How Doug and Jess Payne Built Their Dream Farm
When Doug and Jess Payne bought 30 acres in Rougemont, North Carolina, they knew that one day, it would become their home base.
At the time, Doug and Jess were running their busy sport horse business out of Aiken, S.C. In the years to come, Doug would represent Team USA at the Pan American Games and Olympic Games, and be awarded the National Champion title at the Kentucky Three-Day Event, among many other top finishes including wins at the $100k HITS Grand Prix as well as a number of FEI classes show jumping, eventing and dressage. Their business was growing with more clients, young horses and stallion services.
The goal was to build a farm one day that would support their equestrian business as it continued to expand.
Fast forward and Jess, Doug and their children have lived on those 30 acres for four years. The property has been transformed into a 26-stall facility with a 125-foot by 200-foot silica sand fiber all-weather arena, and a 10-acre outdoor cross-country course with mounds, ditches and banks. Their family home is located above the horses in a custom built Legacy Post and Beam timber-frame barn with specialty stall fronts, rubber pavers, four wash racks, three grooming stalls and a range of paddocks and pasture space.
“Doug told me we’d be here in six to nine months, but seven years later, here we are,” Jess laughed. “But I truly believe everything happens for a reason.”
Doug and Jess have ridden performance horses out of different training facilities across the East Coast. During this time, they were able to fine tune what their needs were, decide what they liked and didn’t, and were ultimately able to plan for the future.
The Paynes hired an architect with equestrian and farm experience to help them design the barn and their living area.
“But having that experience in lots of different barns really helped,” Jess said. She explained the barn building process recently on Episode 136 of the Heels Down Happy Hour Podcast.
Having a growing family, Jess said building their living quarters above the barn made the most sense. But the closest horse from their home is 24 feet away, a decision they made after living above a barn before and being able to hear the horses in the stalls below them.
“You hear them if something is wrong,” she described. “But you don’t hear them just banging their buckets.”
One of Jess’ favorite features of the property is being able to walk out her door onto a shady patio overlooking the arena. The patio is two stories and also accessible from the tack room.
“The sun rises on our patio and sets behind it. So it doesn’t get a ton of sun in the afternoon and it’s comfortable to be out there any time of day,” Jess explained.
In the barn below, the center aisle is the only place with large overhead fans. There are none in the individual stalls, which Jess says is thanks to good ventilation and planning in the barn. With two overhangs of ventilation, the barn stays airy and cool.
But there’s never a day on the farm at Payne Equestrian where there isn’t a new project on the to-do list.
Since moving in, the Paynes have installed mirrors in their arena. They’ve placed a French drainage system around the outside of their barn. They’ve built ditches and mounds out in the fields. And most recently, they installed lockers in the clients’ tack room.
“There’s a lot of things I’ve learned in this process that I didn’t want to know how to do,” Jess said. “I’m actually pretty good at building stuff.”
The equipment on the farm makes a big difference in the projects they handle day-to-day, from small to big ones. Doug used his own Yanmar tractor to carve out a ditch. He also uses it to drag the arena.
“We have our dream barn, and the tools that helped us build it are right here with us. Our Yanmar tractor has been essential, from dragging the arena to digging ditches, and it stays parked just steps from the barn,” Doug explained.
Jess said the MVP of their fleet is their Yanmar side-by-side UTV.
“That is a crucial one for us here,” Jess said.
“Our hay and shavings are in an auxiliary barn. Our staff can load it up in the UTV instead of having to walk them one by one into the main barn. They use it to pick the paddocks. We need it for something every day.”
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