Kevin I used to have two Standard bred mares, I started out with one, a 16 hands high mare I called China. She was useless for racing, way too slow. She was too suffer the fate of similar animals. That was to be sold for dog-food but I purchase her. The second belonged to my cousin's son who asked if I could look after his horse. I would go around and see people who owned vacant paddocks and kept them there. Now China had two speeds. Stop and plod but if there was food around it went back to stop.
I am lucky here in Tasmania there are a lot of areas suitable for horses and not all are used for farming. Combined with our low population does help.