Finding an area to ride horses is challenging. We have five acres but only about 2 acres are usable in that fashion. We can ride in the back-tree lot – but it’s hard for Bridgett to practice Dressage and Working Equitation obstacles routinely without hauling out to someone else’s arena.
We have no funds for a good indoor arena now – so we elected to measure out an area slightly bigger than a small dressage court and sacrifice that pasture for an arena. We had reseeded the pasture this spring but set-up some hot wire to let the horses graze it down. Bridgett broke up the ground with the tractor and we harrowed it a few times to start leveling the area. We’ll need to get an arena harrow and bring in some sand to help keep the clay from hardening up again.
We plan on dropping posts and fencing the area in to make it more “official” as an arena. Overall the project will not be a perfect space, but we have plans for a larger possibly covered arena in the future.