United States Eventing Association

Purchasing your first horse farm is a very daunting experience. When you are a young, horse-crazed kid, having your very own horse farm sounds like the perfect dream. “All I want is to wake up in the morning and be on a farm with my horses and ride all day long.” Then you grow up, and that dream starts to become more tangible, and you realize a lot more goes into owning a farm than you first thought. Most would think for a professional horse rider and trainer that it would be a no-brainer to own your own farm, but making it happen is not always that easy when you are living it. So, when the stars do begin to align and the possibility of making that childhood dream a reality, you jump on it!

Like any real estate purchase, buying a farm can be stressful, especially if you have never owned a big piece of land with multiple buildings. Once you go through the process of finding the farm you love, have all the financing ready to go, and the inspections are complete, you would think, “Okay, great, we are done!” As you get closer to the closing date, where you will go and swap keys, deeds and sign your life away to your dream, little things will continue to pop up along the way. This is where Parker Equine Insurance, and Donna Parker, in particular, got me out of a dream-killing-sized pickle.

Our (myself and my husband) situation was somewhat unique in that we were not using a realtor. We knew the property owners well and had come up with an arrangement that was going to work for the sale without having to go through a realtor, which was going to save us both some money. When you purchase a property without a realtor, you soon realize how much they are responsible for doing it because you have to do it yourself! We thought that we had crossed all our t’s and dotted our i’s and couldn’t believe we had gotten all the way to the finish without a hiccup. Then, 36 hours before the closing, my current home insurance company called. “I am so sorry we didn’t notice this before, but because your dwelling and business are on the same property and it is technically agriculture, we are not going to be able to insure you,” they said. All I could feel was panic. We had 36 hours to figure out how to get someone to insure our farm and bind the coverage!

Fortunately, I knew that Parker Equine Insurance also did Farm Coverage in addition to insuring horses, amongst other things. I gave Donna a call and left her a voicemail alerting her of the giant mess we were in. She called me back in less than 5 minutes, asked me a few questions, and then said, “Pretty sure I can make this happen; let me see what I can do.” I was still a little panicked at this point but was praying that Donna could help me find a solution. Sure enough, she came through. Donna was able to find a company that could bind my coverage to help me get the sale done and assured me we could then go back and figure out the particulars of the coverage.

I really leaned on Donna to help me with exactly what I needed. In the end, I learned a lot about Farm and Home Insurance policies. There are a lot of things that you need to have covered when purchasing a farm that you wouldn’t think about. I am so thankful to Donna and Parker Equine Insurance for helping me out when I was in a bind and acting quickly to help. Now, we can live out our childhood dream with no stress because we know we are covered!