Volunteers make Wahkiakum go

Wahkiakum is filled with amazing and innovative people. Local reaction to the winter snow on Christmas day 2008 proves it.

It only took Mother Nature a few minutes and tons of snow to turn the Wahkiakum Fairgrounds Arena into a twisted heap of steel and corrugated scrap tin.

Fast forward to last Saturday morning, with the first annual Silver Buckle Series Open Game Show sponsored by the Wahkiakum County Fair Board and its volunteers.

The event was held in the Fair’s new arena. It was the brain child of Ginger and Stewart Moonen. “This was collaboration between the wife and I,” said Stewart. “We tried to come up with a venue that would let us use the new arena and make money for the fair at the same time.”

Moonen said he and Ginger have been around horses all their lives and have attended a wide variety of horsing events.

“We went to fairs and got a lot of experience and picked a lot of brains before we approached the fair board,” he said.

“When I was younger I used to ‘game’ horses,” said Ginger. She said gaming is a term used in horsemanship to describe riding horses through obstacle courses.

“I did it as a kid and all through 4-H and my kids enjoy it now also so I said, You know what? We got this great new arena; let's get something going,” said Ginger.

Stewart and Ginger, since they both are “horse people” decided on an equestrian event that had the potential to grow and eventually sustain itself year-after-year.

“Ginger and I talked about it,” said Stewart, “and we put a proposal together and went before the Fair Board and told them what was possible.” Stewart said he and Ginger told the Fair Board about their idea for the Silver Buckle Series horse gaming series.

“We explained to them we would probably have a small turnout for the first event,” said Stewart, “but that eventually we felt with a little word-of-mouth and perhaps some advertising the event would draw riders from throughout Southwest Washington and Northwest Oregon.”

“We weren’t just thinking about this one event,” said Ginger, “we wanted to make people aware that this is simply a great arena, and that it can be used year round.”

“Ginger approached the Fair Board and said she had an idea of how to use the arena, and I, being a horse person, was all for it”, said Becky Ledtke, the Fair Board President.

Ledtke said the Fair Board liked the Moonens' idea. The board started gathering information on how to put on a “gaming series” horse show event together. Then they recruited volunteers and found sponsors to donate the prizes. “We even recruited 4-H members and relatives,” said Becky.

Western Washington University student Valle Ledtke is one of the family volunteers.

“I came home from school this weekend just to help judge and to help Mom out,” said Valle, with a bashful smile.

Valle said she volunteered to judge the Showmanship Class series. Her job was to look at how riders present their horses.

“We use a quartering system that involves four different stages of judging and the first is how the horse presents itself,” said Valley

She said the next step is to look at how clean the horse is; how the rider must also always stay on the same side as the judge. The judge also considers how smoothly the horse turns, backs up and breaks into a trot. Finally the judge looks at the quality of the riders equipment. “Any one of these things not done correctly will get points knocked off the rider’s score,” said Valle.

The Silver Buckle Series is actually three different riding events. After Saturday, the next event in the series will be on July 3. “The final event of the series will be held during the fair,” said Ginger, “and the top rider of all three events will win the silver belt buckle. It’s a beautiful buckle that I’m having made for this event.”