Sunny K Sootzz is a furry black beauty, the pride and joy of Sunny K Farm in Penn Township.

	Bill Wade, Post-Gazette Mary Beth Kuznik and her 86-year-old mother, Merle Smith, walk with stallion Sunny K Sootzz, one of the foundation breed quarter horses that are the farm's speciality. Click photo for larger image.

He's small for a quarter horse. His feet are round, his eyes bright and his pedigree is 100 percent "foundation-bred," with not a drop of outsider thoroughbred blood in his family tree. He's the only stallion of his kind in this part of the country, and horsemen send mares from all around to make his acquaintance.

His brother, sons, daughters and mates form a band around him. They stand in a muddy hillside pasture against the slate-gray sky, their coats thick for winter.

They're the hope of the Kuznik family, bright spots in three lives otherwise full of struggles and fights.

Their 35 acres of mostly hillside and bottom land lie off Pleasant Valley Road, along the border between Penn Township and Murrysville.

The first Kuzniks came from Slovenia in 1912 and settled here to raise beef cows, hay and chickens and work in a coal mine nearby. They did not sell their gas and mineral rights when "the big men" came by in their great black cars and long wool coats.

And the next generation didn't sell out either, says 86-year-old Merle Smith Kuznik, even when most of the neighbors sold their acreage in the 1980s to residential developers. She stayed on the farm while Chicken Street was renamed Valley Club Drive, and a poultry farm upstream became Cortina Marie Estates, a development of 397 tract houses.

Kuznik's husband died young. She raised her children, Mary Beth and Paul, on this farm. Mary Beth was a horse-crazy girl, and her parents bought her a quarter horse mare for Christmas when she was 11.

Now Mary Beth is 49 and still raising the horse family started with Tybee the Christmas horse. It turned out Tybee was a pure quarter mare, descended straight from original cow-pony stock.

"She was Sootzz's mother. She lived to be 26," Mary Beth said. "Sootzz's half-brother, Jazz, he's here, too. He was the first horse in Pennsylvania to get the American Quarter Horse Association All-Around and Palomino of the Year."

Mary Beth knows her horses' bloodlines back 11 generations. She knows their DNA -- which one has a "perlino" gene (producing a horse with a cream-colored coat, reddish mane, tail and lower legs, pink skin and blue eyes) and what horse has papers from which of the nation's four quarter horse associations.

Paul, 46, helps out around the farm where he can. Paul is autistic. He's bonded to Boo, another of Sootzz's family, and exhibits her in state-level horse shows.

Bill Wade, Post-Gazette Housing subdivisions overlook the valley where the Kuznik family's Sunny K Farm sits. The Kuzniks have lived on the Penn Township farm since 1912. Click photo for larger image.

The horses are beauties, stars of the farm. Their barn is run-down but safe. Their stalls are dusty, dimly lighted concrete block, but clean. The place echoes with old times and better days.

Trouble started 12 years ago. Cortina Marie engineers finished work on two storm-sewer runoff ponds on the edge of their property.

"The ponds didn't work. They never worked right," Merle Kuznik said. "And one day, after a big rain, water drained out and came down into our pasture. It was poison water, tainted with chemicals, probably from the mines. We had six beef cows pastured there. They died. It was like Gettysburg, a battlefield."

For 12 years the Kuzniks have filed suits and counter-suits in Westmoreland County Court. The family's fought off bankruptcy and foreclosure proceedings, while the engineering firm and developers maintain the ongoing pasture erosion and tainted water isn't caused by the water system upstream.

In 1993, Penn Township bought one of the ponds, and spent $1.3 million in PennVest funds shoring it up. The other continues to send water into what once was the Kuznik's pasture.

"The farm's cut in half by the creek. We can't pasture animals over on that side any more," Kuznik said. "We have to use our hay field now for pasture, so we can't grow our own hay any more. It's been a disaster."

"We're the poster child for land-use problems," said her daughter. "But we have lots of good neighbors. The kids come down from [the subdivisions] and spend time with the horses. This is the only chance they get to be around a farm."

Meantime, the Kuzniks have other battles to fight.

Mary Beth spent the past few weeks in eastern Ohio, helping to re-count presidential election votes in three counties. This week she's in Virginia and Washington, marking the anniversary of the civil rights march on Selma with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Then she's off to a board meeting of the Pennsylvania Palomino Exhibitors' Association.

Merle has horses to watch, barn cats to feed and Paul to keep up with. She's got to reschedule a surgery for herself, get a blacksmith in here for Smarty, the little foal born on Preakness day.

And up there, see Duz, the pretty gold Palomino? She's pregnant with Sootzz's first grand-baby.

"We got so much to look forward to," Merle Kuznik said. "There's no standing still around here."

From up in the pasture, the mare whinnies out an equine "Amen."