Jeez I live in one of the wettest areas in the country, on clay land with springs, at the bottom of a hill in a valley bottom, river is one border and water on the other two sides.
I have horses out 24/7 and manage my turnout better than that place on the advert does.
I’m pretty appalled that anyone thinks that’s OK
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I guess I have a different definition of photoshop. Softening and increasing saturation do not equal photoshop to me. Every listing ever has that stupid “HDR” effect applied, which is just a manipulation of the curve. This one is no exception.
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Yes, you are spoiled. While I don’t think this should be listed as a “high end, upscale horse farm” (that was written by someone who has never seen one, in my opinion)…I am not put off by the mud. That’s just how it is in some areas. My 3 horses on 7 acres have created a lot of mud right now - not because of overcrowding, but because it’s clay. When it’s wet, it’s soup; when it’s dry it’s concrete.
Boarding farms in my area have very little turnout; some have almost none. Zoning allows it because there is simply no alternative in some places. I wouldn’t prefer to board in a place like that, but that doesn’t mean it’s unusual or horrible.
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Well, yeah. LOL. But you’re in Kansas, not 90 minutes from New York City.
You can get a lot more bang for your buck in central New York as well. If you don’t mind that you live in the middle of nowhere. And if you could find work, the salaries are comparatively lower as well. Although with the potential to telecommute, some people have gotten lucky to be able to have the best of both worlds.
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For the record, I don’t think those paddocks are “ok.”
But apples and oranges. There are so many factors that influence paddock management. Are you in that part of NJ? Are you running a boarding and training stable on 6 acres?
My immediate area has poor soil drainage. I live in an equestrian neighborhood with 25 farms in close proximity. After a heavy rain, we all have standing water… BUT some properties are far worse than others just because of the lay of the land. Like my property is a hair higher (we are talking 1-2 feet, it’s very flat here) than either of my neighbors and I fair much better. Ironically, the southern part of my county is touted and sought after for its great soil drainage, so these issues can be very localized.
I also want to say that I’m not sure when that farm was listed, but we (the Northeast) have had an exceptionally wet fall/winter so far. I have standing water in my pastures and just wishing it would freeze again. It’s been raining for weeks now😣
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I have no idea about the geography of that location, but not all mud is equal. Trained out of a literal swamp for several years. There were no grass fields, all were swamp muck.
Those “swamp creature” horses had the healthiest feet ever, didn’t lose/pull shoes.
That said, you would have had to go down through several feet of muck to get to the clay base, so the muck was always soft, never sucking. Except for loose wellies, it would occasionally suck a loose boot off if you weren’t careful lol.
It was a fact of life that the owners and I learnt to live with after a few $$ mistakes thinking we could manage it. Once saw a small gate area eat an entire dump truck load of pit run in less than a week. For those that don’t know, pit run, is made up of approximately softball sized rocks. We weren’t fooling around. That was supposed to be the base to hold the new gravel and stone dust on top. Ha. Ha. Ha. That never happened.
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The grass is not just a case of increased saturation… the edges of the path, for example, are super straight and have weird sharp angles wherever it bends. Look at aerials of the place on Google maps, which appear to be from a similar time of year… the grass cover is sparse at best even outside the paddocks. Even in the street view from this past June, the grass is patchy and not insanely bright green. Totally seems to be Photoshopped in from some other place.
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Whoever was doing the photoshop also didn’t remember where they were drawing the line with the neighboring property - two of the photos show the grass extending beyond the trunks under the screen of trees, while a third shows the trees growing from dirt/dead grass! It’s especially obvious comparing the single tree farther off the boundary in #s 8 & 30.
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You must be in Eastern Ontario. LOL
That sounds like the farm I used to manager. I mastered the toe-curl to keep boots on when turning horses out or in, didn’t always work though. 
We tried putting a lot of bricks in the area in front of a gate to see if that would help and maybe put some gravel on top, but they just disappeared. The odd bit of one would pop out in the spring, but they were gone otherwise. There was also the joy of pounding down fence posts every couple of years when the clay would just spit them out when saturated in water. A year like this one with a super wet fall would be a nightmare, I’d leave the big pasture open so the horses could find a dryish spot to go. Putting hay out was a cardio workout plus. 
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Southwestern, where all farm land is systematically drained. Hobby farms, on legit swamps, not so much.
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I’m east of Ottawa. There was a book written about the area I live in, referring to the area as a swamp. Flat land and clay, with the added bonus of leda clay in spots. If I bought a farm around here, it would have to be on higher ground than the farm I managed, just so you could have some feeble hope of keeping it manageable.
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Agree with this and with your statement that it has been a ridiculously wet winter in my area. My fields are the worst they have EVER been in the 12 years I have been here…despite the fact I bought and spread $2k worth of stone dust on high traffic areas in October. It’s just been a terrible winter – lots of those 35 degree pouring rain days. I’m so over it!
The paddocks in these photos look terrible, yes. Mine aren’t that bad, but they wouldn’t stand up to my own criticism if I didn’t know for sure all I did to try to prevent the current mud situation. I would much rather have frozen ground than mud.
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I feel sad, seeing the barn’s website and FB page and reading of their plans for 2023. I wonder what happened and I feel bad for the trainer/owner and the boarders both equine and human. The more so because of the OTTB program. And this, which is particularly poignant, from the FB page:
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Really unfortunate listing for the property. Not so much “high end” as a commercial business property (which seems to be how it was used) Much more realistic to be marketed as a boarding/training/lesson facility. Not doing that makes me wonder if it was grandfathered in and can not longer be used that way.
The mud situation is bad, especially since it seems to affect every single paddock. Not that unusual though in the NE in high density suburban situations unless carefully managed.
The copywriting is ridiculous. Is this an owner marketing website or is there an ostensible real estate professional involved? But the property is typical exurbs rundown farm, and would be quite workable with a big investment in drainage and footing.
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90 minutes from Times Square is more than just “on the east coast” though. It’s the densest population area in the country. The real estate prices are insane. Lots of other more affordable places near the coast than northern NJ.
And “the middle of nowhere” is Central NY. Lots of pretty farms; not a lot of much else. Perfect if you are retired or independently wealthy; not so much if you need to work. It would be hard to have a high end lesson barn because the average person wouldn’t be able to afford it, and it’s too far from more populated areas for people to commute.
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Nobody’s saying it’s OK. People are saying that, in the kinds of heavy rains we have recently had, mud happens.
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Key takeaway…get good photos of your farm in every season so you can post better ones than this ad. 
I’m not actually kidding. I am thinking of selling my farm in the next 3-5 years or so…will make an effort to get photos in nice weather rather than end up with photos like the mud I have now. LOL.
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There a concurrent thread on the Around the Farm subforum called “The Mud is So Defeating” where a new property owner is asking for tips to get through the winter/spring before they can excavate and renovate properly. Much commiseration. I live in a wet area where mud is variable because the terrain is diverse, but if you’re in good river bottom fertile farmland you will have mud in winter unless you spend a fortune on drainage or have only a couple of horses on ten acres of good pasture. Even there you can destroy a decent pasture between November and March
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