we have takeout for dinner. Being flexible becomes our normal. It’s just our way of life.”
Brown takes each day as it comes, and if she’s able to get it all done, great, but if not, she doesn’t sweat it. She also adds that having family members, especially her husband, can help balance your day-to-day routine.
“You wing it and hope everything falls into place,” Brown said. “It’s a balance—my husband is very much Type-A, and I am the opposite. Tomorrow is another day. The dishes in the sink can wait if we can’t get to it tonight. And you need people in your life to help you keep your balance.”
When asked for advice about fitting everything in, Brown says it’s worth making time for the things that mean the most to you.
“It sounds cheesy, but if you want something bad enough, we all have the same 24 hours in a day,” Brown said. “Different people have different responsibilities, but if there’s something you think about before you go to sleep, and it’s the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning because it’s that important to you, you will find a way to keep after it.”
Brown says if you love barrel racing and want to get back into it, she can totally relate—she really missed it for a few years, “Circumstances worked out for me that I have this really cool horse now, and barrel racing is something that was important to me—it didn’t matter if I had to haul to Texas to work with a trainer or spend a weekend with the trainer I have here now,” Brown said. “Whatever help I can get, I take it. That’s the only way you can get a little better. Even a little bit better every day is fine with me. I will take it.”
This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of Barrel Horse News.
