Shooting Star Farm in Livonia, NY

Shooting Star Farm is owned and operated by the wife and husband team of Peggy Schuster and Dan Bielaski.

Peggy

Peggy is a native of Rush, NY, and has been a horse owner and rider since 1996. Before we built our horse farm, she wore many different professional 'hats', having worked in professions as varied as architectural drafting (Peggy also designed our house!) and long-term substitute teaching. She now manages the horse farm full-time and is extremely attentive to the needs of the horses boarding with us, and their owners. Peggy is a lifetime member of the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) and is a leader of our barn's 4-H group, the “Shooting Star Superstars”.

Dan

Dan was born in Rochester, NY, and also lived for many years in both New Mexico and California. After returning to New York in 1995, he gradually became a horseperson after meeting his eventual wife Peggy. And now, he can hardly remember his pre-equine existence! Aside from helping Peggy with the barn duties, Dan works as a computer network administrator as his 'other job'. He is also the webmaster for this Web site (www.shooting-star-farm.com), so feel free to send him feedback via the Contact Us link.

Before we bought the land in 2002 that would eventually become Shooting Star Farm, it had been vacant for many years. The picture at left shows an aerial view from this time period, probably circa 1994. The road shown at the top is Stone Hill, and the area visible is the non-wooded portion of the land on which we built the house, barn, and pastures.

This picture was taken some time around April 2002, when construction of the barn had just been completed and the foundation of the house was in its early stages. We had a very wet spring that year and that (among other things) delayed progress more than we wanted. We knew it would take a lot of time and effort to build our farm from the ground up, but it was an almost-indescribable feeling of accomplishment to watch as Shooting Star Farm became a reality.

This aerial shot taken in 2005 shows the farm after the majority of construction had been completed. The fenced outlines of the 6 pastures show faintly, and the tiny rectangles in each pasture are the run-in sheds. The round pen and outdoor arena are also visible, as is the hay barn which sits between the main barn and our house. That's our dog Jake's backyard to the left of the house and, if you squint hard, you can make out Dan's vegetable patch (even with the top-left corner of the house).

Peggy surprised Dan on his birthday by having a local outfit, Outside Shot, take some color aerial photos of our farm in October of 2006. The green pastures and autumn foliage really make for some gorgeous colors: