The whole reason we bought this farm was so that we could look out our windows and see our horses grazing in a field nearby. That dream, however, was a little hampered by the state of the only pasturable land looking like a war zone when we first moved in.
While Ted did clean up most of his junk, he did leave numerous burn piles filled with nails, glass, and debris, miscellaneous car parts in the woods, and a generally unkempt and unsafe area for our horses. We knew that we had some serious work to do on the field to get it to a horse-ready condition.
I gave notice to our boarding barn in the middle of August, intending to bring Yukon home in mid-September, but due to the barn manager's very different interpretation of the boarding contract than my contract lawyer husband, we ended up paying for board until October 1st. Not a huge deal, and in the end, I think this actually worked in our favor. Though I can't wait to see this sweet face every day.
I gave notice to our boarding barn in the middle of August, intending to bring Yukon home in mid-September, but due to the barn manager's very different interpretation of the boarding contract than my contract lawyer husband, we ended up paying for board until October 1st. Not a huge deal, and in the end, I think this actually worked in our favor. Though I can't wait to see this sweet face every day.
Danny is also finishing up his show lease, and will be coming home in the next month or so. We are really excited to have him home again too, so it means Chris and I will be able to ride together on our own horses for the first time. I will miss seeing Dan being so successful at shows and teaching his kid the ropes in the Pre-Childrens, but will have a good time bopping around on him in a lesson or two and giving him some time off this winter.
Back to the field... one of our first tasks was to identify where we wanted the fence line to go. We started by talking to King Conservation District and signing up for a farm plan, which will help us in the long run with planning and cost sharing of farm features. The farm plan takes two months to develop, so during that time Chris and I walked the proposed fence lines and got a feel for how simple some areas would be to clear over others. In the end, we decided to cut a fence that ran on the west property line, took a roundabout turn to the east, and followed an access road back to the big cleared area. We would also follow the road on the south, and the wetland on the east. This gave us approximately two acres for our field, though only about one of it is currently grass.
Chris bought a circular saw on a weedeater and attacked the low lying brush with that to get us started. We also had a chainsaw on a pole for limbing up trees, and a chainsaw for taking out the big stuff. In the end, we had a pretty good line through the trees!
We had a work party over Labor Day weekend and with the help of some good friends and family, we got a TON accomplished. We used the new farm truck (1991 International with a hydraulic dump bed) to transport branches to the ever growing burn pile and drag a huge burned stump into a flowerbed. Chris and Terry worked tirelessly to dig post holes, coming up with a pretty good system along the way. In the end, the whole place started to look a lot like a field (minus the actual hot tape fence). We were even able to create a garden around the old well casing that stuck out like a sore thumb.
The final step was a tractor date with a good friend to work at leveling out some of the "leg breaker" holes that were residual from the hog pen. A little work moving some fill dirt and these were starting to look pretty good too! Our magnet worked double time to get the nails out of the burn piles, but even those got cleaned up and covered over.
I dare say, we are ALMOST ready for horses!