I work remote and still can’t make it work riding 5 days a week. I can do 4 days max due to kids activities.
I think I need a slower/easier job to make it work as I’m busy from 7:30 when I log on till 4 when I log off to run kids around till 6. I take a normal hour for lunch, but I actually eat.
I don’t have lights so unless it’s summer I’m not riding after work and riding in a 1 hour window rushes me. So before work is really it for me.
if it made tall enough that a future use could be RV/bus storage its value could easily be greater than as a riding arena
A Coverall (now called “Spanmaster”) can be sold and moved to another location for a new owner if you sell the property to someone who has no value or use for an arena. Metal framed building, tarp cover. More expensive now than when we got ours, but still far cheaper than building a stick frame. Light comes through the tarp, no need for lighting for daytime riding.
Does that make it count as a temporary building then? Does that have an impact on getting permits?
Are you horses out on pasture 24/7? That would be a huge time savings right there. I don’t have that. I have PPID, high insulin, PSSM2. All the fun diagnoses. So huge dry lot and muzzling out on grass. My last acquisition came in w FEC of 2100 so picked my fields since his arrival in early 2022. Never stopped doing it - my two are on 4 acres.
So I have to clean my dry lot - raking after wind and hay blowing etc. Hay clean up where they pull it and it lays. I also stuff hay nets and that takes time.
I soak beet pulp shred and feed wet and just feeding takes 5 minutes at least - each meal.
And you said less than $500/mo for two horses and that’s all in - all expenses. Just the other day - board certified dental practice - $735 - two floats and did have two molar extractions.
Ack no, sorry! I see how you read it that way but it’s only twice a week. Tues dressage lesson on one horse and Thur jump lesson on the other. Ride both Wed at home, so the middle of my week is busiest. Dressage is 15 min away and 45 min long, plus 10-15 min walk warm-up. Jumping is 20 min away and 30 min long with 15-20 min warm-up. Those days I try to work earlier so I can get to lessons at 4/4:30 if possible. It’s almost the shortest day of the year and this Tues it was only just getting dark when I got home, so driveway-to-driveway dressage lessons only take about 1.5 hours if I don’t hack out afterwards. I would hate to do it with longer drives though.
Also, I do suck it up and do flatwork in the dark. It’s rarely completely dark in the early evening, and I have good night vision. I’m just finishing a ride now and this is my view:
I put the wrong gloves on and can’t feel my fingers, but the arena isn’t frozen, so here we are. Today turned into a two-ride Friday because I only rode one yesterday (work plus quality time with hubby) and might only be able to ride one tomorrow (work again).
I don’t know about permits. I do not remember getting one for our arena. But we are kinda remote. We got a permit for building the house. You will have to look into it. Contact a company near you who deals with Spanmaster, and they will know these things.
It is not considered temporary for the purposes of permits anywhere around here.
I mean, technically a barn can be taken down and moved. It has to do with how it’s anchored to the ground, and those coverall structures most certainly have anchors. Big ones.
Several metal large agricultural barns here, one 150’ x 300’, have been unscrewed and frame unbolted and moved to another place.
It didn’t take them long to move them, but is not very common.
Decades ago when the original Coverall came out, they asked us to be representatives for our area.
They were practically the same costs as metal barns, when you figure all, site, footings, labor and materials and insurance was questionable.
They were considered portable, not permanent structures.
After talking to a civil engineer, we decided against it because of our high constant winds, that would wear the cover sooner than the 25 year guarantee.
The few that have been tried in our region are not up any more.
The footing anchors will make them permanent around here. To be temporary, it would have to be on skids.
I’m impressed! Especially at this time of year! I really think I will try someone closer to me because the hour each way shipping is a real killer.
My vet/dental for the year was just shy of $2000. Luckily no major issues/injuries this year.
$400 for spring vaccinations/coggins/fecals
$1000 for fall vaccinations/dental
$600 for dewormer/meds/misc.
Final approx. numbers this year (assuming no emergency in the next two days) are:
$2000 vet/dental
$2000 feed/shavings (this includes hay/fertilizer/farm sitting/sold hay/shavings/alf pellets)
$925 farrier
$0 supplements (I buy in bulk and happened to not have any hit this year. Unusual but next bucket is on its way in January)
$315 misc. equipment
$855 lessons/shows (old horse and baby horse = no showing currently)
Picking dry lot and pasture would add a tremendous amount of time. I just pick the run-in and the gravel part of my lot as needed.
Me too. If I can have a year without major dental problems my numbers are similar to yours. Except 2025 does have me starting a track system w a surfaced “track” and fencing that I’m budgeting so far at $25k. Beans and rice. Beans and rice. 
Oh I could travel the world if it weren’t for my horses but cannot imagine a day without them. 
This is a great thread- fun to revisit it after a year or two’s time.
Having experienced almost every combination of housekeeping there is, conversations like this are really important to help people get a better-than-ground-level view of what considerations made a difference in their planning for housekeeping.
My suggestion would be to really, really do your homework, and to set up a spreadsheet based on all the factors you can think of, and all the ones that come to light in threads like these. Divide the research into tangible (costs for everything including time value of commuting and/or cleaning stalls!) and intangible (your lifestyle, your SO, your health your proclivity to ride by yourself or your preference to ride with barn buddies, etc etc) factors and see where you come out.
I do want to make a comment about costs in California, since that’s where I live. Yes, it’s fairly high cost of living here but don’t forget to give value to generally great weather, and- significantly- quite low property taxes for the most part. These are examples of my ‘extending thinking’ that are great to at least try to capture on a spreadsheet, because you really can’t compare apples to apples when it comes to horses… you compare apples to kumquats and then do a lot of massaging the data after you get done with all the obvious fruit!
Another factor to consider is the peripherals- that is, what lifestyle changes you can foresee in the next year/five years/10 years/20 years depending on your current age. For example, if you’re working now but looking at retirement within, say, 5-10 years chances are quite good that your horselife is going to change a lot with your change in work commitments .For some that might mean wanting to be at your own place to raise a foal or do more trail riding, but for others that might mean continuing to board with lots of travel an important aspect of your retirement years.
I’m pretty happy having given up my 60 horse barn in SoCal (and selling that property for a lot, which was my original masterplan when I bought it almost 20 years ago) and now living in a funky/cool little horse community with a bunch of retired-ish horsegals like me to hang around with and ride with. I keep my one horse next door in the community equestrian center which gives me the best of both worlds but this is an unusual place and I looked for a very long time to find it.
I would not have been interested in living here ten years ago, but I sold my businesses and retired, and really don’t care about showing much any more (we have little shows right here) so this suits me now. By formulating a 5/10/20 year plan about ten years ago, I am right on track for what I guessed I would want/need at this point. Yes, I still have the spreadsheets!
It’s wonderful to have your horses at home. It’s also wonderful to NOT have your horses at home!
I feel like maybe I have the best of both worlds or maybe the worst of both?
I have four horses at home (two boarders, two are mine). One of my personal horses is my elderly 30 year old that needs soaked feed but doesn’t like to be stalled which started to prevent issues in a traditional boarding situation. She can no longer hold her own in an outdoor board scenario, even being grained but she paces nonstop if stalled.
So she was one of the original reasons we purchased our farmette. This place is and has been a fixer upper but everything we’ve set up is to create ease of handling for horse chores and we keep improving and doing most of the work ourselves. The stalls are dutch doors/in and out. I have automatic waterers inside and out to cut down on time doing waters.
All pastures and drylots are connected via gates so we don’t have to handle horses to move them around.
We built an attached haybarn so I can bring in more hay and we now can store bulk shavings in a gravity box which has cut down our shavings costs by $200/month.
My old lady is happy and doing fabulous.
But I also have my show horse boarded because I don’t have an arena at home. The plus side is she’s boarded just a couple houses down on the same road with my coach. This has been a built in support with helping network for hay, helping lend equipment, covering in case of emergencies etc. It of course goes both ways!
I also have one of her employees clean my stalls a couple times a week and pick out the dry lot as well. The money had been worth it as it means I cut down the time and often go ride on those evenings instead and I’ll often so some of the other chores like scrubbing out waterers or dusting instead of picking stalls so I still am trying to use my time effectively.
The cost of our farmette is definitely about the cost of a home anywhere near the city in which I work. I have about a half hour commute each way but I do try and bundle going to the store, running errands, etc all in while I’m in town.
But I’m very thankful to so far have a pretty comfortable setup at this point in my life. I imagine as we age and want to travel more, we will reconsider but for now we enjoy the work and sweat equity.
Considering some of these blended situations can be the best of both worlds. I board one of my horses at a place with an indoor. Aside from the payoff period a personal indoor being close to never, the companionship of fellow riders and a built-in support network to source hay, bemoan the weather, find a house sitter etc and basically not be isolated as I could easily become, if all of mine were at home is well worth the savings differential of having that one at home. I also bundle trips when I go ride like to the feed store, that’s on that part of town. I also like the peace of mind of knowing I can bring my horse home if finances or other situations would dictate it. I (briefly) tried trailering in for lessons.
My close friend has 45 to 50 horses on their property right now and it’s so much labor. Definitely a full-time job, even just to do a few of the tasks. you’re definitely getting what you pay for. They hate that the waterers get so gross/are difficult to clean and they break a lot. It’s great that you guys clean the waterers instead of leaving it for clients to have to do themselves. So many places don’t seem to care about the water getting dirty and leave it up to the horse owner.
Do you happen to know any specifics of how long it takes to clean the waterers? Also, which waterers are you guys using? I saw that Horseproof claims the EasyClean takes 1/5 of the time for cleaning on average. Being a technical person, I do want to see those claims put to the test, so I’m SUPER curious if you had ever measured the time or calculated labor for that.
Has anyone else seen these? https://www.instagram.com/horseproofmfg/
I gotta say I do like the design though, and a friend of mine loves them.
IME - 20yrs of horses at home - horses’ idea of “clean” water is different than most humans.
The 5gal heated buckets in my stalls get topped off daily. Sometimes 3X a day, so I know they’re drinking from them.
Buckets get dumped & scrubbed maybe once a month.
I have a 50gal foodgrade plastic barrel serving as a trough in front of the barn. Also topped off when level looks like the 34" mini might not be able to reach it.
He has a bucket in his stall, all 3 have free access to stalls, but his rear entrance is only 4’ high.
Trough gets dumped & scrubbed even less often. Maybe 4 or 5 times a year.
In nice weather, when I dump the barrel & scrub out the accumulated yuck at the bottom & sides, 9 times out of 10 my horses will come over & drink the water I dumped.
When I’ve scrubbed stall buckets or trough, added a splash of bleach & refilled with pristine, clear water, not a one rushes over to drink it.
In fact, if stall buckets get the scrub&refill & trough doesn’t, they’ll still drink from the trough over the buckets.
Horses! 
I have done both. The math I did on board vs home depends on number of horses for me. When I owned farms, I had 3-4 horses. When I got down to 1, it made sense for me to board.
Say the farm mortgage is $1800 and cost to board & have a small house is $1800.
If I have the farm, I still have to buy hay, grain and shavings. If I go out of town I need a farm sitter. I still have to buy a tractor and do all the maintenance, plus work a full time/non horsey job. I’m single and not getting younger, so the physical aspect could be an issue sooner or later.
I like boarding as it has a tad more social component than if I was at the farm alone. I work and nearly all the boarders at the barn are retired, so a lot of the time I have the place to myself. There isn’t a trainer at the boarding barn, but have an awesome one that travels to me. I have a trailer so still independent and can get out and about.
When I had the farm, I loved it but I was a Farm Nun. My life revolved around the place. The upside to the farm is I feel like I had a better relationship with my horses, I saw them all the time (this is a good/bad feature depending on the day and weather, lol). Things got done (or not done) how I wanted and when.
So it’s really about what you want/willing to do and in your case, what hubby is willing to do/not do. He may never touch a horse or bag of feed but then he might find it enjoyable.
The farm I had in Mississippi was 22 acres. The farm in SC was 10 acres.
We don’t have an indoor where I board but the barn manager does a great job getting the right boarders - right now everyone is pretty enjoyable to be around. And yeah, who doesn’t need another horse person to bemoan the weather and horse ownership woes with, lol.
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