Fields in 1994

Goldfish pond

In December of 1994, my husband Glenn and I purchased 125 acreas of land in Nottoway, Virginia.  The land was mostly open with a beautiful 8 acre pond.  But the fields were all grown over with weeds and the only structures on the place were an old burnt out cinderblock house and unlivable single-wide house trailer.

old cinderblock house

Pond in 1994

When we purchased the property, we owned a pair of ostriches.  So the first order of business was to build them a barn and enclosure.

Of course, the ostrich weren’t the only ones who needed shelter so next came a house. We put in a doublewide the summer of 1995.

our house

When Glenmar was a goat farm

almost finished hay barn

I was planning to raise meat goats, Hair sheep and hay so most of our time was spent putting up fences and replanting the fields. By the time we had finished putting up the perimeter fence and cross-fencing, we had over 2 miles of woven-wire fence. There was also hay and hay equipment to protect so next came a shed & equipment barn.

After these were built, we spent the next few years building up our goat and sheep herd and selling them for meat. By the time I decided to get back into horses, we were running an average of 500 head of goats and sheep.

equipment shed

and sheep farm

 In the winter of 2005, I decide to faze out the goats and sheep and switch our focus at Glenmar Farms to horses. This required quite a bit of work to change everything over to make the place suitable for a horse breeding/training and boarding facility. First we built a 3-stall barn for the horses and then in 2007 we built a really nice 8-stall center isle barn like I had always dreamed of having.Our pastures were way to large though and all the horses were staying much too fat. And I wanted to be better set up for Boarders. I didn’t like the idea of pasturing client’s horses together and wanted to give them their own private lots with shelters. So the next couple of years we spent doing more fencing to divide up our large pastures and building individual stalls for each paddock.

Load of hay for new barn

3-stall barn

New Lots

This project has turned out very well and we can now accomadate up to 17 horses in their own private pastures with a stall. That’s in addition to the 6 stalls in the big barn. We also still have several larger pastures with bigger sheds for housing multiple horses. And enough hay fields to grow our own hay. In 2009, this was a very busy place at times, with as many as 17 outside horses here for training or boarding along with the 16 horses we own.

It’s been a lot of work but a labour of love and Glenmar Farms has come a long way in the 15 years we have been here.

my dream barn at last