COLLEEN Horton is determined to keep her late husband's dreams alive through hard work and resilience.

Kevin Horton was a popular bus driver and much-loved local personality, who passed away suddenly three years ago.

However, Colleen has made it her priority to keep their thriving bus company going as well as expanding their rural enterprise at Clifton.

Kev and Colleen established Horton's Bus Service in Clifton when they moved to the small country town more than 40 years ago.

"We bought our house and one school bus run, and things just grew from there," Colleen said.

She now has four school bus runs, plus a busy charter business, as well as a 105 hectare property, "Iona", just a few kilometres south of the town.

"We've had the farm for about 10 years, and it was going to be our retirement dream when we sold the bus runs," Colleen said.

"It still is my dream to move out to the farm and build a new home."

But for the time being Colleen has her hands full, currently driving the Mt Molar School Bus run, as well as running 60 cows and calves at "Iona", and a small Black Suffolk sheep herd also.

"I have too many sheep," she laughed.

The farm is very much a family affair, according to Colleen, who gets help from her three children, Mark, Vanessa and Ben, with Vanessa doing most of the stockwork on horseback.

"I also get wonderful help and advice from my neighbours, including Rob Imhoff, who plants my oats and advises me on cropping matters," she said.

Colleen lives at the farm and after feeding animals and doing the morning jobs, she heads into town to the depot to start the school bus runs.

"It's just convenient with the stock to be out at the farm," she said.

"I have 30 ewes with lambs ready for market," she said.

"I've had to be out there due to the problems we have had with dogs and foxes."

Colleen said she has had major problems with wild dogs in the past, but foxes were causing the ewes and lambs grief at present, losing two lambs to the predators this year.

However, she put this low number of losses down to her two dogs, Blue and Bonnie, who are her guard dogs, and have endeavoured to keep the foxes at bay.

Colleen currently runs 60 droughtmaster/santa gertrudis cross cows, with 30 calves on the ground at present.

She said she had mainly run steers in the past, with this being her first foray into breeding.

In line with that, Colleen purchased a two-year-old bull from the recent very successful Ascot Angus and Charolais stud's annual sale at Warwick.

She paid $5000 for Ascot Net Income, a son of the United States sire, SAV Net Income, and plans to put him over her newly purchased females.

"It is the first time we have bought at the Ascot sale, and I had heard very good reports about the quality of their genetics," Colleen said.

"We pondered what to do next when we sold our latest lot of steers back in June, and a friend from Longreach got us onto these cows which were all PTIC (Preg Tested in Calf)."

Colleen said they purchased the breeders from John Atkinson of "Katandra", at Hughenden, who has a very good reputation for the quality of his stock.

"We had done really well out of our steer backgrounding operation, but I wanted to try something else," Colleen said.

The cows and calves are running on both natural and improved pastures, with Colleen planting oats and other pasture grasses on the property in recent years.

The Hortons came to Clifton in the early 1970s and bought their first school bus run.

Today Colleen operates the school bus runs to Leyburn, Nobby, Back Plains and Mt Molar.

She said the fate of the school bus run was always dependant on numbers.

"The numbers on school bus runs are down at present," Colleen said.

"It seems to go in cycles of about 25 years, where a family with young children moves out onto a property, and put their kids on the bus," she said.

"It is tremendous for the town also, as these families support local business as well as the schools."

However, she said as the children grew up and left school, the bus numbers dwindled and placed pressure on the future of both the school and the bus run.

Such is the case with the Ryeford State Primary School, west of Clifton, who has had no pupils enrolled since mid this year.

Colleen said she very much missed Kev, but she has made it her life's work to see both their plans to fruition.

"I'm lucky I had buses to operate and a farm to run, as it's kept me busy," she said.

"I'm also lucky that I've always had good health and have been very active.

"We had worked really hard for 40 years to put it together and I couldn't sit back and just let it crumble."

Colleen admitted it was a steep learning curve, but she is determined to carry on her late husband's legacy with the help of family and friends.