Kentucky. It was also too cold in the winter.
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the primary reason for leaving Kentucky was the winters of the late 1970s, we had 60 inches of snow on the ground with temps in the minus 20s … after the second year of that then add in the summer heat/humidity it made leaving pretty easy.
I grew up there, just outside of Louisville in thoroughbred and saddle horse country
The summer heat in north Texas can be dealt with since the humidity rarely is above 20%, often falls into the single digits.
Florida never appealed to me, I did work for a company based in Tallahassee for a short time. really did not like the area
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Definitely thought this was going to end by this woman missing a hand. 
Staying away from the edges of freshwater that you can’t see into (springs are crystal clear) is a good rule of thumb in FL.
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Slightly off topic (maybe) but has anyone looked into the Terranova area? I saw the other day they have tons of lots for sale in their “equestrian community”. Might be $$$, but it’s 20 mins from Sarasota (beach, whole foods, starbucks). The community will include a club house with tennis, pickleball and a water park(!), there’s a dog park and a feed store on site. The lots look like they vary from 3- 24 acres.
ETA: weather! the reason I started typing this haha… I hear its a lot cooler than Central FL bc you get the ocean breezes.
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I don’t know anything about the summer weather, but the horse shows at Terra Nova are really nice. They are obviously in the process of making a first class facility there.
In addition to the show rings and warm up rings, they have a big cross country course, so there is a lot of room to ride, graze your horse, etc., etc.
I believe they are also building a very nice golf course as well on the other side of the property.
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Southwest Florida is wicked hot because it’s nothing but concrete, houses and cars doing nothing but generating and holding heat. There’s a little breeze coming off rhe Gulf but not enough to change anything
I grew up in that area (Bradenton specifically) and rode in Sarasota a lot. It’s hot, but not as bad as central FL. Beaches are the best in the country, but definitely get crowded unless you find the few that the tourists don’t know about or go during the week. Sarasota is bluer than the rest of the state on average and has some good restaurants/bars/things to do. Terranova’s plans look nice but I’d caution that there have been many failed equestrian developments in that area that never got off the ground. They do look more optimistic, however, as they have a great show series going. I’ve been to the facility and it’s definitely more like 30-45 minutes from downtown Sarasota, which is near the ocean. You can probably make it in 20 minutes if it’s the middle of the night. 
The facility is gorgeous and they have a great piece of land. I really hope it works out!
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Just keep in mind the gulf is like a hot tub during the summer. Not much fun to swim in. Fine if you have little kids and need shallow water.
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I lived in NE Ocala from 2016-2021 on my own 20-acre farm. I had 2-3 horses of my own at any given time, and took up to six boarders. All lived out 24/7 with either a run-in or just trees for shelter. Had zero problems with lightning or storms. I think the lightning thing has a lot to do with the farm’s set up. My entire property had tons of trees. Amazing for shade, and means there’s no one single tall thing to attract lightning. My vet agreed that probably the farms that have problems with lightning are the ones that are mostly cleared with maybe one or two trees or metal structure the horses choose to stand under.
Yeah summer is hot, but so is much of the country in the summer. I grew up in Ohio, and will say that the summers in Ocala were not any hotter (nor more humid), it’s just that they last longer - 6-8 months vs 2-3. As someone who despises winter, this was far more preferable.
I also did not find the bugs to be any worse than Ohio. In Ohio, you’d get dive-bombed by a dozen B52 bombers (horse flies) trying to ride outside in August. I think I saw one horsefly the whole five years in Ocala. Now in Georgia I apparently bought a property in the gnat belt. In comparison, Florida was a reprieve.
It is a town with not much going on other than horses. My ex was a golfer so, fine for him, that’s the second biggest thing going on there. The parks are nice, outdoor activities can’t be beat anywhere in Florida really. Crystal River isn’t a far drive, and Silver Springs park is great too. Kayaking, tubing, hiking. The gulf is a significantly better ocean to visit than the Atlantic, I think. But the drive to Daytona and Ormond beaches isn’t bad.
MCO will be 1.5-2 hours on a good day. The traffic from just south of Ocala to the 75/turnpike overlap tends to be incredibly ridiculous most any time of day. If traveling during the holidays, the whole turnpike will be a parking lot. It took me 4.5 hours to get to the airport one year a few days before Christmas, definitely missed that flight. MCO also just blows as an airport, way too busy. Tampa is much nicer to fly out of, IMO. Less crowded, newer facilities, shorter security lines. The drive is a bit longer but usually less traffic. If you can afford to, and don’t mind a layover, flying out of Gainesville beats both of the other two. I flew out of Jacksonville once, that drive super sucks, no major highway so just all back roads with speed traps.
It is also incredibly expensive now. Five acres with a manufactured home for $500k+. No thanks. I considered moving back summer 2024 after I spent three years in Tampa (without my own farm). Ended up in Georgia due to properly prices. I mean, it was in my budget but I just cannot wrap my brain around spending $500k on a mobile home. Especially in a state with hurricanes.
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I much prefer the Gulf to the Atlantic side! Never cold and the waves probably won’t kill you.
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The entry price to the Estates at Terra Nova is about 3 million (minimum) because you need to stick with one of their preferred builders. Beautiful lots, if we ever have that much to spend it’s top of our list.
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Sorry, but I lived in the Southwest/Mountain area and it’s not the same. Do not think that the dry heat of AZ/NM/CO is comparable to FL summers. Totally different struggles. PLUS, literally everything in Florida is trying to kill you or your horse. Bugs, snakes, weird plants. It’s a hot mess. In every sense of the words.
We live here now. It was fun initially. But it’s become pretty much rinse.repeat. The growth is residential mostly, so it’s just adding to the traffic, but not solving some of the other challenges. We will probably make moves in the next few years and even if we keep a winter address, I doubt we’ll be year-rounders anymore. There’s just too much nonsense. Do your homework. Read up on the area, the crime, the politics, etc. I feel like FL is still absolutely abhorrent when it comes to getting insured and don’t even get me started on some of the medical challenges with insurance here. It’s a nightmare. If you look to buy a house, just know that you will need to replace its roof if it’s more than 7-8 years old. Doesn’t matter if it has a warranty, there’s only a handful of insurance companies left in this ridiculous state and none of them will cover you if it’s older than that timeline.
All that said, Ocala is building up and I think you’ll see some relative growth in the restaurants and entertainment options in 2-3 years. Curious to see what happens when WEC opens their retail section with grocery stores and lux retail. If you like paying Publix prices, you’ll do great here.
I’d suggest that you spend a few weeks in July and September here before making any decisions. Those 2 months seem to have the dicey weather events and extreme temps. Leaving horses out all year long is possible, but realize that it’s not dirt paddocks here, it’s sand, so with that comes the risk of sand colic if the space isn’t properly maintained. You’ll also want to check flooding/water tables, as we are very much attached to swamplands, so fun things like sinkholes exist, and making sure that your horses aren’t standing in water or that you have pockets of standing water (they attract mosquitoes) is important.
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Re insects :
Mosquitos and other bugs can be absolutely horrific if you are in an area that does not have mosquito control spraying regularly.
Re lightning:
It can be pretty bad.
I have had 3 big hits on our property. 1 was the house and that resulted in a .$6000 insurance claim. The house didn’t burn down thank God. Although we did find out later that the house that was originally here was hit by lightning and burnt to the ground and then the owners built the house that’s here now that we later bought.
I had another hit that hit a large tree in my field that several horses were under at the time. No one died but one horse was a little weird , like a touch neuro, after it for a while.
The third hit killed a horse.
Storms blow up really fast here and often come out of nowhere. Sometimes there’s just not time to get them in before it hits. You could have gorgeous sunny blue sky and then BOOM
ETA I was outside once working in the barn and the storm blew up so fast. I barely had time to run 100 yards to my living quarters trailer to get in out of the rain, and did so just in time to see lightning hit a big tree in my yard. That was terrifying. and there have been a couple of other times where I’ve been stuck in my barn when a storm blew up quickly and saw lightning coming sideways across my yard, so I didn’t dare make a run for it through that but pretty much any afternoon in the summer between about 230 and six you can count on a rain storm.
Ahh interesting! I guess they want the continuity.
We have an equestrian community down the street from us too. They just want the houses to be of the same “grade” due to the HOA and to keep the look of the place and the home values up . It’s also in the deed restrictions that the houses have to be a certain size or larger and no mobile homes etc
One morning I went out riding. A big storm blew up out of nowhere and I pretty much galloped back. My dad went to open the gate for me and lighting hit the pine tree next to the gate, went through the gate and blew the glasses off his face. He was really lucky that the tree took most of the hit and that he was fine.
One thing to avoid is clear cut properties/open fields as your horse becomes the tallest object around. Also big trees should be fenced off so your horses can’t stand under them. I planted a bunch of trees on my property as I wanted something taller than the barn and house if lightning is going to hit. The tallest tree we had behind the barn was struck by lightning about 5 years ago. It was replaced with a sycamore tree because I wanted another tall tree back there.
Loved Florida. I was there from 1985 to 2016, living in Gainesville, which is a blue enclave in the sea of red. Didn’t show, but horses were boarded south of town and basically lived outside 24/7. Yes, it is humid. Yes, there are bugs and snakes and alligators. Yes, it gets really hot during the day in the summer. Yes, hay is expensive. Yes, some horses do stop sweating from the heat and humidity.
You will never find lovelier evenings anywhere. We generally rode from about 5:30 until sunset, when most days there was a breeze and the overall temperature softened.
Moved north to be with family at the beginning of 2017. Miss it a lot, but definitely don’t miss the change in politics. I would recommend that you go down there multiple times to check things out. I think you might like it there.
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Our house was 25 years old when we bought it, and had tons of full grown mature trees, all around it, although it is also a two-story house. The tree in the pasture that day happen to be a very old live oak tree so was huge and also gave a lot of shade being in summer with this ungodly heat in Florida. After that, obviously the tree died it’s no longer with us so now my pasture is just hot.
Will echo much of what’s already been said, my pony has sweet itch and it’s very difficult to manage, but I finally have a routine that is (mostly) working for us - it involves applying topical pyrethrin weekly, fly mask 24/7, fly sheet when weather allows, and Equiderma to bites/areas of concern as often as I can. My pony did get a hematoma in one ear from shaking her head due to bugs, and now her ears are permanently asymmetrical. It is not obvious to most that she has a bug allergy, but my care is meticulous.
My TB is prone to rain rot, and getting him in a sheet when it will rain for an extended time and with Equiderma applied to the troublesome areas helps a lot. He is easily overheated so I hose him frequently, which I feel affects his foot quality.
Both of mine have had significant sweating/heat tolerance issues, which I believe was caused by the oppressive heat/humidity - summers are LONG and brutal. My TB stopped sweating entirely for a couple of summers, and due to him being not rideable and so difficult to manage (I work full-time, so I can’t drive to the barn every day, multiple times a day to hose him off), I’ve spent a lot of time considering if I should move, or euth… Not a great position to be in.
I wouldn’t be able to keep mine outside in the summer, too hot and they are too sensitive - they both require a misting fan in their stalls to remain comfortable during the day. They are turned out all night.
I get horrible headaches in the summer just trying to do farm chores, I can’t ride for more than about 30 minutes. Trailering the horses anywhere in the summer (keeping in mind summer lasts like, 6+ months) feels inhumane.
I’ve lived in Gainesville for almost 20 years. Blue dot in a sea of red. I visited Wellington a few years ago to take my horse for surgery and I personally strongly disliked that area - all cars/pavement/traffic and very little nature to speak of.
UF Health/Shands also no longer accepts UnitedHealthcare at this time, so something to keep in mind if that’s the only insurance offered at your job. And as a healthcare worker, none of us are paid nearly well enough in the SE US - UF actually pays better than most.
I’d say visit before you commit, obviously there will be compromises no matter where you go, but I feel there are many negatives here.
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If was OP I would consider the Myakka City area. Depending on OP’s taste, they may find the Ocala area to be pretty slow and lacking in upscale amenities. I am sure it’s changing somewhat, but the Ocala area doesn’t have a lot of independently owned restaurants, shops or cultural events. Sarasota has more of those and is closer to the beach, airport etc as well as about an hour to Tampa’s amenities, easier driving distance to South Florida and the Keys for getaways.
Traffic is pretty bad in both areas. Florida’s downfall is the lack of good planning and transportation infrastructure. OP needs to visit and spend time driving all around in these areas.
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