I'm hoping somebody on here can help point me in the right direction on this. I've had my daughter in riding lessons for some time now, and she has progressed to a point that it's time to start looking to get her own horse for her (and mine also!!!!). The problem is, we live on 3 acres. We have a very wide 3 acre lot, that is nearly a perfect sqaure (350 ft. side to side and 348 front to back). Our zoning is agricultural, but typically requires 5 acres to own horses, but I recently talked with our zoning administrator and said that a special use variance wouldn't be a hard hurdle to jump over.
Right now, my wife's parents live next door to us and as they age, their health is starting to sour a little bit also, so moving to a place with more acreage isn't a viable option. Also, most boarding rates run nearly $400 p/ month in this area, and I'm the only bread winner in the family so that route is out also.
I checked a book out from the library that deals specifically with this topic, and really starting to get into the nuts and bolts of it. It looks like it will address some of my concerns, I just wanted to see if anybody around has experience with keeping horse on smaller lots like mine. Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated.