Hometown Living At Its Best 29
“My kids, Terra and Travis, were young when we first
moved here,” said Tim. “I wanted to get them involved in
something. I don't know why I picked pottery for Terra, but
I thought maybe she would like that.” But something that
happened at an outdoor stage play in 1990 during Vidalia’s
centennial celebrations, would bring an unexpected change
of plans. “The horses were being kept behind the stage,
and all the people running across the stage in costumes
and the crowds of people had the horses spooked. The
guys wrangling the horses didn’t know what to do. The
more nervous they got, the more nervous the horses got. I
thought, ‘Somebody is going to get hurt.’ I told my daughter,
‘Let’s go over there and help these guys.’ I showed her what
to do, and we got the horses calmed down. They asked if I
would stay on and help, and I did that for two or three days.
After that, my daughter was bit by the ‘horse bug,’ and I
couldn’t have been more thrilled.”
Tim bought an Appaloosa mare and her colt from an
excellent bloodline in Sumter, South Carolina. “I bred
her with what they call a ‘Few-spotted Appaloosa,’ in Kite,
Georgia, which is black and white, and that’s how we really
got started.” He leased some land from a friend and started
looking for a place of his own. In 1992, he found 52 acres
on Center Road going toward Alston. Tim started repairing
fences and had the house gutted to rebuild and remodel.
Except for the “twenty-one automatic transmissions and a
bunch of old cars” he had to move, it was the perfect place
for “Spotted R Ranch.”
An Amish group down the road came over and asked
if he needed a barn. “I said, ‘Yes!’ and they cut about sixty
trees off of my land and took them down to Doodle Hill Saw
Mill.” He gave them a design for exactly what he wanted, and
with the rough-cut lumber and “a ball of string,” they built
him the perfect barn. “To this day, it’s perfectly square.”
In the years that followed, “My daughter competed at
the State Fair and other competitions and did very well,”
said Tim. “But they kept working in the medical field in
the family. Terra just passed her boards to become a Nurse
Practitioner, and Travis is the director at the Cath Lab at
Meadows Regional Medical Center in Vidalia.”
Today, Tim’s wife Rita keeps a few goats in the barn, but
his horse training days are behind him. “If you’re going to
ride horses, you’re going to get bucked off. I’ve broken some
ribs, but after a total shoulder replacement, I knew my days
of training horses were over,” he said.
Roose Angus Farms is a partnership. Both Rita and Tim
do the work, which is “not glamorous. It’s dirty, hard work,”
said Tim. “We’ve had multiple broken bones and stitches