Field of Dreams: One Rider’s Journey To Turn An Old Food Plot On the Family Ranch Into A Successful Equestrian Venue
When I began my equestrian journey as a twenty-three-year-old who was married and had a toddler, I never could have predicted where that journey would take me. Though my grandfather and great-grandfather before me were avid horsemen, I had personally only had experience riding some tired dude horses when my parents took me for birthday trail rides as a kid. I didn’t actually know anything about horses or riding, so when the trainer at the hunter/ jumper barn that I had found via Google told me to put a halter on the lesson horse I was supposed to ride, I had a moment of panic. Mercifully, I figured the halter thing out and from then on horses consumed as much of my time as I could spare. I became very good friends with my trainer and ended up working at the barn in exchange for my lessons. Fast-forward over a decade that included the birth of my second child, a career as an equine massage therapist and instructor, hundreds of miles ridden with fellow horse fanatics, a pandemic, and lots of crazy highs and lows, and I am now working to build an equestrian venue business on my husband’s family ranch in Texas.
Buffalo Mountain Ranch is a beautiful and rugged piece of Texas wilderness that spans over 4,400 acres in the hills overlooking the city of Abilene. It has been in the Ledbetter family since 1977 when my husband’s grandfather purchased it. Originally it was a cattle operation, but has primarily been a hunting ranch and occasional retreat location for a few decades now. My family moved to Abilene from Colorado in 2021 so that my husband could be more involved with his family’s ranch legacy. Before we moved, I had sold my only horse and resigned myself to the idea that my riding days were over. I wouldn’t have the village of horsewomen around me that I had in Colorado, so that was that. A little over a year ago, I met several women in the local horse community who quickly embraced me as one of their own and encouraged me to get back into riding. I was also made aware of the demand that local riders had for new and interesting places to explore on horseback. With that, the idea that the family ranch would be a fantastic place for people to ride was born. It all sounded like such a great plan, but where on earth was I supposed to begin?
After creating a basic business plan, the first project that we decided to tackle was adding an outdoor riding arena to the property. A friend had managed to build a small arena on her property for what sounded like a pretty reasonable price, so I was confident this wouldn’t set us back very much. After all, we had a skid steer and a bulldozer so it had to be a thing we could easily do ourselves, right? I found an arena panel company, and we purchased the panels for a 300’ by 150’ arena with a ride-through gate at one end. The cost of the panels was more than I had anticipated, but it was worth it to have good, heavy-duty panels. I was so excited when the shipment arrived. We had cleared an old food plot that had a beautiful view, and the panels were placed in the middle of where we wanted to put the arena. Then months passed. The brush began to grow up around the panels that I was sure we would have up around a beautifully groomed arena pad within a week or two. In my delusion that the project would take very little time to complete, I had managed to get our first event booked in this arena that didn’t yet exist. I had been slowly realizing that if I really wanted to host events, it needed to be as perfect as we could get it, which meant we needed to hire a professional. It was going to require laser leveling the pad, picking rocks and debris from the site, packing the base layer, and sourcing the footing material. Once again, I was not expecting how expensive that would be, but we had gone too far. We had the panels. We had the dream. We had a booking! I had to call an arena contractor. The contractor came and went, leaving a beautiful arena pad for us to put up the panels around when we had time.
Then another couple of months went by. I knew that we needed a good arena groomer, but the one that we wanted was only available for order from the manufacturer in Idaho, so we waited on the groomer. Finally, during the week of Thanksgiving, we got the panels up and the arena finished. As we started to make the first few passes with the groomer, we quickly discovered a problem. The arena contractor had told me that he wasn’t thrilled with the sand that was brought in because it had some debris in it. The issue was that it didn’t have some debris, it had A LOT of debris in it. I spent the better part of two weeks painstakingly walking the arena behind the groomer, pulling up everything that appeared from deep down in the sand. Tree branches the size of my forearm, bricks, cement chunks, and other fun objects just kept showing up as we went. We had clearly gotten sand that was pulled from some kind of trash pit. To be fair, I don’t think that the contractor knew how bad that sand really was. I didn’t know how bad it was until we started grooming it. Once the arena was looking good (and not like a dumpster), we worked on clearing the trailer parking area around the arena. Rather than pull the ranch manager away from all of the other things he does for us on a regular basis, my husband decided that he would learn how to work the bulldozer to do the clearing. After a little bit of practice and some accidental gouges in the ground with the rippers, he figured it out and got the parking area looking good.
Thanks to a crazy amount of work and help from our family and friends, we had everything ready to go in time for the horse show that we were booked to host for a local riding club in December. The show was an absolute success, bringing a small but respectable amount of horses and riders from Abilene and neighboring places. I couldn’t believe that we had done it. We hit bumps along the way, but I was looking at a beautiful arena full of happy horses and riders in a place that was once just a field. We still have many more plans for the ranch that include offering guided trail rides and hosting equestrian retreats, but getting the arena finished proved to me that we can do it. Our 2025 event calendar is already filling up and we are here for it!
Heather Ledbetter
"Heather is the Equine Event Coordinator for Buffalo Mountain Ranch in Abilene, Texas (her husband's family property). Besides her work with the family ranch and being a mom of two boys, she is an active member of both the 40 Something Cowgirls and Big Country Equestrian Clubs. With those groups she enjoys trail riding, participating in parades, and announcing for horse shows. Heather is also a lifelong artist who has won awards for her work painting horses."
This article is from the March issue of Equine Business Magazine
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