Buying the horse farm property in Maine.
The land soil profile, the location and slope is everything for raising, showing, developing a horse farm property for a business investment. Or for just the sheer pleasure of an equestrian hobby operation. Horsing around on your Maine land. And agriculture 101 comes into play in the real estate exercise buying the horse farm property in Maine.
Like people, Maine land soils are different.
What you use the farm land in Maine for requires different agricultural real estate approaches to maximize the soil’s productivity. While being careful not to cause soil erosion and remaining always eagle eyed about drainage, the terrain of the land and proximity to Maine’s precious waterfront resources. The fields, the woodlot are kept in a balance with the wildlife to protect their home too. And the goal is to pass along the land in Maine to your loved ones or another farm property buyer who protects the environment in the same respectful approach.
A large acreage parcel being eyed for use as a Maine horse farm would be a very foreign assignment.
To a real estate agent or broker working an urban market where it is just house house house sales.
And everyone has a tight tall obtrusive fence around their lots to desperately gain a spec of privacy. With the land measured in square feet like the home, not in whole or at least large fractional units of acres or hectares.
(One acre unit of land measurement is almost two and half times bigger when converted to hectares.) And one acre of land is roughly 208.71′ by 208.71 when sliced and diced into a simple square shape. Where I live, just a few miles to the east is the Canadian province of New Brunswick where hectares not acres are how land is measured up for size on farm properties.
Making your living off the land in Maine.
The soil health quality of the Maine farm land, the need to improve it for better pasturing of the horses on it. For plot rotation to avoid over grazing it. What types of grasses, winter crops work best to rotate in to plow under for the rich nutrients to boost the soil amendments and soil health?For your horse, cow, crops or whatever farm operation.
Much more to consider buying a horse farm property in Maine than just the big view and how much the real estate costs per acre for the equestrian land.
Especially if starting from scratch and building the structures that support the horse farm dream. And clearing land or re-purposing it into animal farming from crop rotation or acreage that has just been ignored with poor PH levels from the neglect laying fallow. Waiting for you to buy the land and be a good steward of the property acreage.
Soil conservation maps tell the tale about what type of dirt you are dealing with and to determine if the Maine land is best suited for raising horses or not.
The local USDA office has soil profiles and often the previous farm conservation folder that contains a wealth of information about drainage tiles put into place. Shows the conservation tiles, the tree plantations put in with cost sharing USDA grant money back in time.
How big and what type of soil this, this and that open section contain on the farm property you are keen on buying? If you like what you see under the ground where you intend to build a house, barn, the auxiliary agriculture structures. Put in the water and sewer, power or maybe off grid and solar. It all takes planning.
When you think horse farm property in Maine for sale, are you hoping for the New England white two story porch with the wrap around porch?
The big red original barn, the machine shed, chicken house and a woodshed? The feel of an original farm that has not been cut up and stripped of it’s acreage and the buildings treated with respect and regular maintenance. And the generous country kitchen with the antique wood cook stove is still in place and used daily. The wainscoted original formal dining room used on holidays with home cooked meal spreads. And the family members having a hand in all of them surrounding the table bowing their head to to take their turn in saying the blessings. To gratefully celebrate life on the Maine farm. 
Or do you plan to create a newer version of the classic farm collection of buildings?
Do you see on the land acreage purchase supporting a smaller cottage like dwelling because this is a semi retired approach to farming? Maybe cedar shingled not clapboard siding. Or a log home, board and baton exterior and a saltbox, a cape or just a simple single floor ranch style home design is what you desire.
Thinking of pigs, chickens, cows, goats, sheep to go with the equestrian horse or pony collection of animals on your Maine farm too?
Two cats in the barnyard. A dog at your feet on the glassed sun porch while you shell fresh picked peas for supper with the grandchildren listening to family history tales. Maine land listing property sales consider lots more than just house or home details of the four walls, roof, floor.
Whatever works best for you at this stage of your life with the Maine farm home you build slowly to have it your way.
It must have the barn, the cornerstone and most important piece of the original farmstead puzzle right? The scaled back barn pictured in your head not a 100′ feet long by 60′ feet or more wide and stable or machinery tractor wings. Or sitting on a stone foundation or sporting large working ventilators on top and wearing lightning rods. This Maine farm barn that will be this many feet away from the house is your own personal creation.
The barn with the hay loft, the doorway for a conveyor backed in by a farm tractor. The gambral or gable roof line of a barn with a cupola and weather vane. Built from the ground up using post and beam technology. Or built more like a pole barn. The box or standing stalls in the configuration that fit the scope of your horse property dream.The expansion down the road if things go well on the homestead.
Maybe you intend to rent out space to horse boarders?
What’s a few extra flakes of hay, a coffee can of grain and bucket of water to add to the daily chores when feeding and hydrating your own steeds right? The extra horses look pretty dotting the green pastures fenced around your Maine farm property don’t they? Make sure to keep those mineral salt licks where the horses can sample them to get all those important trace elements their healthy diet require. To like the apple a day keep the veterinarian away.
Renting out unused open field sections of the Maine farm might be needed to help subsize the purchase of a bigger property acreage of land.
So you don’t see the cleared land grow up to scrub brush. And you personally don’t have to climb up on to the tractor pulling the bush hog back and forth to mow down the vegetation. Or be forced to farm it that takes away some of the energy you are pouring into building up your other Maine horse farm elements around the weather.
Big fields are ideal for large six to eight row equipment. The smaller four or five acre fields of open fertile farm land work well for two row equipment yesteryear farming. The fields are contained from disease like blight too when a little protected by a buffer of trees, that wooded section of the Maine land you purchased with an eye toward the agricultural application.
I grew up on a Northern Maine farm.
Lucky to own the house had a wood cook stove like most farm properties. I bought the farm in Maine from my three older brothers after my Mom passed away. My Aunt Ruth ran a Maine summer camp horse riding farm and I learned a lot about both crops and critters in my well rounded exposure to agriculture in Maine in my childhood. Both parents grew up on dairy farms too. Farming runs deep in the family DNA.
Owning the farmstead I grew up on I can tell you first hand there is nothing more satisfying than helping a real estate buyer looking for a Maine farm. To use for raising horses, for growing crops, Christmas trees, dairy or poultry. It is a lifestyle I know and practice.
We deal with property listings in Maine in the counties of Aroostook, Penobscot, Piscataquis, Washington and are tied in with the statewide MLS. What to consider when buying a horse property in Maine, when looking for land to invest in that has fields and woods to manage.
Are you planning on hitting the horse show circuit, state agricultural fairs?
Do you think about the food you eat and where it came from whether for you or your horses, your livestock?
Organic farming is not just a buzz word fad that will fade with time. Something is causing all the cancer in the world and it is not just those 20 grade A cancer sticks packed like sardines in your shirt pocket or tucked down into a deep dark place in your purse.
The local farmer’s markets are a great place to peddle produce but also to rub shoulders and elbows with other folks working the dirt, making a living farming in Maine. On a big, little or inbetween approach to the real estate with an agricultural twist. It is not glamorous, you are going to get dirty, learn to be a half way skilled carpenter, mechanic, soil scientists and marketer using the social media platforms to advance your Maine farm property education. You will be in the best physical shape in your life repairing building roofs, jacking up and replacing sills and digging post holes to establish new and original fencing sections of your Maine farm land. Searching for tractor parts and becoming a pretty able welder over time.
Is the soil rich Caribou, Linneus loam or Burnham, Thorndike, Monarda, Conant on the Maine land you are tramping with the intent to seed down with clover, timothy, alphapha conservation mix?
In the search for a farm property in Maine with or without the buildings? Is that a rocked around dug shallow well that goes dry some summers when rain is not as regular showing up to water the fields, pastures, gardens? Is the septic system more of an 8′ x 8′ hemlock box cesspool that lacks a leach field? That worked fine for the one Saturday night bath whether you needed it or not. But not designed for the pressures of teenage daughters taking long marathon showers, four or more bedrooms. Full of large blended household families of children using those bathrooms and feeding those laundry baskets with dirty clothing.
And what’s a HHE 200 soil test septic system design?
It is a auger core sample of the soil to sample the profile of the dirt rather than just digging a hole and filling it with water studying your watch to see how long it takes to empty. In Maine we do soil tests not perk tests for septic system designs because not every season has the same rainfall and not all dirt has the same drainage qualities.
We just sold a Maine farm where the horses had their barn, the sand riding area for the jumps, the lunge line exercising. The pastures fenced, the paddocks in place and picture windows in the house to watch the horses graze and interact. They are like big kids and more than hay burners. Your cats keep the farm mice population down. The dogs help move the horses from pastures into the barn and vice versa when you turn them out of the barn stable.
On your Maine farm you will make friends with the folks down at the feed store. You will check the sell, swap and trade guide for a yesteryear tractor and begin collecting farm equipment attachments.
The farmer down the road becomes your source for land applications with machinery you can not justify buying that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. So hire out the custom grain combining. Don’t duplicate and waste financial and time resources on a piece of machinery used only for a short time once a year and that sits, drains your resources. Network with the other area farmers and prosper working together. We are lucky in my area of Northern Maine to have Amish settlements of farmers that provide labor, lower cost materials used in keeping the farm running efficiently.
Containing horse manure, spreading it on fields to fertilize in the right places.
And making sure ponds, small streams or brooks are not contaminated with the waste from your horses or ponies.
All part of how much land is needed for how many horses on the Maine farm.
Knowing that an acre of high test farm ground land will support three horses but out west it is the other way around. The flip flop from the not so lush as Maine land is to support one hungry horse rather than a trio of belgians, percherons, morgans, palimino, arabians, quarter or whatever breed of horses on your Maine farm.
Horse farm properties in Maine, looking for one to complete that life long dream?
Got you covered and we need to talk soon, at length about the real estate puzzle of properties to consider in Maine for your horse listing. Do you have to sell first the house you already own? Is the place on the market yet and what’s holding that up or how is the marketing process going? How’s your local real estate market? MOOERS REALTY will help you any way we can to locate and consider all the horse properties for sale in Maine that could be a perfect fit solution.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |
MOOERS REALTY 69 North Street Houlton Maine 04730 USA
