I am incredibly lucky in a few ways.

First, I know that if a boarding situation doesn’t work out, I have a good friend who could take both my mares at her house. It wouldn’t be ideal long-term, but it would be a safe and reasonable solution short-term.
Second, my current boarding situation is not actively dangerous to the horses. It’s not important that I move the horses ASAP. I was able to give 30 days notice.
Finally, over the last bunch of years I’ve been in the area I’ve done a reasonably good job of networking in the horse community. I’m not starting from scratch in my contacts and research.

What factors did I look at with barns?
1. Location. I currently drive about 40 minutes to the barn and can move my schedule around to avoid the heavy commute times on that highway. I’m not interested in making a significantly longer drive. I can’t get much shorter, as the location of our house is minimum 30 minutes away from any barns in the area. Barns to the north or the west of me would be acceptable in addition to (my ideal) barns to the south. I have the strongest local network in my current barn area and it’s valuable to me to keep that. It’s also where the folks I like to ride with are located, and the social aspect is important to me.

2. Price. Horses are expensive. My self-care/co-op setup let me not think too hard about total cost per month since it was all spread out. I definitely winced when I added up the total.. but also I don’t have any real regrets. See: horses are expensive.

2b. What’s included in the price? What do I count in my “monthly” totals? Hay (grass or grass/alfalfa, preferably both available). Supplement feeding once daily (for either Polly or both horses). Daily feeding and cleaning (either a similar co-op setup, someone who I can pay to do it the times I can’t make it out, or 100% covered). My life right now works best when I’m not at the barn 7 days a week, so I need a setup that can support that. Shavings (either I purchase or barn provides).

3. What facilities do I need? An arena. A turnout area (OK if arena can be used for this). Preferably a round pen. Ideally, the footing in at least one of these isn’t awful in the rain. Trail access of some kind. I accepted that I can’t get amazing trail access comparable to what I currently have without limiting my search to about five barns in total, and I made peace with that. Some kind of secured tack storage. Trailer parking (though if I stayed local, this was not a dealbreaker).

4. Things that weren’t super important to me: how busy the barn is during the day. How pretty the barn is. I ride mostly in the evenings. I need something functional and I’m willing to put in some work to keep it there. I have plywood. I have stall mats. I have tools.

Barn #1: North. I actually know several folks via Instagram that board here and it came well-recommended. Price was similar. I think there’s a covered arena. Reasonable trail access on property. I’ll admit that the location ended up being the dealbreaker here.. I just don’t want to move the ponies out of my social circle if I don’t have to. It’s still on my “if I need to move” possible options list and the price wasn’t much more than I’m currently paying.

Barn #2: South (current area). Maybe another five minutes of driving. Small barn, usually has a waitlist, two open paddocks right now. Arena looked fine, rotating small turnout so each horse gets a full day with more space, self-care. Reasonable trail access. Large shared tack rooms. This place was super cute but also had a ton of wood, and I had visions of Polly eating through wooden fence in no time flat. There was also the sense that if we were to feed at our usual near-dark time, that would be problematic since others feed closer to 4 or 5 year-round. The two open paddocks are not terribly close to each other. I don’t remember exactly but think the pricing was similar to what we’re currently paying.

Barn #3: South. Approximately same commute, a 5-10 minute neighborhood walk from our usual trails as well as another park. Self-care. Also entirely self-maintenance. OK to let horses loose in the shared turnout or possibly rebuild the hillside turnout. Shared turnout, however, backs up to all the other paddocks. Snarky mares would be unlikely to enjoy this. Fencing was questionable at best, some really low fencing, some broken pipe, random objects and t-posts in turnout. Small arena with decent footing is a short hike up a somewhat significant hill. There was a lot of potential here, I really wanted to make it work. Then we realized we’d need to re-fence the hillside turnout to make it safe for our horses, hike up the hill every time we wanted to take any horse to the arena for turnout or work until then, fix broken pipe panels, provide several more pipe panels, run water lines since there’s nothing close to the paddocks.. re-gravel, redo walls.. the bones of the place are there but that’s about it. Or worse, it has stuff but it’s not safe for energetic and injury-prone horses. Fetti would probably be fine here. Polly.. this is the one my gut feeling kept telling me was the wrong place. It would be cheaper month to month, but at what cost of labor and materials to maintain everything?

Barn #4: South. Adds about two minutes of driving. Full-care. Slightly smaller paddocks, with the option to pay more for enclosed stalls. I ignored that in the price, as my two don’t currently need a soft fluffy stall with walls in the California weather. Hunter/jumper trainer on site, big boarding barn feels very much like the hunter barn I grew up in. Not necessarily a positive or a negative, but it’s an environment I know I can be in comfortably. Round pen with lights. Arena gets a few puddles in the rain but appears well-maintained and still useable. Limited trail access, but enough for weekday evening hacks. I’ve done volunteer stuff with the owner before and trust her judgment and sanity given what I know so far. Trailer parking available.

I’ve ended up moving forward with Barn 4. It is slightly more expensive than what I’m paying now, but means I get the time back in the evenings to ride and work the horses, not just hang out with them and clean and feed. In a year where I’m hoping to put more rides on Polly that time feels more important than it has in the past. I don’t know if this is our perfect solution; I don’t know if there is a perfect solution.

There are a lot more options I have available to me that I could move to. Barn hunting really is a matter of figuring out where your priorities are and what dealbreakers you have, and then being OK with things being imperfect for everything else.

I’m still grieving the loss of the community I’m losing. But I’m intensely grateful for the community support and the knowledge that I’m not alone and I have choices.