Living to Ride

Some people pay close attention to the number of bedrooms and the state-of-the-art kitchen amenities when they are shopping for their dream home. But some people — a rapidly growing number here in the Triangle — pay close attention to the number of stalls and the top-of-the-line tack room amenities. For some folks, living the American dream means making a home among the rolling pastures of horse country. The barn, the paddock, the tack room, the fencerows crisscrossing verdant pasture with clusters of oak trees for shade, and of course, the horses — these are all part of a different kind of lifestyle that area developers are seeking to deliver with unique new equestrian communities tucked into quiet corners of the Triangle.

The North Carolina Piedmont is indeed horse country, and more and more, fascination with this majestic animal and the lifestyle it represents is leading people to seek out a home that incorporates the horse into day-to-day living. Whether to train or ride or breed or raise or just gaze out at the swishing tail and lazy rocking of a grazing chestnut mare, the equestrian lifestyle has a romantic, country-estate, outdoorsman’s appeal that, for many,  is irresistible.

Triangle developer George Horton is grooming the 410 acres of his family farm on the Little River into an equestrian paradise. At Pleasant Green Farms, 32 estates on 10-acre lots and larger will share open land, wooded forests, two miles of riverfront land, a five-acre stocked pond and three miles of walking and riding trails.

In addition to owners’ private stabling and pastures, Pleasant Green Farms will offer community boarding, with training facilities and forty acres of pastures and paddocks. This private gated community will feature an elegant entry with the traditional stone walls of classic country estates.

West of Chapel Hill, national builder Toll Brothers is developing Triple Crown Estates. This luxury community features homesites ranging from three to 10 acres and the elegant stone and brick architecture reminiscent of grand manor-style homes. The larger homesites will have equestrian privileges in this secluded country-estate community.

In North Raleigh, Baldwin Homes is developing a new community of quiet country estates, just minutes from I-540 and all the conveniences of city life. Belmont Ridge features wooded homesites, stables and acres of fenced pastures.

The rolling pastures, the rich smell of leather, the nicker of a mare meandering in for supper, the thunder of hooves pounding the trail — these are just of few of the charms that are drawing more and more in the Triangle to horse-country living. 

Kelly McCall Branson is a Freelance Writer