by Ellen Harvey, Harness Racing Communications

Freehold, NJ — It was just another day at Sam Beegle’s Ginger Tree Farm, outside New Holland, Pennsylvania, on Monday, August 9. All the racehorses were trained, jogged, bathed and resting in their stalls. Mares and foals were out in the fields and everyone else was getting ready for lunch. Just another day — right up to the time the plane landed on the track.

Photo courtesy of Sam Beegle

A pilot used the racetrack at Ginger Tree Farm for a runway on Monday.

“We saw the plane circling overhead a few times,” said Beegle. “I wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Then he got her landed. It was an older gentleman piloting by himself and we went out and brought him to the house. He had coke bottles for glasses, he seemed pretty shook up, but he handled it well. He was running out of fuel flying from Dillsburg to Morgantown, Pa., and he couldn’t find their grass landing strip.

“He was getting low on fuel when he saw my racetrack; we saw him swoop down low a time or two and he landed. He broke the propeller in the process and ran in the ditch around my track. A guy from the Dillsburg Airport came over with a new propeller and fuel. They put it on and got the wires locked in. They filled up with fuel and did all their checks. It was a 1946 biplane, not that heavy. A couple of us pushed him out of the ditch and he got it revved up in the infield. I told him to swing it around by the eighth pole (on a half-mile track) and build up speed. We thought it would take the whole stretch to get it up in the air. He picked it right up off the ground from the three-eighths pole or seven-eighths pole to the start/finish line and he had her off the track and was on his way.

“We had quite the crowd. All my neighbors are Amish and they walked over through the fields. It didn’t bother the horses, they were all put away. If you hadn’t seen him doing this, you wouldn’t have known it was happening. The plane didn’t make a lot of noise. They’re (his horses) pretty used to planes around here because Fort Indiantown Gap uses this as their training ground. They don’t land on my racetrack, though, most of them,“ he laughed.

“If I knew we’d get such a crowd, I’d have sold lemonade. The plane was here for about three hours and every time I’d look up, there was someone else, quite a group.”

The incident did prompt Beegle to consider a new name for his training center.

“I’m thinking about Ginger Tree Farm and International Airport.”