Barn with a view
Dec. 4—It was by word of mouth and a bit of fate that led photographer Helen Garber and her alternative medicine practitioner husband, Stuart, to find what became their Rancho de Sueños home. It's in the Arroyo Hondo area, off Old Las Vegas Highway.
The couple, who met in college and are now in their 60s, relocated from Santa Monica, California, to Santa Fe almost a decade ago. They rented another home in the vicinity for several years before purchasing the six-acre property, which is also now home to three English Spaniel and two Welsh Spaniel rescue dogs and three horses named Desi, Gunner and Ranger. "We're new to the whole horse thing," Helen says, adding that a lot of thought went into building the barn for their equine companions."
I knew the barn needed to be built on the highest point," she says, explaining that it would allow for proper drainage of rain to prevent a muddy mess and potentially soft hooves. "And I didn't want to block too much of the mountain views."
It was the mountain vista, after all, that sold the couple on the home in the first place. "I had to have that view," says Stuart, who earned a PhD in homeopathy and developed a line of natural remedies. In addition, he treats horses and dogs with chiropractic medicine.
Helen wanted her husband to be able to see their horses and the mountains from his office, a structure originally built as a guest casita by the previous owners. "I looked out the window by Stuart's desk towards where we would place the barn," she says. "Then I went outside, put my back to the window and with our foundation contractor ran a string to delineate the center of the aisle. When the aisle doors are open, it frames the view of the Cerrillos Hills, and the Ortiz and Sandia mountains behind it."
The Garbers can also see their horses move around and play from the wall of windows in their house's main room and kitchen. The area was just a big open space when the couple moved in, so they could design the acreage to suit them. "We really lucked out," says Stuart. "It's great to see the horses from the house."
Most of the construction for the barn and the enclosed three-acre paddock took place during the pandemic. Stuart told how they gathered all the materials in a rush — including 144 wood posts they angled and sealed at the top to use for the fence line — since they thought everything might shut down indefinitely. "With the help of a local high school student and that student's grandfather, they set up the fencing and hired an electrician to wire the barn, which includes lighting they can control from their smartphones.
Helen says that they looked at several manufacturers' designs before deciding on the wood-sided, pitched-roof barn made by Castlebrook Barns in Fontana, California. "I saw the fencing and the barn on the internet," she says. "They looked modern and cool."
When the Garbers visited the Castlebrook Barns factory, Stuart spotted black iron stall fronts, each with a Gothic-style look. It was a style they both liked. "It was a new design that wasn't available yet," he says. "They were just lying on the ground." The stall fronts appealed to Helen's artistic sense, an aesthetic that appears in her photography and which she describes as "urban noir." The manufacturer agreed to install the samples at no extra cost.
But the most fun was the tack room, says Helen. She'd found a wood carving of a mare and foal that had been handcrafted by an inmate at the state prison on Highway 14, and the tack-room door was the perfect place to showcase it. "Tack rooms always excite me," she says. "Laying out the room to hold the tack in the most efficient way was a fun design challenge."
Helen says that they never could have realized their vision in Malibu. "It took us years to manifest the dream of owning a beautiful ranch," she says, adding that they left a wonderful beach life to pursue it. "But the whole process was thrilling, the reason the name translates to 'Ranch of Dreams.' "
Barn with a view
