Back in the Saddle Again

Career change, like many other things, is something more people talk about than act on.

Marguerite Eliasson, however, didn’t just leave a career, she leaped from it. She went from a lifelong big-city environment of pollution and congestion to the pristine tranquility of the countryside.

And it wasn’t an easy job.

E. A. Ranches is a large but little-known thoroughbred farm near Ramona, and Eliasson runs the place, a million-dollar spread in the original sense of the term.

You could say she led the horse to water and made him not only drink, but enjoy it.

Eliasson, who was born in Queens, N.Y., and raised in Reseda in the San Fernando Valley, had always been around horses. Still, except for those moments in the saddle, her life was pretty much citified.

“I did solid secretarial work,” she said one recent winter morning while helping ranch owner Ernest Auerbach conduct a tour. “I was 16 years at an electronics company in Van Nuys, then went to San Diego as executive secretary to the vice president of corporate development for Oak Industries in 1979. I quit to come here.”

A friend in Ramona, where Eliasson had a saddle horse stabled, told her about the job. She was happily employed and had not been looking for other work, but such an adventure must have been in the recesses of her mind. “I never hesitated. And my boss said I was crazy.”

But Eliasson never looked back.

It was 1980. The job opening was for office work on this 1,000-acre farm that focuses on the training, boarding and breeding of racehorses.

Auerbach, 73, of Pacific Palisades, is a developer in real estate and construction. “When she came here to apply, I told her she was overqualified and would have to work for practically nothing,” he said. “Marguerite said, ‘Well, how much?’ I told her. It was about half what she was making.”

Smell that fresh air. Hear that silence.

She took the job. In June, 1985, the manager left. Auerbach named Eliasson to replace him.

“Now she makes more than I do,” Auerbach said.

Eliasson had management experience from her two principal jobs before moving to E. A. Ranches, and she had taken classes in animal husbandry in college, but her promotion still lifted eyebrows and evoked more than an occasional caustic comment within the fraternity that is the thoroughbred industry. Said Auerbach: “When I told some people in the business that I was hiring a woman for ranch manager, they said I was crazy.”

He didn’t flinch.

“Marguerite’s working out well. She is clear-thinking and conscientious. Women have a good feeling for horses. Marguerite can look across the pasture a quarter of a mile away and know if something’s wrong with a horse. If a person’s good, they’re good.”

He acknowledged, however, that women as managers of thoroughbred farms in the West “are absolutely in the minority.” The combination is anathema in the East.

“You read about women running a nice farm,” Auerbach said, “but usually they own the place.”

Eliasson knows all that. But she keeps a tight rein on her goals and gallops ahead grittily. Besides, she said, she has not encountered any face-to-face resentment, and “the possibility of it doesn’t bother me.”

If a male manager wanted to, however, he could be jealous of three of Eliasson’s innovations.

When she took over, yearlings were broken and sent elsewhere for the next step in their training.

“But they’d return with sore shins,” Eliasson said. “So Sherri (Songer, an exercise rider) and I would jog them on the trails every day for 30 to 40 days.”

The ranch has nearly three miles of trails, both level and hilly. This workout, Eliasson said, gives a young horse stamina and experience at being around new sights. It also develops bones and soft tissue. Now all yearlings get their trail rides with Songer, an Escondido native, and with trainer Dan Southworth, who was born in Chula Vista. Eliasson and Songer, whom Eliasson hired, help give the ranch a strong 1-2 female combination. Dan was hired away from the prestigious San Luis Rey Downs complex.

Another innovation was bringing in a nutritionist, something Eliasson did within weeks of becoming manager.

“I had liked the looks of the weanlings and yearlings at Anvil Ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley,” she said. “I found out about their nutritionist and brought him in.”

He was Gordon Wooden of Santa Ynez. He changed grain rations and added supplements, such as mineral blocks.

“I saw the improvement the very next year,” Eliasson said. “Each year the (weanlings and yearlings) look better.”

Next, with one dry winter following another and the water bill for the pastures spiraling ever upward, she contacted Walter Graves, a farm adviser with the UC San Diego Extension.

Eliasson wanted to know what to plant in the pasture that would require little water. Graves recommended a mix of annual rye and three types of clover.

“We got a conservation award as a result,” Eliasson said. “He’s great. This year has been a problem because of wind and lack of rain.”

Another big change was the installation of an oval training track--five-eighths of a mile of dark, rich running surface consisting of a mix of 6 inches of sand, 6 of topsoil and 3 of fine bark. Rick Fontana, who found out about the Auerbach spread when he installed the rails for the track, liked the ranch so much he has sent several of his thoroughbreds to board there.

“Some trainers call this ranch the best-kept secret around,” said Auerbach, who started slowly and has not done much trumpeting. He hopes to soon, however, in races at the Santa Anita race track and elsewhere.

Auerbach bought the ranch in 1977 and brought in four Kentucky-bred broodmares, his first venture into racing except as a longtime fan and spectator. He now owns several thoroughbreds in Kentucky, plus breeding shares in the stallions Greinton, holder of the third-fastest mile run in history, and Green Dancer.

He planted 1,000 trees at the Ramona spread--alders, cedars, peppers, redwoods, birch and camphor--on property already wealthy in live oaks and in one of the grandest stands of manzanita in San Diego County. He had it fenced, put in the pastures, expanded its lake and constructed several buildings, including a huge barn that houses his numerous antique cars and 100-year-old horse-drawn wagons and carriages, a collection for which he plans to build a museum so he can donate the entry fees to charity.

“This was like the Old West when I bought it,” Auerbach said. “The trees keep it rustic, as natural as possible. I love it. It’s my Utopia.”

He owns cattle ranches at nearby Santa Ysabel and Sutherland Dam, plus others in Hemet and New Mexico.

He and his wife, Lisa, live in the main house for two weeks each month. The view from the front porch is of sleek young thoroughbreds grazing and caracoling in well-kept, beautifully fenced pastures. The broodmare barn across the way resembles a Moorish mansion.

Counting weanlings, yearlings, runners and broodmares--some owned, some boarded--plus Stancharry, a home-owned stallion and multiple-graded stakes winner, the ranch is home to 175 thoroughbreds, and growing.

“I get a lot of personal satisfaction out of seeing the horses broken and trained,” not to mention living in the country, said Eliasson. The addition of the training track made the operation complete. Now she and the others can hope for some big winners, perhaps even realize every horseman’s dream: a runner in the Kentucky Derby.

“Yes,” Auerbach said. “That’s my big dream--everyone’s big dream--in this business.”

He knows, of course, how long the odds are. “Man makes plans and God laughs,” he will tell you. But he is having fun trying, and he is trying assiduously.

“Now we have everything going here,” he said, “and expect to have a very good year. I’m very happy with the way Marguerite and the staff are running the place.”