What's Changed in the Barn October Thru April

 I haven't posted anything in a while about the horse barn project, or about the horses specifically.  That doesn't mean there hasn't been anything going on.  Rather, quite the opposite.

Last fall, I acquired two new boarders, both geldings, both basically retired and owned by the same person.  This is a great arrangement for both my client and myself: she gets someone knowledgeable about older horses giving her horses great care, and I have a client who isn't concerned that there's no 'real' riding arena here (yet. . . it's on the list but not likely this year. . .)

Those two horses, I think I'll refer to as Crockett and Tubbs.  Yeah, Miami Vice, but really the only thing remotely related to that TV show is that one of the geldings is rather chubby (he's an easy keeper and I will need to watch his weight) and mentally I started calling him Tubbs.  Which led to me thinking of Miami Vice and that I could easily name his friend, the other gelding, Crockett, because they are a long time pair.

The LBM is still boarded here, although at the end of December her owner took her out of training for the winter.  Which ended up being a good decision (and one I wholly approved of despite the loss of training revenue) based on the winter we had which was mostly too frigid/snowy/icy to work horses with any sort of regularity.  Plus, it gave me all the decent weather/decent footing days to work the Poetess rather than trying to squeeze her in around a paying customer.  

The LBM started back in training on May first, and seems to have retained a whole lot of what we worked on last year.  So far, so good!

The Poetess? She loved having me all to herself, as it were.  Her training is coming along nicely, and I'm thinking by the end of summer we'll have made an amazing amount of progress.  She catches on pretty quickly, and working her 3-4 days a week has ramped up her learning significantly.

Meanwhile, inside the barn, there's been a whole lot of changes since the beginning of the year.  DH ran wires to the feed room, so now I have a light in there.  That was a great and very appreciated addition, especially on those dark winter mornings.

Next, he framed in the tack room.  Which included making the divider wall between the tack room and Poetess's wall go all the way up instead of just high enough that she wouldn't be able to jump out (as we'd originally built it in our rush to get her home.) 

I wasn't sure how she would respond to that after more than a year of having an unimpeded view to the front half of the barn--and out the front door, but she took it in stride.  That first night, when she came in from turnout, she pricked her ears, sniffed the new boards and I could almost visibly see her shrug and say "huh, guess that was gonna happen sooner or later".  I have, since then, stained the new boards so they match the existing stall wall.

After that wall was finished, DH began framing in the other three walls of the tack room.  And that began the mess of stuff pushed into the center of the room so that he could access the walls with a ladder, and also be able to bring boards into the room for building with.  A mess that daily drives me nuts and has me more and more anxious for the whole tack room project to be finished.

Photo taken before more stuff was added to the center of the room,

making a gigantic mess.

The next wall to be finished was the one between the tack room and the aisle.  Once it had enough boards on the 'exterior' to make DH realize it would be easier to set the door before the whole wall was covered, DH installed the door to the tack room, and then added the remainder of the boards.

In March, when the daytime temperatures were warm enough for three to four days at a stretch, I painted the tack room door.  Because I could.  And because I have a thing for color (that thing being the rationale that anything that doesn't have to be white shouldn't be white).  Using a semi-gloss alkyd paint, I made that door dark green.  (For those wondering, it's Behr paint and the exact color I had mixed for me is called Vine Leaf).  I used two coats of paint and was quite happy with the result.

The door after the first coat of paint, definitely green, but blotchy.

That wasn't the only thing I painted green.  In framing up the tack room (and getting ready to install a ceiling in it), the time had come to move the ladder to the hayloft out into the aisle (it had been in the tack room area for eons) and cut open the 'hay drop' in the loft floor that we'd framed in nearly 20 years ago when the barn was originally built.  

Using the old ladder, which had been given to me in 2005 by a friend who no longer needed it, with the now usable hay drop didn't work ideally.  So, DH offered to build me a new, longer, ladder to my loft.  Of course I said "yes, please!"  I mean, when DH offers to do something remotely horse related, I've learned to jump on that offer before it disappears never to be mentioned again.

With a brand new ladder custom made by DH, I absolutely had to paint it green.  Two coats of the same paint I used on the tack room door, and it was good to go.

DH didn't quite understand why I so vehemently insisted that the ladder needed to be painted before installation--or painted at all--until it was in place.  Then, he had to admit that it was definitely worth waiting the three days it took me to get it painted and cured before bringing it into the barn.  The green ladder by the green door just really looks sharp.

It's the little details like that that can make a big difference.

For the interior of the tack room, we'd had many discussions over the winter of what the sheeting material on the walls would be.  DH was hoping (ease of installation and price-wise) that I would say OSB was good enough.  HA!  He knows me better than that.  So his next suggestion was cheapy paneling sheets.  Also a "I didn't wait 20 years for a tack room to slap just anything on the walls" response from me.  Plywood?  Maybe.  Maybe, I said, depending on the grade of it.

Well, then, on Craigslist he found some tongue-in-groove knotty pine paneling that ended up being, per foot, about the same cost as the (less than ideal in my book) grade of plywood he'd been trying to convince me to go with.  Knotty pine paneling?  Oh Hell Yes!!  Winner!!  

So on Good Friday (because he had the day off work) he drove two hours one way and picked up an entire 'rack' of knotty pine paneling from the guy who'd listed it on Craiglist.  And on Easter Sunday, after church and after barn chores (we'd done family Easter on Saturday, remember), I got to staining that paneling so he could start installing it.

It's really a clear coat sealant with polyurethane, but it does put a very light tint to the wood, as you can see in the above photo of the stained (bottom) vs unstained (top) board

Interior tack room/aisle wall, 

partially paneled.

Now, we don't need an entire rack of knotty pine to do the inside walls of the tack room.  But, a neat thing that DH didn't tell me about until after he'd gotten the paneling boards home, is that the back side of the boards is milled for bead board.  So, my tack room ceiling is going to be finished in white bead board, and I spend the end of April starting painting boards for that with a semi-gloss white alkyd paint.  Two coats per board, and they are exactly the look I want for a ceiling (to reflect light back downward as much as possible).

And that is all the horse and barn related news at this little place here from October 2024 to the end of April 2025.

I Have a Horse Farm!

Let me tell you a story about not giving up.  Patience.  Endurance.  Hope.

As a child, I loved horses.  Not surprising, as it's a phase almost all girls go through. In fifth through seventh grade I sold hundreds of boxes of Girl Scout cookies in order to earn (pay) my way to Girl Scout summer camp, and for three years running I spent a blissful week at Camp Deer Trails doing the horse program that was a (somewhat pricey) camp option.

I came home from that third summer camp just wickedly smitten with the desire to own a horse so that I could ride all the time, not just one week in July.  I begged my parents to buy me a horse.  Practical people, they told me they didn't have the money for it, but if I could find a horse that didn't cost more than the amount in my savings account (my entire life savings for nearly 13 years, minus the time in Kindergarten I talked them into letting me buy a parakeet and birdcage) they would consider letting me get a horse.

Being someone who doesn't give up easily when there's something she really really wants, it took me a month of daily scouring the for sale ads in every newspaper I could get my hands on before I found an ad for a horse that didn't cost more than my bank balance.  This was the days way, way before internet and horse for sale websites.  And we (my parents and I) were pretty clueless that a horse is not a horse is a horse.  That maybe some horses are better or worse than others.

To shorten the story a bit, several weeks later, my bank account was empty and we were taking delivery of a nearly tailless (hence the low price) 8 year old Arabian gelding, delivered by it's former owner to the boarding facility that was just 2.5 miles from my house!  2.5 miles which I rode my bike, both ways, every day (except maybe Sunday if my parents objected) rain or shine, to go see and ride my horse.  When the weather turned snowy, my parents did drive me, rather than having me bike on slippery roads in the days where a 10-speed was standard and mountain bikes with fat tires were unknown, but a lot of times that meant I couldn't ride my horse everyday. There were stipulations to this deal: my parents would pay board, veterinary and farrier expenses as long as I was not only dedicated to this animal (ie. didn't lose interest in a few months) but also kept my grades up and stayed on at minimum the B honor roll (I'd always been on honor roll, often the A honor roll) every quarter of school and took riding lessons so I would learn to be safe in the saddle.  Because a cheaply priced horse of your own is not the same as an experienced camp or riding stable horse.

I really believe they thought this was a phase that might last a year.  It's lasted much, much longer than that.  All through my teens I got more and more involved in horses. I joined 4-H and was super active in that, being a club officer all but the first year of my membership and the club president for three years before I aged out of the program.  I showed my horse extensively in the summers.  My own horse needed retraining, which I learned to do via riding lessons. Then I sold my original horse and bought a half-ownership in another one, who was barely three years old and that I trained myself (again with help from my instructor during lessons).  That horse I paid for by doing barn chores for it's other owner for a year straight.

In fact, I graduated high school (almost five years after that initial horse purchase) with a 15-year goal: I wanted, by the time the 15th anniversary of my graduation and entrance into the adult world rolled around, to be married, have four kids, and have a horse farm of my own.

So, fast forward 15 years from graduation, and lots of hours in the saddle and even more hours mucking stalls at other people's farms.  I'm married, we have four children (the oldest of whom will be starting high school that Fall), and we're living in a house we built on the 40 acres we bought with the intention of making it a horse boarding and training farm.  Built the house first, and were making plans to build the barn, which I designed and DH was going to sketch up blueprints for then construct ourselves.

Then, fast forward 20 years plus a few months, kids going through high school and then college and then marriage (3 of 4), a recession, several head count reductions at DH's employer where we weren't sure he'd have a job to pay the mortgage let alone fund a horse barn, seven different horse farms I've been employed at (three of which I also boarded my horses at), and well, here we are this week.  Same 40 acres, same husband, same four kids now age 26-34, five grandkids, having owned and sold 1 horse and owned and put to sleep 4 other horses (including the kids' pony)--all of which I worked off board on during the time I owned them-- and this past summer bought yet another horse.

Which brings us to now.  I finally have my horse boarding and training farm.  The Poetess moved in on Wednesday, along with a large pony/small horse that will be boarding here over the winter and be in half-training while I tune her up (after not being handled hardly at all in 2023) and make her pretty much that anyone can ride type of horse people think of after having ridden at a camp or a riding stable.

It turned out to be 35 years (and a few months), not 15 years, but I didn't give up.  I kept hoping, kept trying, kept being patient, and now I have my horse farm.  I'm not mucking stalls for someone else. I'm mucking my stalls. I'm not working horses owned by my employer or that someone else is collecting the training fee for (while I get an hourly wage that is way less than the hour's training fee).  I'm the barn owner, I'm the trainer.  Goal attained.

Stalls are full!

Poetess in her new home

Now we just need to get the other four stalls built and rest of the pastures cross fenced so that I can have more than one client at a time!

Here Chickie, Chickie

After not raising any meat birds last year, and exhausting the supply I had in the freezer, DH and I decided it was time to raise some more.  I was a little concerned about being able to use the minimum order--25--with just two of us living at this little place here now (not counting DD2 being here this summer, because she will be gone back to college right about the time my broilers get butchered).  So, I polled my offspring, and they all said they would take at least three, leaving roughly a dozen for my own freezer, possibly less if the married offspring took 5+ each.

With that figured out, and having talked to my favorite chicken processor about his vacation schedule--being retired he takes an entire month off for travel every summer, I went ahead and ordered 25 broiler chicks.  While I was at it, I also ordered 6 pullet chicks (3 buff rocks and 3 of a blue egg laying breed) to boost my laying flock.  We've had a fox problem since May, and I'm down from ten hens to just four currently.  :0(

A little over a week ago, my chick order arrived.  Except, when I opened the box, instead of 30+ chicks, there were only 22!  The packing slip showed my entire order, plus the hatchery's typical extra "freebie" chick, and supposedly an extra broiler chick, totaling 33, yet when I took the chicks out one by one to put into the brooder, there were 11 missing. 

I had what I assumed was the freebie chick (see the striped one?) and 21 of my 25 broilers, but none of my laying breed pullet chicks.  No dead ones in the box, the other 11 were just plain missing.

I called the hatchery right away--well, about a half-hour later, had to wait for 9:00 a.m. business hours to start--and reported the odd situation.  In fifteen years of ordering chicks nearly every year from this hatchery, I'd never received a box that was missing chicks.  And only twice received a box containing any dead chicks (which sometimes happens due to shipping stress and/or rough handling of the container).

The hatchery representative was very nice, took my report, looked at my account, and offered to send out replacements for the missing chicks ASAP.  Plus enough extras ("They will have to be extra cockerels, no choice of breeds" she warned me) to make enough little bodies in the box so that the chicks stay warm enough en route this time of year .

The new chicks arrived five days later.  All of the 'missing' ones from the first order, plus more freebies. 

DD2 has taken it upon herself to name the ones she thinks will be roosters, despite the fact that they will more than likely end up in a soup pot this winter.  We currently have a Leonard, a Lionel, a Pierogi and a Stuart.  Leonard and Lionel appear to possibly be Easter Eggers, with puffy cheeks that look like they will turn into muffs and beards.  Pierogi is very obviously a Polish chick due to the pom-pom on his head.  Stuart (as in Stuart Little) is a true mystery so far. He's smaller than the other chicks, and we're not sure if he's a bantam--since we've never had bantams before, we're not sure how much smaller than 'normal' chicks they are--or if he is (more likely) a brown leghorn.  Time will tell.

Now there are 36 active little balls of fluff on skinny legs living in the brooder in our garage.  They will be there for about two more weeks before getting moved to the grow-out pen outside, and then 25 will go to freezer camp (aka the processor) in mid-August.  The rest are not meat breeds, so after they reach their full growth in several more months they will either be laying hens or roosters for the soup pot. 

But that's not the end of this story.  Nope.  Because DH just happened to be on a work trip for 10 days.  During this time, the chicks arrived.  Two days after their arrival, he texted to tell me that one of the guys he works with would like to get 10 of the broilers once they are butchered.  By my calculations, 3 for this offspring and 5 for that one and 5-10 for the one with a family and about 4 for the last offspring, plus 10 for the guy DH works with did not leave any for DH and I's own freezer.  That was a problem.

For every problem, there is a solution.

After many texts between me and DH (because he was, after all, on a work trip and coordinating phone calls across three time zones while working is difficult and spotty cell service makes phone calls nigh on impossible at times), DH and his work friend, and the work friend and some of his friends, a consensus was reached.  Would I be willing to order, and raise, and take to the processor another batch of 25 broilers? The work friend would pay all expenses and all 25 birds would be claimed; I wouldn't end up with way more birds in my freezer than I had room for.

After figuring when my brooder would be ready, when is the last date my favorite processor is willing to do birds in the fall, and what availability is with the hatchery, I went ahead and ordered that additional batch of broilers.  So, I will have chicks in my brooder from June 14 (when the original order arrived) through August 15 or so (when the next group is feathered out enough to live outdoors).  The grow out pen will be in use from early July through the end of September.  

Guess I'm a chicken farmer this summer.  I did manage to get a new poultry transport crate and a chicken catcher (4 foot rod with a narrow hook on one end) out of the deal.

Transition

This morning, I started my new job.  Which, actually, isn't a job, but the beginning of my own horse business.

You see, I am working at a different farm than I have been for the last decade-plus.  But I don't work for them.  I am not their employee.  That is not the way the pay  system is set up.  This is becoming more and more common at horse farms and other similar places: you hire in to perform a set of tasks, and you are paid as a 1099 employee (meaning you pay the taxes on your income, not the farm--and they don't have to offer you health insurance) rather than being hired in to work x number of hours on y days a week.  In other words, an independent contractor.  Self-employed.

Which is really ironic, as I've been wanting to have my own horse business for a long, long time (since I was sixteen), yet the time, finances, real estate, etc never aligned perfectly in order for me to do so.  And when I decided to look for some other farm to work at so that it would be possible for me to leave the situation I was in at the other farm (the decade-plus one), I didn't think of it as going out on my own.

Honestly, until this morning I thought of it as a stepping stone; a way to make a (much needed) break from the other farm while I get all my ducks in a row to pursue a business loan (this winter/next spring) to get the start up funds I need for finishing off the horse facility we began at this little place here when we seeded pastures, built the shell of the barn, and began growing hay more than a handful of years ago.  A horse farm was the original intent for purchasing this raw piece of land, way back in 2001 when we made an offer on it.

Two weeks ago, when I accepted the position at the new farm, I thought I was just biding time (and earning cash) waiting for next spring to get here when it would be construction season again--as in, once the ground thaws for putting in fence posts, running water lines, etc since I don't have the cash on hand to begin that stuff now before winter hits.

But actually, I just started my self-employed horse business.  I'm freelancing, as it were, at the new horse farm doing much of the same things I will be doing at my own horse farm once all the physical structure is installed.  Which means, as a self-employed person, the rubber knee boots I bought this afternoon to replace the ones that cracked and sprung a leak yesterday, are now a business expense.  A write-off against those income taxes I will have to pay.  And the miles I drove to get to the new farm (and home again) are also a business expense.

I'm kinda liking this.  I was so afraid to jump into self-employment partially because I couldn't see how to juggle the monetary stuff.  Yet, today it's so clear.  Need new boots to do the horse-related job because the ground is currently very muddy?  Buy the dang boots and write them off instead of worrying how to squeeze such a purchase into our personal budget (in other words, out of DH's paycheck).  Stop worrying about the 9 miles further drive to the new barn each day versus the old barn.  Those extra miles are now worth their weight in gold in reducing our income tax responsibility at the end of the year.  Gloves from last winter worn out and in need of replacing so my hands don't freeze this winter?  Just like the boots:  go get some good warm work gloves, write them off, and enjoy having fingers that stay supple and toasty instead of stiff and icy.

Just think; I have all winter to get the hang of this self-employed/business owner thing before laying out a big chunk of change (or signing on a loan) to complete my own farm at this little place here.  And, all the while, I am making contacts who are all potential future clients.

Win-win.  Not to mention I'm starting to feel like my lifelong goal of working for myself and no one else is actually obtainable.  A dream that really will come true.