This is a little story about going from townhouse to horse farm but let’s start with a little backstory shall we?

Alex and I got married.  Then we moved to GA and bought a no-maintenance townhouse.

During that time we bought Scuba, our arabian gelding, for a dollar and that’s also when I started The Georgia Horse as a platform for me to write about our adventures and pitfalls of Scuba and I’s training journey.

From halter training the just-gelded still-acts-like-a-stud feral 4 year old  Arab, to jumping around 3 foot courses, there was 3 years of constant blog posts of our hard workx.

Then the entire blog disappeared and everything besides a couple of old Youtube videos was gone.

All those journal entries of our progress, of Scuba’s accomplishments, and every setback was just gone.

It was probably a good time for things to go awry because at the same time Alex and I were buying our very first horse farm and I had no time to ride and train much let alone blog about any of it.

Long story short, we went from townhouse to horse farm really quick.

We went from one 1$ horse, to a family with a 1$ rescue horse and a $700 rescue horse named Tyson to keep Scuba company.

We went from having free time to not enough time.

We don’t regret it for a second.

Now that we have been in our farm house for a year (exactly one year today!), things have slowed down enough for me to get back into blogging about our horses and their training, about running our horse farm, and starting this whole blogging thing again from scratch.

I guess a new start was just meant to be.

So how did we adjust when we went from townhome to horse farm?

Ummm…. we made it a full year.

It came with a lot of lessons learned the hard way.

It came with a LOT of frustrations.

It came with a lot of sore muscles and aching backs.

A lot of sleepless nights.

A lot of credit card swipes.

A lot of contentedness.

It came with a lot of pride.

A lot of satisfaction.

We may have been crazy going straight from townhouse to horse farm with nothing in between.

Sure we had someone doing all the yardwork back then.

Sure we were in town and close to ALL the amenities.

Sure our townhouse was move in ready.

Sure we moved into a rundown home that hadn’t been taken care of in decades.

Sure it was in a rural community far from our jobs.

Sure we had no idea of the time commitment to keeping up a farm.

But looking back on it, we wouldn’t change a thing.

Here are some things that we’ve learned since we moved from townhouse to horse farm:

1. Our weekends are spent doing yard work, fixing fences, working horses, or updating our farm house.  We don’t go out much ever.
2. Horse farms require a lot more equipment than you will ever plan for.
3. That same horse farm is a lot more expensive than what you will ever plan on.  It’s like a crash course in home ownership…. on steroids.  There’s the expected bills like water and electricity but then there is the bill for when the waterline broke.  There’s the bill for when the tractor stopped working.  That arena that looks so pretty…. yeah it’s damn expensive to keep that damn pretty.
4. That inexpensive rescue horse that you bought to keep your first rescue horse entertained…. well that horse will unexpectedly cost you more than two of your vehicles combined… all before you have had him a week.  Go ahead and get your credit card ready.  One horse is expensive.  Two horses is actually like owning four horses.
5. Horses will break shit… besides themselves.  Yes they like to hurt themselves but they like to break their surroundings even more.  You will constantly be mending fences, replacing buckets, hammer thingys back into place, replace cross ties, gut the barn after water leaks, etc.
6. When you collapse into a little ball onto your couch or into your bed at the end of the day, your day will feel very rewarding knowing you worked your butt off on your own farm.
7. After boarding horses for over 20 years I would never board again unless I had to.  Owning and running a horse farm is no joke, no matter how small or large the operation.  But it’s yours.  You run it the way you want it run.  You can make it as safe as you want it to be.  You are now the decision maker.

Would I recommend others to go from a no-work, low-maintenance situation like we were in in the town home straight to a horse farm?

Umm, no I would not.  It was a big shock.

But it can be done.

And as long as the good Lord allows us the blessing of owning our own horse farm we will be hard at work to make it work.

Thanks for stopping in friends!    -J