Photo by Renee Joseph.
Kelly Bensabat feeding the animals in her petting zoo.
Splendor Farms is different things to different people. It might be the place you learn the nuances of horseback riding. Or first stroke the neck of an alpaca. Or fall in love with a long-haired, miniature dachshund. Or watch your daughter gain new confidence at a different kind of summer camp.
Or, maybe, it’s where you spend the night.
Located on a large, pastoral spread in a rural part of St. Tammany Parish, about fifteen minutes from downtown Covington, Splendor Farms is known to many as a bed and breakfast, but really it’s a living, pulsing incarnation of one woman’s imagination and energy.
Meet Kelly Bensabat, owner, cowgirl, real good cook. Take your vitamins if you plan to keep up with Kelly, a no-nonsense, can-do West Texas woman transplanted to south Louisiana. From the minute she pulls on her jeans and boots, she’s on the move. There are tomatoes to be picked, horses to be brushed, and sheep, dogs and paying guests to feed, too.
There’s a lot to juggle at Splendor Farms, co-owned with lawyer husband Albert Bensabat, and Kelly has several balls in the air at all times. There she goes, riding in her golf cart with Chihuahua Chloe on the seat beside her, off to check progress on the new fishing pond. She pops in on the stable. She chats with a staffer about one of her show dogs. You might find her in the kitchen making preserves, or teaching a bunch of nine-year-old girls how to saddle a horse.
Funny thing is, with so much going on, you’d think Splendor Farms might be too frenetic for the kind of down time most people crave when they go to a B&B. And yet, there it is, the ‘R’ word, time and time again in the little notes guests leave behind for her. “It was so relaxing.” “What a relaxing getaway!” Kelly’s dervish devotion to her to-do list means guests can leave theirs behind.
The Beds and the Breakfast
For many, Splendor Farms is where city folks come to see the stars at night, catch their breath, slow their roll. It feels like another planet when you . . . just . . . let . . . go (and let Kelly do the work).
The bed and breakfast offers three rooms in the main house and a bunkhouse that sleeps 8-10 people. Though many guests come from the New Orleans, Northshore and Baton Rouge areas, says Kelly, she also gets visitors from Europe and Asia, travelers seeking an authentic farm and real Louisiana experience. They get it at Splendor Farms where the room rate gives guests access to fishing ponds stocked with bass, blue gills and catfish (bait and equipment provided), miles of riding trails, farm-grown produce and Kelly’s impressive breakfast.
Served on a dining room table that seats twenty-four—the table came from a Scottish castle—breakfast offerings include eggs Benedict, huevos rancheros, omelets, French toast and house-made granola (get the recipe on her website). Guests love the biscuits, served with home-made preserves and local butter, and rave about Kelly’s cooking in general.
She credits her grandmother, now 93 and still living in Odessa, Texas, with teaching her to love to cook, and she passed that passion for cooking on to her son, Travis Cabler, who’s now executive chef for the popular Friends Coastal Restaurant in Madisonville. “Travis did learn cooking from me,” she says, “but he’s long since passed me up. I call him all the time and say, Travis, I have this. What can I do with it? And he always says, ‘Sauté it off.’ That’s what chefs say. Sauté it off!” She smiles at her son, who’s visiting this day with his 2 ½-year-old daughter Riley and 5-month-old son, Austin.
Kelly, who looks younger than her age (mid 50s) is a doting grandmother. She loves kids and it shows when she talks about the herds of little girls that invade Splendor Farms each summer.
The Horse Camp
At the Splendor Farms summer camps, which begin in early June and continue into early August, Kelly’s girls will learn a little about gardening and art (the large dining room table is afloat in craft paper during sessions and they’ll even paint Buckshot, the snow white pony); they’ll take field trips to a dairy farm, pick blueberries in Waldheim, maybe visit the LSU Research Station. And they’ll learn everything they want to know about horses, including a little about how to compete, showing off new skills in Splendor Farms’ tiny rodeo arena, complete with risers.
Margie Barre, of Covington, has two daughters at camp this summer, their fourth at Splendor Farms. The girls knew little about farm life or horses when they first came to the camp. Now, Samantha, 13, is a senior counselor in training and her 11-year-old sister, Kelly, is a junior assistant in training.
“The girls love doing anything and everything with horses,” says their mother, “and when they go riding, they do it all. They saddle the horse, tack them up, unsaddle the horse, wash them and brush them down. They learn responsibility. They come home exhausted and smelling really bad,” she laughs. “And I like that. They’re not in front of the TV. They’re not in front of the computer. Kelly makes sure that they are safe but she lets them spread their wings. The camp is a big confidence builder.”
The Splendor Farms Story
The Bensabats started with five and a half acres in 1988.
“I dug a pond. I laid the patio. I put a barn in. I told my husband, if we can board horses, that’ll pay our ‘land rent.’ Now I have this business and there are twelve people working here.”
Splendor Farms today encompasses about seventy acres, with miles of horse trails that run through creeks and wooded areas, down to the Bogue Chitto River. Riders see wildlife, including deer and hawks, along the way. (You don’t have to be a B&B guest to ride the trails. Splendor Farms offers guided trail rides for different experience levels. Riders are matched with one of the farm’s forty-plus horses, depending on size and experience.)
Kelly says the farm took on a life of its own. Boarding horses turned into riding lessons, which turned into trail rides which turned into summer camps. Horseback riding inspired the bed and breakfast. The bed and breakfast led to the petting zoo.
“There are B&Bs throughout the state,” Kelly says, “but how many offer fishing and horseback riding and are kid-friendly and pet-friendly?”
Kelly’s not done; there’s more to come. She’d like to put in loft-style cabins and maybe start a pick-your-own garden and maybe a co-op, too. She can’t stop thinking of new projects.
“It’s fun. I love it. I love making people happy when they come to the farm. Not everyone understands farm life and what you have to put into it to make everything work but you have to enjoy hard work, you’ve got to love animals and people to be in this business. And you have to be very lucky. I have been lucky and blessed.”
And busy. Details. Details. Details. Splendor Farms 27329 Mill Creek Road Bush, La. (985) 886-3747 splendorfarms.com
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