Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Horses!

Oh, my goodness! Where to start? Well, we finally got the front pasture refenced with electric braided rope, sprayed for weeds and the majority of the unused stalls cleared of their bedding. We transferred all of the bedding into one stall and will pull from there until it's gone. Each stall had roughly four inches of bedding on top of rubber matting. We are able to use the bedding that was inside the barn, but the bedding that was outside was unusable. Jeremy hooked up the manure spreader and spread it lightly on the back pasture and we used some of it in the compost bins and as footing in the garden walkways. So, we figure now we're ready for horses and our journey begins.

Monday afternoon we went to a local rescue shelter, Diamonds in the Rough, with our neighbor to see if we could find a companion/light rider for me. They had roughly 30 adoptable horses, but we only looked closely at three. One was a mare named Zoey, the second was another mare named Lady and the third was a gelding named Frosty. We all fell in love with Frosty. He's a Tennessee Walker, 17 years old, and about 15 hands. My neighbor loves him because he's gaited. He has at least four gaits, and possibly five. He's ridable and only has some minor issues that can be fixed with consistent riding and work. I called yesterday to set up a time to go back to ride him and was told that 1)someone else was coming to look at him on Saturday and 2)the trainer was going to be there at 1pm. I quickly called the neighbor and we headed out to see him again and ride him.

We quickly decided he was the one and put the deposit down on him. He's getting his feet done on Friday and will be delivered to our house Saturday. We can't wait! We have a 30-day trial on him and if he works out we'll pay the remainder of the adoption fee and he will be ours. This rescue facility is well respected in our area and has already had him checked by a vet, his feet done every six weeks, teeth floated and he's up-to-date on all his shots. They have an open-book policy and we'll be able to see all of their records for him, including anything that was passed along from the previous owners.

To top it all off, we possibly found a great horse for Samantha as well. The rescue shelter also has a regular boarding barn and they have a ten-year-old Thoroughbred mare whose owner doesn't have time for her any more. They are contacting her now to see if she would be willing to either sell her outright or give us a free lease on her with the option to purchase at a set price. This would be so perfect. She has a ton of potential and normally would cost us a ton of money. We're praying it works out. If so, we'll have two horses delivered on Saturday.

Samantha and I spent last night cleaning the tack room and utility room and setting up the stalls we chose for our horses. We still have some work to do, but it's coming along. We're going to spend this morning visiting the different tack shops in the area to get our necessary supplies.


Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Garden Start

Our gardening experience has officially begun! I started by trying to kill the grass in a 30'x30' patch of yard that had previously been used as a garden. Unfortunately, the previous owner reseeded the garden every year with grass, so it was covered pretty completely. I wet the grass down and laid clear plastic edge to edge, overlapping pieces to fit. I held them down with boards, which were then weighted down with large rocks. The wind is so bad here that I had to redo a section twice because it kept getting blown away.

This partially killed the grass and would have worked eventually, but we needed the grass to be taken care of sooner. Luckily, my neighbor has a plow and he offered to come over when we were ready and plow the entire area. We had to wait for the ground to dry up first because it keeps raining every couple of days. He finally made it over and not only plowed up the garden, but ran his disc over it too! I love my new neighbors!

It was beautiful! I made the comment that the newly turned up earth looked like dark chocolate brownies.

We had some pretty hefty roots down there. We're not sure if they are from an existing tree or one that fell down several years ago.

When he was finished we brought the dogs out and they had a ball running over the bumpy ground.

More pictures coming soon of the raised beds and the beginning of planting.

Chicken Coop

Wow! The guys worked their hind ends off and got the coop pretty much finished in one week. We started with a series of pictures I found on the internet from someone else's coop http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/coop-build and they took it from there. Our coop is very similar, with only minor adjustments.

The beginning of the coop with the floor and walls framed. The total inside dimensions are 4'x8'.

 View of the inside with the nesting boxes on the side. We are looking through the people door which has a window in the middle. The other window is on the opposite side and they are situated on the north and south ends of the coop.

Jeremy putting the heavy-duty axle and tires on the back end to make it easier to move. He was so excited to hook it onto the tractor and pull it out on the road to get it into the round pen.

The dogs thought the coop was pretty cool.

Grandma and Samantha putting the chicken wire on the round pen fencing. It doesn't look too difficult, but boy, was it tiring. My fingers are still hurting a week later.

The coop is finally in place and ready to be moved into. 

 Here are the girls checking out their new digs. They really like the spacious interior and all of the yummy things to eat in the grass. They have already figured out how to go inside by themselves at night. We just go out at dusk and latch all of the hooks to keep varmints out.