“ I had a lot of adventures, a lot of neat experiences growing up on the farm with my dad’ s draft horses. That’ s how I got started into horses.
I fell in love with horses, and it was my passion to have a riding horse someday and compete in rodeos.”
R esiding in the back woods of Hermosa,
Sharon Weaver is a self-taught allaround horsewoman with 81 years of experience, having pursued a passion for horses since she was 5-years-old.
“ I’ m just an old cowgirl that learned on her own experiences,” said Sharon.“ Some of my riding friends say,‘ You’ re my cowgirl idol and my inspiration.’ That’ s what they call me. They say,‘ I want to be like you when I grow up.’ I say,‘ Well, I don’ t know if you want to go through all I went through, but you’ re welcome to try.’”
Sharon grew up near Revillo, S. D., on a farm where her parents, Esther and Melvin Syrstad, raised eight girls and one boy. Sharon was the youngest.
“ I had a lot of adventures, a lot of neat experiences growing up on the farm with my dad’ s draft horses. That’ s how I got started into horses. I fell in love with horses, and it was my passion to have a riding horse someday and compete in rodeos,” said Sharon.
On the farm, they raised crops, dairy cows, pigs, chickens and other such things. They also raised their own hay and used draft horses to rake it. From the time Sharon and her sister, Shirley, were about 2-years-old, their dad would take them to the field and put them on the backs of the draft horses. There they would sit for most of the day while he raked the hay, planted corn or worked in the field.
“ Usually, two horses pull a little machine, but these dump rakes are so light that we just put one horse on one and one on the other, and they’ re pulled with shafts. So my sister drove one, and I drove one, and we raked hay all day long and loved it, because we wanted to be with the horses,” said Sharon.
Sharon learned how to drive the horses and rake hay herself when she was eight or ten.
After the work was done for the day, they would take the horses to the creek, where the horses would swim and pull the girls on their inner tubes.
“ We’ d hang on their tails as they swam in circle. They’ d love to swim and get cooled off. Then, they’ d go roll on the sand and go back in again,” said Sharon.“ We used to use them for diving boards.”
Sharon and Shirley also used to pretend they were circus performers, taking the horses out into the pasture where their parents couldn’ t see.
“ We put rubber inner tubes around the horse’ s belly, make it tight and then we’ d stand on there barefooted and gallop them around the pasture. But we never did tell our parents that till years later. That was fun,” said Sharon.“ We really just kind of lived with those horses. They were our friends, our pets and playmates, and they really took good care of us.”
When she was 12 or 13, Sharon raised a colt out of one of the draft horses. It was a white and sorrel paint. By the time it was two, Sharon had taught it to bow down, shake hands, count, stand on its hind legs and other such things.
Sharon and her husband, Dale, bought a place off Ghost Canyon Road in Hermosa in 2020 where they built a home and barn from scratch.
“ I had a lot of adventures, a lot of neat experiences growing up on the farm with my dad’ s draft horses. That’ s how I got started into horses.
I fell in love with horses, and it was my passion to have a riding horse someday and compete in rodeos.”
10 Down Country Roads June / July 2026