Depending on the layout this isn’t hard on 9 acres. We used to have a boarding barn with up to 22 horses, a big outdoor, small indoor, largeish lawn, paddock area and 5 small to medium sized pastures on 8 or 9 acres. There would have been plenty of room for a second house and the barn that was separate from the main barn/arena could easily have been a shop (actually future owners put a shop there) and there was plenty of room for parking cars and trailers.
A U-drive with parking at the bottom allows for a lot of flexibility with regard to building location.
I’m over the border from you in southern PA. If it’s all or mostly usable and you set it up right you’ll be happy on 7-9 acres. With our winters you will feed hay in the winter even with boundless grass so why more mowing/upkeep. I’d also love 100 acres and no neighbors but to keep 3 horses and doing most of the work myself my 10 is perfect (3 wooded with house so functional horse area more like 6).
We have three acres total, all flat, all grass, four horses at the moment. Horses are on about 2.25 acres with a dry lot included. We have a space about 160 by 80 that has the haystack, trailer parking, etc and there is room for a small shop there if we ever decide to do that. We don’t need a ring or arena since we can do that kind of work in the pasture if we want to, just not really our thing, but if we did I’d dip into that parking area. That area is all grass and our horses are steady so they can go graze in there occasionally; we need to keep that area “driveable” so there is room to deal with trailers and for the insurance to see that a fire truck could turn around here since we’re on a dead end. House is in one corner and has a small footprint about 1200 sq feet, a decent yard and a large garden, 3 stall carport, and small shed by the carport. Pasture has a 24 by 36 barn and a smaller “barn” with one run in shelter and a tack room size enclosure. In the winter the horses are loose on their whole pasture, right now they have a decent sized dry lot and a side pen, maybe a quarter acre total? with that small “barn” in the middle. In the summer we’ll turn them loose to stretch their legs and graze a bit for a few hours a day. We have round bales out year round. It’s about as tight as I’d want to do it and have all the things but it works for us. The whole place is flat and grassy and we’re able to make the most of that. Worst part of it is poo picking; it’s too small not to and it’s too large for it to be easy! All that to say, with the right set up just under 5 acres can be done and not feel like you’re pinching everyone TOO hard. Depends on the shop and second home probably.
We have a neighbor that has ONE acre total and three horses. They must be on maybe a half an acre with a shelter and an old fallen in shed; they are young, bouncy horses. They buck and run around in there and she’s out cleaning it up every few hours it seems like but man it seems tight to me. Definitely get more than one acre. ha ha
How much time are you going to dedicate for all things farm? Or will you be able to hire someone to do things like mow/fix fences/clean stalls or lots? The more property the longer and harder the up keep is. You should be more the able to keep 4 horses on ten acres if you set it up correctly. If you need a ring you could use it as additional turnout as well.
I’m down to 2 equines on 3 1/2 acres which includes home & barn. Both equines diets have to be managed because their bloodwork is trending towards metabolic issues. I have a large 150’ by 90’ full time dry lot right off the stalls and 2 grass paddocks (just a little larger) for controlled turnout.
I could own acres and not be able to turn these two out full time but I could grow my own hay.
I’ve kept 2 (now 3 - mini added 7yrs ago) exactly like that on my 5ac farmette for 19yrs.
36X36 pole barn w/attached 60X120 indoor is surrounded by drylot in front & pasture to each side.
Larger field is ~2ac, small is ~1/2ac.
House & lawns take up the rest.
An L-shaped grassy field surrounding the buildings is cut & baled by neighbors.
In return, I get hay + a place that looks civilized.
If I could do over, I’d perimeter-fence all but 1/4ac for the house & garden.
Horses have free access to stalls from pasture 24/7/365.
I stall them for vet or farrier visits.
I feed hay year-round, but intake decreases sharply when grass comes in.
My herd vastly prefers Out over In.
Last night temps dipped near freezing & all 3 spent the night outside.
Evidenced by not 1 single pile of manure in any of the stalls. Or on the flat area just behind the stalls - also a hangout.
I’m in the Midwest, so we get 4 seasons, including some brutal Winters.
Even when this happens, stalls remain open at the back.
I can count on one hand the times I’ve kept horses in overnight for weather.
Bonus Points for even inexperienced or non-horse people to farmsit as they don’t have to turn out or in, can feed & water from the aisle.
Rotating becomes MORE important as you get smaller, not less. Cross fence with gates. Open them all when the field is in good shape, close off areas that need rest.
Agree with rotating, I didn’t mention that we will use temp interior fences (tape/step in) to cordon off the areas of our pasture that we’re rehabbing from the former owners and work we’ve had to do. We took out permanent interior fences b/c we wanted the horses to be able to stretch legs in the times of year they can be on it all.
You need to rotate to reduce worms and so you don’t turn your small acreage into a dry lot. It’s it’s muddy, super wet, you need to utilize a dry lot to save your fields. Horses are hard on grass.
An acre field is plenty big to run and cut the fool.
Yes even hay fields need management year over year.
In our climate with a big enough field and all the rain, if you keep the horses off the field October to April the summers worth of manure takes care of itself and melts away.
But you’d still want to rotate a bit even in summer. I don’t think there’s any farmette sized acreage where you could do zero maintenance or rotation and maintain good grass.
If you possibly can afford it, buy enough land to qualify as a farm for tax purposes. Here in SC to get the agricultural tax exemption it is 10 acres. Not having to pay state sales taxes on big ticket purchases like tractors, mowers, farm trailers, and many other things like pasture seed and fertilizer is a huge plus and will save you a fair amount of money.
Ugh, this is so dependent on location. In CT (or maybe it’s my town?) there’s no land size qualification for “farm” classification. You’ve got to be running a “farm” business. And then the city TAXES all of your “farm” equipment.
Yes, but you can’t just have a farm and be tax exempt. You actually have to report a farm income. It’s not a huge amount, like $10K, but you don’t just get to buy property and no longer pay taxes. I have 20 acres but no farm income - no deal for me.
To the OP - 5-9 acres is totally doable. My farmstead was originally 7 acres, and I’ve picked up an additional 13 but I don’t actually use any of it for the horses. I have an outdoor riding arena that is too small (80x100) but could have been larger and wish I had done it differently, but has been fine for me personally. My 3 horses have about 3 acres pasture, 1.5 acres of sacrifice pasture, another acre or so for the barn/drylot and arena, and the remainder is the house, backyard + a too large front yard that needs mowing and serves NO purpose. So could double as a turnout if fenced, or potentially another riding area in the right weather conditions.
With more than 7 you can make larger pastures, but again - grazing may or may not be good depending on climate, terrain, etc. But the 3 acre pasture is large enough for the horses to get good turnout exercise daily; even the smaller 1.5 acre + dry lot area is a pretty good size for turnout.
It does seem to vary widely. Here a 10.00001 acre property with one pasture horse will get you the agricultural tax exemption. On the on-line application for the SC agricultural tax exemption (SCATE) card you check the box for “other animal activity.” No further explanation or other documentation is required.
So I save $1,600 on my $20,000 tractor, $1,200 on my $15,000 Kawasaki Mule, and the 8 percent sales tax on sales tax on all horse feed, hay, fence boards, and can buy farm diesel fuel for my tractor.
I may be misunderstanding your definition of “minimally” but I’m in Maryland too and even with milder winters lately, I think you should expect to feed a lot of hay in the winter. I have 9 acres total but only 3 in pasture and my 3 horses are out 24/7 except mid-May to Sept when it’s too hot/buggy. In the spring I can feed little to no hay. Same in the fall if it rains enough, which lately it has not and the grass has barely grown between August and November. Over the winter their grazing is recreational only. I think you’d need a huge amount of land and some clever management for your horses to get real nutrition from grass over the winter here.
Potentially not out of the question if necessary, but trying to plan to need as little as possible. I am fortunate that the better half is willing to mow and provide backup emergency horse care where necessary. We will likely both work on property repairs and day-to-day horse care/weed eating/mucking/dragging will be mine. Standards-wise, I already know I’m going for “workmanlike” rather than “Better Farms and Gardens”–riding is my priority.
I’m pretty unwilling to pick paddocks and would like to clean as few stalls as possible, so that factors into my sizing decisions and desire for 24x7 turnout as well.
I’ve worked in a fair number of barns and know I can do daily chores for three or less, set up the way I’ve described, in less time than it currently takes me to commute to/fro. Obviously farm maintenance will add time, but we’re both onboard with Farm As Lifestyle.
In my case, I’d prefer not to do this because I’d be concerned about them digging down to the base and destroying it (I want a nice correctly-crowned all-weather surface that I can ride on in anything short of an active monsoon), but definitely worth considering!
In Maryland, it’s five actively in agricultural use (homesites generally considered to occupy ~1 acre, so six or over without going through additional hoops) and horses qualify, so shouldn’t have any problems here for any size I’d consider, but good point!
Fair enough! I had expected to occasionally have to do step-ins and tape when spots got really ugly, but I will reconsider my permanent fencing plans to accommodate rotation. This is why COTH is so great. Thanks, all.
Yeah, that was poorly phrased on my part. I meant “the minimal number of months I expect to have to feed hay to meet the bulk of the forage requirement” (leaving open the possibility of needing to supplement in additional months), not “I expect to have to feed a minimal amount of hay in these months”!
I was so hoping you’d post with the size of your property and how much you had in pasture–I think we’re very very close and I have drooled over some of your previous posts! Thank you–everyone has been super helpful, but the local expertise is invaluable.
If you want anything resembling pasture, be sure to create a situation where you can rotate the horses to let the land rest a bit. Rotate, rotate, rotate.
was going to mention this also as we are currently battling the property tax appraisal as we are way under the ten acre threshold needed. It is disheartening to see pastures valued by the square foot
Be sure to read and understand any deed restrictions on track of land
our saving grace is a little known deed restriction that was put into the one hundred lots of our survey back in 1948 whereas these lots can not be sub divided
No one really thought much about that until a developer bought three lots with the intent tu put 90 townhouses on the the those three lots, The city was all for it even was going to waive some costs and pitch in half a million of the development cost…until this deed restriction came to light…it would take 60% of the land owners in this survey to consent to the sub division which is not ever going to happen to allow such a compact development to be built.
