Speak to me of Ocala

[173north]

I’m currently living in a VHCOL area and the math is not mathing, so I’m considering heading for cheaper pastures and Ocala is top of the list.

I do have a few friends and connections in town, and I’m self employed in a horse-adjacent field, so feel moving to a horsier area would be good for networking & business. I’d be renting & boarding for a bit to make sure it’s a good fit.

What’s the ballpark rate for year-round full board at a decent dressage barn? Doesn’t have to be uber fancy or showing every weekend, just looking for good horse care / good training / good vibes. PRE or Iberian experience is a plus.

Are there any ‘absolutely do this before you move’ recommendations - ie spend a few summer months there to make sure I can handle the heat?

[lorilu]

What is VHCOL?
I pay about 1200/month in a nice barn.
Some advice:
Look at the pastures. Some barns overpopulate their pastures. If you damage a pasture here, it’s really hard to establish grass.
Decide if you need to be near WEC. If so, you will pay premium price.
Decide if you want a covered arena. I won’t lie, it’s darned nice not only in summer but those drizzly winter days as well
Decide if you want an in-house trainer and if other trainers are permitted to come in.
In general, the north part of the county has better grass. Especially the northwest part.

[StormyDay]

I’d definitely go down and just stay a while to see if the area fits you. I’d probably recommend being on the west or north side of ocala; the traffic moving through town can be ROUGH and most of the barns are on the south and north.

What part of the world are you in right now? That would dictate my advice to you.

If you don’t like Ocala, try Gainesville. You could easily live in Gainesville and drive 20-30 minutes down into the Williston or Reddick area.

[Butterfly1]

There are so many nice facilities here! $1,200 for full care board is a probably the baseline for most decent farms and it goes up with proximity to WEC and amenities. Hay is ridiculously expensive here…the price of living in paradise. To avoid having to evacuate during a hurricane make sure the barn your chose is block construction. WEC does open its doors to people who need to evacuate so there is always that option. Ocala is known to have very dangerous and active lightening strikes, just something to keep in mind when looking at barns. The summer’s for me aren’t that bad even without access to a covered arena, but I have known a few horses that needed to be sold to northern climates due to anhidosis. As long as your horses sweat normally they should acclimate. Bug activity seems worse at night and from what I understand some areas have more mosquitos and gnats than others. One of my horses is prone to sweet itch so he goes out during the day and that keeps him bite free. There is so much to love about Ocala and if you are in a horse related business this is the place to be.

[SillyHorse]

@lorilu

What is VHCOL?

Very high cost of living (I think).

[Annie10]

Very high cost of living

[Annie10]

Depending on where you’re coming from, the heat in Florida is horrific. I’m in North Florida and it’s been 100° every day now almost for the last several weeks. It’s absolutely horrible. You walk out the door and you feel like you’ve walked into an oven and been sprayed with the garden hose. And my county is coastal, Ocala is landlocked.

[StormyDay]

I also think for some reason the area you’re at in Ocala really makes a difference on how bad the summer is. It seems the closer you are to Ocala proper the less wind there is. Out closer to Goethe State Forest it’s more hills and more breeze. I’d wonder if it’s the same on the other side, but I’ve spent very little time over by silver springs.
I still would want a covered arena. I know there’s people who ride in the early AM but to me that’s worse because it’s 80 degrees and 1000000% humidity.

Also, OP, there’s two soil types in Ocala. Some prefer the ‘dirt’ soil type because it grows grass better. Some prefer the sand soil type because you never have mud. No matter what, there’s still sand in the soil so you do have to keep in mind measures to prevent sand colic.

[4horses]

I agree. The weather is pretty miserable. I do chores as late at night as possible like 10-11pm, then shower and go to bed. My friend gets up at 5:30 am, does a short workout and then rides… but the humidity is super high in the morning. 9:30am the wind picks up but then the sun is scorching hot. There’s no good time to be outside. It’s either sunny and hot, humid and hot, or wet and buggy.

Even late at night, sometimes the humidity is terrible. Some mornings and evenings are so buggy I need long sleeves and a bug mesh hat, to keep from getting eaten alive.

Trying to exercise in this weather is difficult. 45 minutes of riding is enough if you don’t have shade.

[Annie10]

it really is truly awful. Horrific doesn’t even begin to describe the weather conditions in Florida right now. I’m scared of August. And I have a non sweater, so he’s pretty miserable. He’s good for about 10 minutes under Saddle and that’s it.

[Mersidoats]

Well, it’s only June and I’ve given myself a dehydration headache twice so far. This is summer in Ocala. Still better than snow.

Traffic sucks, hay costs a bazillion dollars, and you might pass out from the heat between May and September…but you have your choice of trainers, vets and adjacent services. Not to mention shows and clinics.

Definitely visit in July and spend at least 4 hours a day outside. The heat really needs to be experienced first-hand. Do you want to be in a program or just board your horse and take a-la-carte lessons? Do you eventually want to own your own land? Small farms are hard to come by these days, unless you’re okay with a mobile home on a few sparse acres. Have to look in Morriston, Williston, Summerfield, etc to find available, affordable places.

There are plenty of trainers who work with Iberians - they are popular down here.

[Pehsness]

I have no advice for the OP but wow, you guys are really selling it for them!

Scratching FL off of places I could ever live, lol.

[clanter]

@Pehsness

I have no advice for the OP but wow, you guys are really selling it for them!

Scratching FL off of places I could ever live, lol.

on the other hand to me it speaks of how bad the winters are up north for people to relocate to the Florida, also there is about two hours of additional daylight in mid winter in Florida verses New York State

I left Kentucky after repeated terrible winters moving to Texas where freezing temps and snow is an oddity

Sure it gets hot but fans for the horses makes their life easier rather than enduring blizzards. We have had four horses we got from North Dakota who enjoy the winters here so much their winter coats is usually just a change of color to a darker shade.

[Annie10]

FL is great if you can snowbird it and don’t have to work (ie deal with the traffic) .about 4 months of the year the weather is perfect for riding. If you have nothing to do but hang out in your beach condo with your drink looking at the rolling waves it’s beautiful.
It is hell on earth to live here year round. I almost had a heat stroke yesterday at 10 am. And the hurricanes haven’t even started yet.

I went outside today to meet the vet and wondered who opened the gaping maw of Hades.

[StormyDay]

Mid may to beginning of October is rough. The rest of the year is really lovely.
I think it’s a lot like any place; there’s times when riding is hard unless your property is set up to handle it. You can’t ride in an outdoor in January in upstate New York, so you have an indoor. You can’t ride in July in Ocala without either riding at night or in a covered arena.

But, Ocala is like no place else. Even my non-horse owning friends are amazed by it. The amount of tack stores, feed stores, showing opportunities, access to so many other things to do (natural springs, museums, beaches, boating, birding, golf; the list goes on) make it really an awesome area.

No joke, I work 10 months a year to spend 2 down there. I take all my vacation for it. And it’s worth it.

[Pehsness]

Now that sounds better!

[Annie10]

Absolutely if you’re taking vacation and making it a vacation it’s wonderful. That’s what a snowbird is. I will probably do that too once we are in a position to move out of this hell hole. We will leave from April through November Nov 1 and come back for the winter, and I’ll just ride and enjoy the nice weather. We will probably keep our house/ farm as a home base.
If you have to live and work here and deal with the horrendous traffic trying to get anywhere and the awful over crowding it sucks. Even Ocala is getting overcrowded and overbuilt and so many of the old farms are gone. It used to be a nice small community and now it’s overrun… I feel sick every time I drive past Irish Acres on 301, along with some other places… It used to be a beautiful
TB farm and now it’s rooftops.
Like I said, if you can snowbird it it’s great. Year round is a different story.

[NoSuchPerson]

I lived near Gainesville for a very long time, moved away for a while, and came back to Florida last year because I love living in Florida, in spite of all its flaws.

When I started looking for a place to board my horse, “covered arena” was nearly a non-negotiable item for me. It makes a huge difference in my ability to ride productively during the summer.

In addition to Ocala, I would look at some of the surrounding areas, like others have mentioned. Morriston, Reddick, Williston, and the Gainesville area (mostly the west and south sides of the county). Gainesville and Ocala are close to one another, but are miles apart culturally and you will likely prefer one over the other.

And you definitely need to spend a couple of weeks here in August doing active things outside. You don’t really start to cook until you’ve started moving around and being physically active.

[StormyDay]

I lived outside of Ft Lauderdale… I get it. Everyone wants to move to Florida until they feel summer in Florida. I have had 90 degree christmases.
But, it’s just really a preference on what you want to deal with. Snow or heat. This past December I got frostbite in my toes and lost all feeling from nerve damage in my right foot for months. I also once fainted in the middle of an arena in July in Miami. So, you know, trade offs to everything

[4horses]

One year for Christmas I went for a trail ride and it was so hot that day, we ended up taking the horses swimming in the lake… The heat is sporadic in winter/spring. You have weeks with cold weather and weeks where you might sweat to death.