Arena Maintenance Problems: What would you do?

[mvspencer]

So my boyfriend and I have been boarding our horses at our current farm for a year. The farm we are at has been rented for just over a year by a very nice, horse savvy person, and for the sake of this story, I am going to call her Kate. The farm itself has had some bad luck with people. Previous trainers who have rented it out usually leave the place after a few years with a massive drinking problem and a ruined reputation. The farm has a smaller indoor and a lighted outdoor, but from day one, the lights outside never worked. That’s the farm owner’s responsibility to fix, but he claims it will cost $14,000 so he won’t do it. (Now I don’t know much about lights, but I highly doubt it will cost that much. Perhaps the drinking problems developed by the aforementioned trainers were brought on by this guy’s constant nonsense.) The footing in the outdoor is sand, and its fine. Over the summer it was unusable because it got overgrown with weeds which was a bummer, but fall rolled around and the weeds died and we rode in it for a little while. The footing in the indoor is largely dirt I think. 20-ish years ago, someone thought that they would try out wood chips to see if that made okay footing. It didn’t, and every once in a while wood chips get churned up but they haven’t caused an issues. It’s just weird. And then Kate has been telling us since before we moved in that she is going to get a tractor so that she can drag the arenas. But a year later, there is neither a tractor not a gator, just two arenas that are a year overdue to be dragged. And its dangerous. The footing in the indoor is especially uneven.

And to make it worse, the half of the barn that the owner of the farm uses to store tractors (go figure!) for whatever he does for a living flooded several days ago, and it overflowed into the indoor, and now almost an entire longside is soaking wet. And it’s not draining, its making puddles everywhere and those puddles are sticking around. And then he drove a golf cart through it, and made terrible tire ruts that we suspect will never go away.

We like Kate. She is good with the horses, and we want her business to do well. We have found that most boarding situations are a compromise. If the care is good, you pay an arm and a leg. If the price is good, someone that you are dealing with is crazy, or lazy, or dumb. If the care is good and the price is reasonable, there is a wait list for eons. We get it. What we are dealing with in Kate is someone who is undermotivated. And really, that’s not so bad. Kate also allows me to work off part of my board every month, so I have a good thing going for me. But at this point, we have no place to ride. If I wanted to put in 30-40 hours of farm work in every month and have no place to ride, I could keep my horse in a field for $100 a month. But I want to ride, and this is getting old.

So this leads me to my questions. If Kate could drag the arena, would the flooding be such a big deal? Should I be angry with her? Or should I be angry with the farm owner for not fixing his leaky barn, or fixing the outdoor lights, which are his responsibilities? Do we keep trying to wait this out? Or do we leave?

[Calvincrowe]

This is a no win situation–it will not get better. The arenas will not be markedly better with dragging, the footing is worn out/gone and with no maintenance of barns and arenas, there’s no amount of good will that make it okay to keep a horse there. Move. Unless you like crappy conditions and no place to ride in exchange for cheap board.

[Equestrian2]

I would leave. The footing won’t get better now if it was dragged everyday. Most places in my experiance allow you to work off some of the board.

[st_francis]

Lol, move and take Kate with you, poor thing

[S1969]

I agree that this is not going to get better. Anyone that leases a boarding farm but doesn’t have a tractor/gator or arena drag is someone who can’t afford to be in this business. Like many other industries, this one requires some money/capital to be able to make money. It doesn’t sound like Kate has that part of the equation, which is too bad.

Finding the right boarding situation is hard - it seems there is frequently something missing from the list of essential needs for good care.

[js]

Is boarding there cheap, if yes, can you afford to move to a barn that will have the amenities you want and kept the way you want?

I’m going to guess that this farm probably doesn’t make a lot of money, probably could in the right hands but doesn’t for lack of owner’s wanting to run it properly. Kate probably doesn’t make enough to buy a tractor or even a gator; both are expensive and it may not be in her budget as much as she wants/needs one. And yes, it may well cost $14,000 for new lights, depending on what is needed. If new wiring, poles and lights and labor for it all it might cost a lot.

It comes down to what you are willing to put up with and how much you can afford to pay to get what you want. If you are a casual rider and not trying to achieve some high level of showing, then maybe you can manage with the footing. I say this as a farm owner because you might be surprised what you will settle for when you are having to maintain and pay the bills.

Sometimes it’s about compromise, what are you willing or to do? It’s either help out as you can and accept what you get where you board or move.

[msj]

Your situation probably won’t ever get any better. I agree with the others about moving on if you can find a spot.

Now, as for the the wet arena, dragging won’t help that issue BUT one barn where I boarded everyone, and I mean everyone, used a hand rake to drag the sand on the track after they rode to keep it in good shape for riding. It worked well but if everyone doesn’t do it, it gets bad in no time whatsoever.

[fordtraktor]

Sure, it can be fixed. For a few thousand dollars, probably. Consider how likely it is they are going to invest a few thousand in the arena (each) if they haven’t drug it in years.

And no, you shouldn’t get mad. You should just decide if the amenities provided work for you, and decide to stay or go. Not worth getting mad about. IME, the facilities are what they are. Kate isn’t going to start hand raking her arena daily because you think it would be a good idea, when she hasn’t bothered to find a way to drag it, ever. Obviously footing is not a thing for her. I would find a place with the footing I want, and leave on as good terms as possible.

[mvspencer]

We aspire to be competitive with our horses. We have been riding every day up until the last week or so when the footing really took a turn for the worse. And at this point, we are the only people who ride regularly. There was a lady who rode as much as we did but she moved to a big competition barn and pays an outrageous amount for training and board now. Almost everyone else is a “weekend warrior.” And Kate hasn’t been riding lately.

We’re in kind of a bad area for keeping horses. There are lots of “horsey people” in the area, and if you’re competitive as a hunter/jumper it’s great. But we are also wedged between a few major metropolitan areas, and open space is hard to come by. So we don’t have a lot of options. There are farms in the area, but they are all full. And as I’m sure you have guessed by now, board in this area ain’t cheap. The only reason that this wretched farm keeps getting rented out is because there are so few barns in the area.

I think if we moved them, we would have to move them very far away, and move ourselves to stay near them which is a stressful proposition. I guess I know what I have to do, I just don’t really want to do it.

[mvspencer]

Thanks all, for the validation.

[Wonders12]

It’s not going to get better. But if the care is otherwise acceptable, I would get on as many wait lists as you can for those full barns and wait it out if possible.

Ideally, you would move. But it sounds like that’s not an option for you today. If you both decide you want to move out of the area a bit with access to more barns, then take the time to do that right.

The answer is the same though. The riding arenas will not change, so you need to make other arrangements for your horses.

[CHT]

Have you considered pricing out the repair options (lights/footing) yourself? Maybe you can find a more affordable option for the lights that Kate can finance. Maybe you can find an easy way to deal with the flooding (such as digging a drainage trench?).

Although not ideal, what about using a truck to harrow the arena? or get the property owner to do it using one of his tractors?

[mvspencer]

The property owner is a problem. Even if she had all the money in the world, it would not be smart to replace the footing because the farm owner has thrown people out with no warning in the past. And he has done it more than once. I guess my original question was more related to guestimating how much life can be breathed back into an old arena. What I gather is: not much.

Kate can absolutely use her truck or lawn mower to drag the arena, and we can’t figure out why she hasn’t gotten a cheapo chain harrow to hold us over until she gets something better.

So to spin off of what Wonders12 said, where is the best value for boarding in the whole United States/southern Canada? Does anyone know of an area with access to good trainers (preferably dressage) that isn’t terribly expensive?

[ElementFarm]

After living and boarding in multiple states (and countries) I fell in love with North Carolina. Cost of living isn’t ridiculous, there are a lot of horses, barns, trainers, vets, farriers, shows, etc.
I’ve had some pretty awesome boarding experiences, and some horrendous ones that make your current place sound perfect in comparison. But we recently bought a small farm and brought our horses home. The facility is a work in progress, but the freedom to keep the horses, maintain the facility, and handle issues the way I want is priceless. If you live in an area with a mild enough climate that you don’t have to have an indoor, or can find a nearby place that will let you haul in, buying your own place might be the best option in an area that has a paucity of good and affordable boarding options.

Otherwise, I send you sympathies I’ve been in that situation where you feel trapped in a place that is just a disaster, and it’s so frustrating trying to figure out the best of imperfect options. Good luck!

[Gloria]

It’s probably easier if you move, but assuming that you HAVE TO stay, you can try this. Note, you will need to take up more work than just a plain boarder would. But it’s either that, or paying higher board to get to what you want.

If you can ride in the arena until just now, my guess is the foundation of the arena is sound, and the only issue is with the flooding on one side. In this case, what you need is to redo the drainage around the flood zone. See whether you can find a dozer guy and see whether you can swing the cost. You will have to pay for it.

As to dragging the arena. If you are the only one riding in it, maybe you can try to borrow or lease or buy a used tractor with drag and drag it once a week.

Your board should have included the cost associated with this kind of maintenance, but obviously it does not, so you will have to do the work yourself.

To be honest, it is probably cheaper, and less headache, to move to a barn with much higher boarding cost and better maintenance. You will come up ahead financially.

[mvspencer]

This afternoon we took a muck shovel and a razorback rake, which was utterly useless by the way, and spent hours removing the top layers of mud where there was standing water. And then we took excess footing from the deeper spots and put it on top. The area where the old flood happened and then started to dry has hardened like concrete in places, and we didn’t want that to happen in two places. The teeth from the rake actually bent. If we do it right, we should tear up the whole thing and level it. As it is now, we could set up a nice mini golf course in there. Hey, maybe we could do that and raise funds to redo the indoor with said mini golf course!?

The cost of boarding here is on par for any barn in the north east with an indoor. We could move to a nicer place, and pay exactly what we are paying now. We have 300 other reasons to leave that I won’t get into here. But like I said, there are waitlists everywhere. We have to uproot our whole life to move our horses, and we want to take our time with that. We also have a couple of very compelling reasons to stay.

If we could afford to move somewhere and keep our horses home with us, we would do so in a heartbeat. But we are young and our student loans will prevent that from being an option any time soon unfortunately.

[DressageLin]

I’ve been in a similar situation with a boarding barn with lots of footing, flooding, and lack of dragging issues. It can only get better, if you are willing to put time and money into it. For the flooding, we helped dig a ditch to divert the water pouring into one half of the indoor arena. It didn’t completely solve the issue, but it only floods with a very large rain. As for footing, if you have enough other boarders who are interested, it may be worth trying to get everyone to chip in a couple hundred dollars and buy a couple truck loads of sand. It is amazing what that can do. I’m not sure of an easy solution for dragging. Teach a horse to pull a drag? After resolving issues with the indoor where I ride, I am still trying to decide whether to put money into paying someone to come work on the outdoor. For me, there are no other barns with indoor arenas within a reasonable driving distance. I’m stuck and have to make it work. If you have options, get on a wait list and get out.

[ToN_Farm]

If there is enough of a puddle, you can use a small portable sump pump to get rid of the water.

[beau159]

[QUOTE=mvspencer;8456437]
The farm has a smaller indoor and a lighted outdoor, but from day one, the lights outside never worked. That’s the farm owner’s responsibility to fix, but he claims it will cost $14,000 so he won’t do it. (Now I don’t know much about lights, but I highly doubt it will cost that much. Perhaps the drinking problems developed by the aforementioned trainers were brought on by this guy’s constant nonsense.) [/QUOTE]

Depending on what needs to be done, it very well may cost that much.

I am on the board for a local saddle club and we just added lights to the club’s arena this year. Since we are non-profit, even got the labor donated by the local electric company. But to dig the electrical in, put in the posts, and put on the lights, etc; even with the labor donation it was still about $17,000.

Granted, that it sounds like this place has existing structure but you don’t know what needs to be fixed.

Also, there are certain lights that need certain posts to hold them. Sounds silly, but it’s true. It could be that the current posts are not up to standards to put comparable lights on them, and would need to be replaced. Or maybe the electrical would need to be retrenched. Or who knows what.

But I just wanted to point out that it might be very possible that for labor and materials, that the price tag could be at $14,000. Not far-fetched at all.

[QUOTE=mvspencer;8456437]
And then Kate has been telling us since before we moved in that she is going to get a tractor so that she can drag the arenas. But a year later, there is neither a tractor not a gator, just two arenas that are a year overdue to be dragged. And its dangerous. The footing in the indoor is especially uneven. [/QUOTE]

If she hasn’t done so in over a year, I wouldn’t expect it to ever get done.

I don’t see anything changing.
If you are not happy, I would leave.

[Prime_Time_Rider]

You are paying board for use of facilities that you can’t use. While you like “Kate”, she should be more proactive in asking/demanding that the owner of the facility do something about the footing in the arena. If the owner has several tractors sitting there, an easy solution would be for Kate to ask the owner if she could use one of his tractors to drag the arena.

You didn’t mention if there is a drag available, but you can buy an inexpensive tow behind drag for about $250 from Tractor Supply.