CountryByNet.com Forums :: Interested in what you think of my situation

My wife, two year old son and I have finally moved from suburbia to a lovely country property. 26 acres total - 16 pastures, 10 wooded.

Everyone around us has horses and boards horses. Our fencing is great. We have two paddocks. Barns are in great shape. There is a 5 stall barn, a three sided loafing barn, a hay loft etc.

Previous owners had their own horses and boarded a couple as well.

I work full time, my wife is a stay at home mom. Neither of us has ever cared for horses before but would be interested to learn. We have been taking about getting some kind of livestock or the other, just to get us started being hobby farmers.

The previous owner was classified as a farm for property tax purposes. Since we have no farm income, we are taxed as residential - about $1200 more per year.

In Ontario, to classify as a farm, you need to be earning $7000 or more gross per year from your farm business. Boarding horses does classify as agriculture here.

I see few advantages of boarding horses on our property (in order of importance to us)

1. It would be really nice to have horses on the property. This property is so perfect for horses - seems incomplete without them. We love being around animals and would be looking to include some kind of livestock into our farm over the next year or so anyway.

2. Boarding three horses would put us over the $7000 per year gross income that allows us to classify as a farm business and save about $1200 in property taxes. There will be other small benefits too - saving sales taxes on this and that (like the tractor that I jut a deposit down on!).

3. Even if we turn a small net profit out of the $7000 gross income - or even broke even on that but were able to cover fence maintenance costs or maintenance costs related to the outbuildings, it would be worthwhile. I feel that we'd be able to keep the outbuildings and fences maintained in good shape and this would contribute to the overall value of the property - even if we just broke even after maintenance.

Disadvantages:

1. I work full time so I can't contribute too much to taking care of the horses.

2. We would have to do a lot of learning. I suspect that we might have to hire someone at least to help us get started out. Our neighbours are very experienced with horses and have offered help and advice in getting started.

3. My wife could definately make the time with our two year old now but in a year or so we might have another baby - would probably need to hire someone to help there for some period of time.

4. May have to deal with the odd boarder (human not horse) that may not be pleasant to deal with.

Other choices are:
1. Don't do anything. Bite the bullet and pay the residential tax rate. Get a few chickens, a couple sheep, just for pleasure.

2. Look into some other kind of livestock. My wife's grandfather (who is now retired and in another part of the country) raised Beefalo and suggests that we go that route for example.

What do you think?

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