GOLDENDALE -- White Horse Vale seems like a modest horse farm.

It has stables, a hay barn under construction and a farm house centered around a riding arena. A staff of five polishes boots, organizes tack and trains 70 or so horses.

But it's enough that this ranch calls itself the largest breeder of Lipizzans in the United States. Worldwide, there only about 3,000 to 5,000 purebred Lipizzans, one of the oldest and most storied breeds prized for their agility, strength and propensity for ballet-like movements.

"Raising Lipizzans is like maintaining a national treasure in a way," says June Boardman, the Goldendale school teacher who owns the farm.

Foals are due any day at the ranch. While they wait anxiously, Boardman and her staff spend their days and evenings training the rest of the herd to perform the levades, piaffes (when a horse trots in place) and other dance steps that make Lipizzans famous.

Head trainer Thomas Ritter leads the white stallion Maestoso II Catrina -- Toni for short -- from the stables to a raked outdoor arena surrounded by oak-covered hills. He and his wife, Shana, tie the horse between two log pillars about nine feet tall and coax him into a variety of trots and prances.

As Toni warms up, he pulls off a levade -- standing momentarily on his hind legs.

The pillars give the Ritters control over the horse's movements, many of which are performed standing in place.

White Horse Vale is one of the few places in the world where trainers still use pillars.

"A lot of these techniques are about forgotten nowadays," Thomas Ritter says.

White Horse Vale is run by committee.

Boardman owns the property, the Ritters run the training business. Staying with them are three apprentices, young women from across the globe. Lisa Hettman, who lives across town, owns a harness shop and takes care of most of the equipment while her husband, Arne, a contractor, handles the maintenance and construction.

The horses sell for between $7,000 and $30,000 to show groups, carriage owners or competitors of dressage, a sport that involves judged horse and rider agility performances.

The farm also makes income from Thomas Ritter's clinics, which he stages across the United States and sometimes in Europe. They also host a dozen or so visitors for dressage vacations, and the Ritters are considering charging a small admission fee to the two performances they hold every summer.

That doesn't mean the horses pays for themselves, says Boardman, 60.

Boardman, who grew up in Longview, Wash., as a "horse-crazy girl," and her late husband, Leonard, bought their first Lipizzans in 1985 at a Hermiston, Ore., auction. Some nearby friends got involved for a while but the Boardmans ended up buying those horses and more.

In the late 1990s, they became friends with the Ritters, who owned a training business in Oregon. Thomas Ritter, 44, is a retired, German-born UCLA Egyptology professor, while Shana Ritter, 36, has worked on ranches in California, Texas and Oregon.

When Leonard Boardman died in 2006, June needed help while the Ritters needed a bigger place to train. They moved into a house right across Columbus Avenue from White Horse Vale, about a mile or so northwest of town.

Lipizzans trace their roots to the 1500s when Austrian emperors trained them in battlefield maneuvers. Throughout Europe's history of war, Austria remained the cradle of Lipizzan breeding and instruction. After World War II, the breed nearly died out when the stallions were separated between the Soviet East and the American-backed West.

However, Gen. George S. Patton intervened to reunite them in a story told in the 1963 Walt Disney film "Miracle of the White Stallions."

Austria is still the training center of the world, but the United States has the most Lipizzans, according to the United States Lipizzan Registry. Other farms have more horses, but White Horse Vale has 13 current broodmares, making it likely the largest breeder in the country. It's hard to count for sure, says Lee Ann Reed, the registry's administrator. Many Lipizzan owners use their horses for trail riding and ranch work and see no need to register them.

"They (White Horse Vale) are big and very respected," Reed says.

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.