Saying Farewell
EBRA Founding Member and Director, Dr. Hernando Plata-Madrid, passed away at the age of 63 on August 18th. He's survived by his wife, Lisa; son, Griffin; and daughters, Gabrielle and Mackenzie. In honor of his dedicated service to the registry and his devotion to the European Brabant breed, we're committing the 4th Quarter publication to his memory.
A Love Story
We previously wrote this story about Dr. Plata and his wife, Lisa Martin, late last year and thought it was worth resharing.
Vibrant colors of yellow, orange, and red stretch across the sky signifying the dawn of a new day while fog gently rolls across deep green, dew-drenched hills. A winding driveway between two lush pastures terminates at a Dutch-style barn, where the clanking of buckets and a woman’s voice can be heard emanating from its vertically hung planks. A sign on the drive out front reads, “Silver Meadows Farm.”
It’s just past 6 a.m. Kentucky-time and a dark-haired woman is toiling away, feeding six hungry gentle giants – all the while, talking to them like old friends. Given her short stature, the draft horses who tower over her seem to consciously avoid crowding her. They quietly follow alongside as she turns them out to the fields after breakfast. When the last horse is released, she pulls a cell from her pocket, making a call as she hikes back up the drive to the two-story blue house on the hill.
“Just checking in,” she says slightly winding with a hint of fatigue in her voice. For most married couples, a 6:30 a.m. call would be odd, however for Dr. Hernando Plata-Madrid and Lisa Martin, it’s everyday life. Together, they operate their own equine veterinary practice, Plata, LLC, where they service hundreds of horses across the greater Versailles, KY, area. By 6:30 a.m., Dr. Plata is on his third farm visit of the day and Lisa’s own busy schedule is well underway too.
“I really like it when she calls me,” Dr. Plata says, smiling. “She’ll call me three or four times a day just to say hi. She seems to know when I’m stressed and tired – especially during peak breeding season when I’m treating 75 to 100 mares a day. It’s hard, but hearing her voice… I love that.”
With a final, “Love ya,” Lisa ends the call and stuffs the phone in her pocket as she walks into the house. Their youngest child of three, Griffin, who is 21, sits waiting for breakfast. It’s treatment day for him, and he knows the routine – breakfast, shower, occupational therapy. The horses, the clients, the kids, they all rely on Lisa. Perhaps no one more than Griffin, who has autism spectrum disorder, is non-verbal, and requires home care 24/7. Griffin’s therapy sessions aren’t just beneficial for him, they provide Lisa a window of opportunity to step away from caregiving, so she can manage the business, generate invoices, and return clients’ calls.
If she’s lucky, Lisa might have time to call and catch up with her eldest daughter, Gabrielle, 24, who just completed her masters in clinic mental health counseling at Ohio State, or her middle child, Mackenzie, 23, who is working toward her master’s degree in secondary education at the University of Kentucky. Like Hernando and Lisa, their girls stay busy, but staying in touch is priority-one. Also like their parents, both young women are smart, educated, and driven.
When Lisa was their age back in Norfolk, VA, she was pursuing a dual bachelors in criminal justice and psychology from Old Dominion University, while also managing a barn of hunter-jumpers and dressage horses. She never formally put her degrees to use after graduation, but it turns out her psychology studies proved useful when it came to managing foals and later, raising children. It was at the barn she managed, where she and Hernando first clapped his eyes on each other.
“I could see she was a party animal,” Hernando recalls, laughing a bit. “I had just finished my Masters in Reproduction and Internship at the University of Missouri and took a position at my friend’s practice in Virginia. Our clinic was contracted to service her barn, so that’s where we met. She was always nice to me though, despite my English language deficiency.”
Dr. Hernando Plata-Madrid grew up near Bogota, Colombia, and spent most of his time on his family’s cattle farm and assisting his father, Dr. Jaime Plata-Alvarez, as he treated his equine clients. When not working or attending classes at La Salle University, Hernando went on week-long riding treks, traversing the Colombian countryside on the backs of his maternal grandfather’s Colombian Criollo horses, stopping at night to sleep under the stars from tree-hung hammocks, and eat hearty meals provided by the farmers and landowners.
“I didn’t do any showing when I was young like Lisa,” explains Hernando. “In Colombia, you must be part of ‘a club’ and those were for the more affluent types. I learned horsemanship from the llaneros [Colombian Cowboys] on the farm.”
Before completing his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree, Hernando made a trip the USA in search of draft horses to bring back to Colombia to improve their family farm’s heavy horse stock. At the time, they had a smattering of drafty-type horses, whose lineage was likely a mix of Percheron, Clydesdale, American Belgian, and indigenous breeds.
“In 1980, I visited Anne Harper’s Milkwood Farm to see some Brabants,” remembers Hernando. “Her stallion Babar [Babar de Wolvertem] was unlike any other draft horse I’d seen before. His size and movement was impressive. We purchased one of his grandsons from Pennsylvania and brought him back to Colombia to be our herd sire. He covered our mares and was leased to other farms from time-to-time. He was a nice horse.”
By the time Hernando met Lisa in 1997, his passion for draft horses, particularly Brabants, grew into an obsession. However, the demands of his burgeoning veterinary career meant he only had time to care for other people’s horses in those days. Like most horse-crazed people, that didn’t stop him from window shopping. He stayed in touch with Anne Harper over the years and built relationships with other Brabant breeders across North America.
“Brabants were always his thing,” remembers Lisa, smirking a bit. “I liked my warmbloods.”
Surprisingly, Hernando and Lisa’s preferences for horse breeds seem to mirror their personalities perfectly. Lisa being warmblood-like in her pursuits – outgoing and bold, tackling challenges head-on. There’s no obstacle too high. On the other hand, Hernando takes a more draft horse mentality approach to life. He’s always positive with a steady pace and nose-to-the-grind approach to work.
In the end, it was Lisa’s warmblood Hanoverian mare, Hannah, who brought the two together. Though Lisa initially found Hernando to be a stick in the mud and Hernando perceived Lisa to be a bit frivolous, these two opposites ultimately did attract.
“She wanted her mare bred,” proclaims Hernando in a mock-exasperated tone. “And she just had to micromanage everything!”
“We did get her bred,” interjects Lisa, smirking.
Hernando and Lisa were married January 28, 1998, and two days after saying, ‘I do’, they moved to Lexington, KY. Hernando became a resident veterinarian at a large breeding farm, practicing internal and reproductive medicine while Lisa managed the home front. In rapid succession, the newlyweds welcomed their three children, Gabrielle, Mackenzie, and Griffin. From then on, life went from busy, to hectic.
Once the two eldest children were grown and off to college, Hernando and Lisa realized they had time and opportunity to start their own practice, so in 2014 they founded Plata, LLC. Two years later, they purchased land and their first two grade Brabant mares, Salsa and Chipotle. Given their last name, Plata, means silver in Spanish, and the rolling quicksilver fog of the Kentucky countryside, they named their farm, Silver Meadows.
Hernando’s dream of owning and breeding Brabants was coming to fruition and his partner in life, Lisa, was right there making that dream a reality too.
In 2018, they bred and settled both their mares using imported frozen semen from Matteo van ’t Reitenhof resulting in two beautiful blue roan foals. Later that year, they imported three yearlings; two were fillies, Lidia van Hoeve Ruth (EB0013) and Nicole van de Vinkenbossen (EB0014) and the third a stud colt, Victor van de Fosse Eugenia (EB0015). Life on the farm has been a rollercoaster of peaks and valleys, joy and strife, life and death. Their oldest mare, Salsa, was laid to rest at the ripe age of 27. She left behind an incredible filly, Havanera (BS0007), who still resides at Silver Meadows today. Salsa’s passing also left an opening in the pasture for Hernando and Lisa to import from Europe once again. In 2021, they brought a mature mare, Laura van de Fossa Eugenia (EB0012) and quarantined her on-property.
Though Lisa had always been more of a sport horse gal, her heart was quickly won over by the loving, eager-to-please Brabant draft horses – a breed both she and Hernando now strive to preserve and share with others. Neither Hernando nor Lisa ride anymore, but they still gain fulfillment from their horses and derive satisfaction in knowing their contributions to the endangered breed by producing quality, healthy, purebred Brabants.
“It’s important to both of us that this breed survives,” says Hernando. “We want to ensure they’re here for our grandkids and their grandkids. Our priority is the Brabant’s preservation and health.”
In 2020, Hernando and Lisa, along with a few others, developed a horse registry whose sole purpose would be to preserve and promote the purebred Brabant and in October 2021, the European Brabant Registry of America was established.
“We wanted to a create a place where people could be proud of owning and breeding 100% Brabants,” explains Lisa. “A place where we wouldn’t be scrutinized for our preference for purebreds. Though we’re just a couple years into the program, the EBRA is a fledgling community where we can all celebrate our horses – no matter their percentage. We are happy and support each other.”
Lisa hits send on an email response to an Australian man who just purchased their 2022 colt, Silver Meadow Archibald Haven Nando (EB0036), and imported him halfway across the globe. Her smartphone alarm rings, reminding her that Griffin’s session is almost complete. She turns off her work computer and makes her way to the kitchen to prep lunch. As she lays out the spread, she gives Hernando another ring. He’s on the road again, this time diverted to an emergency call. For Hernando and his assistant, there are no lunch breaks. Each vet packs their own snacks and beverages which they hastily consume in the truck as they hurry from farm-to-farm.
For Hernando, the prime breeding and foaling season is winding down, which means Silver Meadows Farm breeding and foaling season is just ramping up. By design, he and Lisa prefer to breed their horses later in the season to better accommodate their hectic vet practice schedule in the Spring. While on the phone, Lisa and Hernando work out a time they will meet that evening to collect their stallion, Victor, to assess his semen for the start of their breeding season. Then they chat about an outside mare client’s request for shipped cooled semen later in the week and discuss the need to charge the cryogenic shipping container so they can ship imported frozen semen from Dorus van de Molenhoeve to a different mare owner. The call wraps abruptly with, “Love ya,” as Hernando arrives at the emergency call.
Lisa turns her attention back to lunch. She and Griffin eat and go through their afternoon routines until another smartphone alarm sounds from her pocket with a reminder on the screen that reads, “Evening Chores.” Together, she and Griffin make their way down to the barn as the mares gallop in from the pastures, eager to eat. Griffin climbs into his hammock that’s stretched across the main center isle of the barn as Lisa brings the horses in for feeding. Knowingly, each horse delicately passes Griffin – some stopping to sniff his hair and others nuzzling his lap, seeking scratches. His face lights up; a smile forms. Lisa pauses for a moment to watch the exchange. There’s a lesson here, she remarks internally. One doesn’t need words to express love – it’s demonstrated through acts of kindness and love just like the bond between our horses and Griffin. If we humans could be more like our horses, this world would be a better place.
Once again, the sky turns a vibrant gradient of yellow, orange and red, signifying the end of the day. Buckets clank as the contented sounds of horses chewing hay reverberates through the rafters. Lisa flips on the barn lights as the sun disappears completely and the headlights of Hernando’s truck come into view. While most couples are lounging their pajamas at home, Hernando and Lisa are just starting their work at Silver Meadows Farm. However, you won’t hear them complain. After all, they’re together doing what they love, for a breed they love, with who they love.
Dr. Plata enjoyed just a handful of years on the farm before he passed. And though we all wished and prayed for more time with him, it wasn't in the stars. Through his vet practice, the EBRA, his friendships, and his family, he's left behind a tremendous chasm in our hearts, but he's also left behind a legacy too. For which we are eternally grateful. We're blessed to have had him in our lives for the time we had.
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