My parents are horse people. It hasn’t always been that way. They became horse people recently. Remember when you were little and wanted a pony? Well, my parents decided they wanted the pony when they were just a little (a lot) bit older. This summer, we decided the horses should move our to our house. It seemed silly for them to be paying for boarding when we have the room.
Little did I know how much infrastructure goes into having horses. You need more than just “room”. You need fencing. You need a structure to protect them from the elements. You need water…..preferably water that won’t freeze. That doesn’t sound like much until you start putting it all in place.
Here’s what the horse space looked like when we bought the house:
Barn, before
Lovely, isn’t it? Can’t you just picture horses here? No? One may say you lack vision!
The chain link (and crazy tall weeds) have been gone for some time. This is what the area looked like in the spring before we built the pig pen.
Corral after clean up and fence removal
This is what it looked like this fall before we started work on the horse area. The pig pen is on the left. As you can see, we tore down the old loafing shed that was there and we started trenching for water lines.
Corral after trenching
All in all, we trenched over 350 feet. 200 feet of water line and 150 feet of electric was buried. All so the horses can have water without ice in the winter. Picky horses.
The trenching should have been easy. We had the right equipment.
Trencher
However, we ran into a couple issues. One was a buried power line. A power line we buried ourselves so we should have remembered….but, we didn’t.
Ooops
The second issue was drilling through about 4 inches of cement so we could run water from the water “pit” out to the trenched area. The drilling was a pain….the hand digging was an even bigger pain.
Hubby in the pit.
We also drilled a lot of post holes. Hubby got a new toy for that task….a post hole digger for the tractor. He “needed” one, he said…..”think of all the fence post holes we’ll need to dig in the future” he said…..”it’ll pay for itself in two rentals” he said. I think he just wanted a new tractor attachment.
Post hole destroyer!
After all the digging and trenching, it was time to put up a new horse shed.
Setting the support posts
First wall up!
Putting on siding
Painting
Cutting the back off the feeders.
I KNOW that is a terrible picture, but I thought he looked so bad ass with all those sparks flying around.
Finishing off the inside
Installing trim on the horse shed
Painting the barn
Putting in gravel
The kitties thought it was pretty cool that we were building this big shed for them. They really liked the gravel after it warmed in the sun all day.
We also had to buy hay. Thankfully, we were able to buy it from our neighbor and have it delivered to the hay barn. Sadly, we then had to move it all from in front of the barn to inside the barn. 150 bales of hay is a lot of hay! The kids liked to play king and queen of the hay hill.
Once we were done, we had to add horses! Meet Jamba and Bentley!
Meet the horsies!
So far, this is the only side of the barn that is done. 3 more sides to go. And, yes, I’m aware the roof is in terrible shape. BUT….it inspires us to keep going. Now the snow is flying and it’s time to do an indoor project!
