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SUGAR CREEK, Pa. -- Flavius and Denise Brinsfield live on 70 acres of fields and woods in Armstrong County, where it's possible to glide across the land in a sleigh drawn by two splendid horses as musical bells tinkle and echo across the white hills.
"We do not mind living 40 miles from the nearest Starbucks," said Mr. Brinsfield, the eighth generation of his family to ride and drive horses and the first member of it to shoe them.
A polite Southerner who grew up south of the Mason-Dixon Line in Maryland, he's especially gentle with Silk and Annie, a splendid team of black and white Shires who were bred by an Iowa breeder.
"Ladies, step now," he says in a buttery tone, and the duo trots down the winding driveway, under the snow-covered pine trees and out to Porterfield Hill Road.
A romantic, wintry activity kept alive in Currier and Ives images, sleigh rides are still available in the United States and Canada. There's even a Web site listing them: http://sledriding.com/horsedrawnsleighrides.html.
Here are some places that offer horse-drawn sleigh rides:
• Armstrong County: Dragon Run Forge & Livery, Cowansville; 724-543-3367; dragonrunforgeandlivery.com.
• Somerset County: Seven Springs Mountain Resort, Seven Springs; 1-800-452-2223, ext. 7629; www.7springs.com. Thirty-minute sleigh rides offered noon-5 p.m., Friday-Sunday, on the hour. Reservations required. Fees are $20 per adult; $10 per child ages 3-11; and children 2 and younger are free. Riders must arrive a half-hour before the sleigh ride.
• Butler County: Bonnie Scheerbaum, owner of Rockdale Farm in Butler, offers a horse-drawn bobsled drawn by Percheron horses for groups of up to 12 people. Call 724-352-0633 to arrange a ride. Mrs. Scheerbaum donates a portion of her fee to Thorn Creek United Methodist Church on Rockdale Road.
• Greene County: Jessica Kiger of Rocky Ridge Acres, a 151-acre farm in Waynesburg, can take up to eight people in a bobsled drawn by Belgian draft horses on a 30-minute ride. Fee is between $30 to $50 for a group. Call 724-627-3396.
Here at Dragon Run Forge & Livery, a half-hour ride for four people costs $100. The time together often allows families a chance to converse as they sit facing one another. A set of grandparents in their 70s rode recently with their teenage grandchildren, Mrs. Brinsfield said.
"Cell phones and GPS don't work here," Mr. Brinsfield said, without a trace of regret, warning that it's best to call and ask for directions.
Besides Silk and Annie, the Brinsfield stable houses six other horses, including four Morgans, a miniature Sicilian donkey, a red Jersey cow and three goats -- an Alpine named Tassie, a Boer named Angus and a Nubian called Nannie -- who serve as "self-propelled weed eaters."
This particular breed of Shire horses originated in England and come in black, bay and gray, Mrs. Brinsfield said. Originally, they were used to haul loads in cities. A woman who rode in the couple's sleigh recently said she remembers Shire horses delivering milk to her family's home in Scotland.
Mrs. Brinsfield grew up around "backyard horses" in Upper Burrell. Although the couple have offered sleigh rides since 2003, the activity is wholly dependent on weather. The right conditions are freshly packed snow, temperatures between 21 to 29 degrees and preferably no wind.
"Two years ago, we didn't even get out," Mrs. Brinsfield said.
A typical ride lasts no more than half an hour.
"We want them to enjoy it. We don't want them to come back frozen," she said.
Dragon Run Forge's sleigh, made of steel and fiberglass, features two red velvet seats, plenty of blankets and an antique brass lantern lit by lamp oil. In the future, the couple hope to clear and groom more trails on their property so they can offer nighttime sleigh rides lit by lanterns.
Besides their sleigh, the Brinsfields have a large touring surrey that accommodates six to nine people and a formal white carriage that seats four adults. They offer these services to bridal parties, students attending proms or couples celebrating anniversaries. The couple also attend community festivals.
The Brinsfields' snow-covered spread is dotted by an A-frame country cottage, a long stand of trees, a large barn and two copses of birches. When they aren't giving sleigh rides or tending animals, they are restoring a sleigh that was built in the late 1880s in Montreal.
"It's a restoration project. It's square and basic. It's not a Mercedes. It's a Chevrolet," Mr. Brinsfield said.
His daughter, Laura Schmidt, an equine nutritionist in Westminster, Md., tells him what to feed the horses. When Mr. Brinsfield bought a stallion named Ready to Run, she offered the unsolicited opinion: "You're too old to be riding such a young horse."
Mr. Brinsfield, 64, met his wife after her first husband was killed in an accident. One day, he offered her a ride home.
"I had a vision in my head of what the perfect place would be, the house and the lay of the land," he recalled.
As he crested the hill and saw her property, he experienced a strong sense of deja vu.
"This is the place that I saw in my head."
Locals know the land well and recall what it looked like when it was vacant, which was more than 15 years ago.
A neighbor, Chad Hill, who came to plow snow from the couple's road a few years ago, told them:
"I know this place. We used to hunt here. They call this place the promised land."
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