This new weekly series invites readers to send in photos and a description of your barn (or where you board). What do you like about your setup? What would you change? There are some fabulous barns out there, from big and extravagant to quaint and workmanlike. Tell us about yours! It doesn’t have to be fancy or dressed up, in fact some of the “bare bones” no-frills barns have been my favorite for horsekeeping. Send us an email about your barn, with attached JPEG photo(s), to [email protected] with “Barn” in the title. Today, Holly Davis of Horsefly Creative, agency for EN supporters MDBarnmaster, Jamco Trailers, Pennfield and Horse Quencher, tells us about her small private farm in the Ocala area.
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Step one: Goals, goals, goals. Familiar with those, eventers? Haha. Of course you are. The same process that brings you finishing on a low dressage score is the same for setting up an awesome farm. Know your needs + prioritize those needs + work to make it all come together. Otherwise you rack up the penalty points… vet bills, hay bills, hours lost slaving away instead of riding. You get the picture.
Here were my priorities:
#1 horse health, happiness and safety (I’ve had too many hurt over the years on stupid stuff)
#2 usability: full size dressage arena, and a single building to serve as barn + run-in shed + office + trailer garage
#3 reduce maintenance
#4 reduce steps taken on chores
#5 aesthetics and entertaining spaces for friends
Every farm has its challenges, this particular one was a tiny footprint. Just 2.8 mostly-wooded acres (no, that decimal is not a typo), with about 2 acres available for a Horsey Kingdom, wrapped in a C shape around an existing house. After getting the land cleared, I became real handy with a contractor’s giant measuring tape. In the brutal heat of a Florida summer, I would spend my lunch break at high noon, pacing, sweating, staking. Re-pacing, re-measuring, and sweating some more. I did this over and over again in the course of a month, really thinking about sight lines, location of natural breezes, footpaths to do chores, the location of the bar (also not a typo… every barn should have a bar, no?).
In the end, I think I pretty much nailed all five goals. To do so, however, took some creative barn layout, and the support of the builder, MDBarnmaster. They called me when they saw my sketch to say, “You realize you designed a parasail in hurricane country, right?” Yeah, well, we creatives can be difficult that way. But their engineering department came through, and it was a masterpiece of strength, fully rated for the hurricane-preparation guidelines in the area (120 mph, though higher is available for south Florida).
In use, the MDBarnmaster operated completely as advertised. I power washed it once or twice a year, and that’s it. The stalls were the equivalent of bubble-wrap, they were super safe through any horsey shenanigans. (Kicking = zero damage to stalls, zero damage to legs & feet.) The dealer at the time suggested that I do the horizontal wide-spaced bars on the stall fronts, originally developed for open-air mare-motels in the southwest, because I wanted to have family and friends visit safely with the ponies. It was a great suggestion, a perfect setup.
Sadly/happily I’ve recently sold this farm and moved to Atlanta. I miss Horsefly Farm terribly, but I have a wonderful new husband and I’m living in Milton, which is gorgeous horse country. We also recently acquired a dealership for MDBarnmaster, because of my great experience with it in Florida. Soon we’ll be putting up another MDBarnmaster, with some of their latest aesthetic upgrades, which are gorgeous. Can’t wait!
View from the kitchen window, coffee in hand. This was right after construction, it looked much better after the grass recovered!
Concrete day! Here you can see three paddocks, the 90 x 220 foot arena – plenty for a full-size arena with jumps around the outside of the dressage rails.
My wacky concept: build a Raised Center Aisle (RCA) building, but replace the aisle with stalls down the middle. Then use one wall of the barn to define one end of the arena.
I love the tack locker feature with MDBarnmaster, it’s great for boarding barns. Although I never boarded with only three stalls, it was great to have my stuff right next to the cross ties. I dedicated one locker to dressage, one to jumping gear, and the third to lungeing and tools.
Right after construction, before the landscaping and finishing work.
And post-landscaping.
Somehow, when guests were over, we always ended up hanging out here under the fans, beer or wine in hand. Great spot, always breezy fresh air.
Unusual set up with the barn wall acting as one side of the arena fence, but it all worked exactly to plan.
Just below the office windows was a rock wall and twin waterfalls into a pond. There was always a breeze on this part of the property.
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Heading to AECs? Come by to see the new Elite Stall System by MDBarnmaster. In the same booth, you can test the strength of a gorgeous 2+1 Jamco, have your picture taken with Traveller (the Jamco spokeshorse) and be entered to win the twice-daily giveaway of a swag bag complete with a $30 bag of Horse Quencher. See you there!
