The very beginning of an adventure

After many years of dreaming and planning and hoping… it is finally happening.  We are buying a farm.  I can hardly believe it.

Dreams are funny things.  Sometimes they take ahold of you in ways you do not expect, and they have a magic and a power that can change your life.  I have spent all the years that I can remember – more than 50, now – dreaming about “my” farm.

I think this is a dream a lot of horse lovers share.  Horses are, for some of us, a passion in the truest sense of the word.  They are an intrinsic part of who we are or maybe who we need to be.  Certainly this love and connection has been a cornerstone of my entire life, and to finally be able to take this step feels … well, kind of massive.

We have looked for a farm, on and off, for a long time.  More than ten years, anyway.  We’ve gotten close once or twice; when we lived in CT, we actually put in an offer on a place, but it didn’t work out.  Now we live in GA, and we have found pretty much exactly what we were hoping for.  It’s a small place – just a bit over 6 acres.  There is a nice 6 stall barn and some really beautiful pasture.  The ring is a bit small, but has a good base that we can improve on and expand.

The house is smaller than what we have had before, and I’m pretty excited about that.  We have too much stuff, and I am anxious to downsize.  I have all sorts of ideas about what to do with the house, but for the moment we are lucky that it is move in ready, and all I’m planning to do is paint a couple rooms.  My first focus is on the barn and the ring.

The barn is in good shape, overall.  I want to put in dutch doors, add some siding, put mats in the aisle and finish out the tack room.  We are also going to upgrade the electrical service, improve the lighting and install proper fans since we get hot weather here (a bit hard to remember at this time of year when it is freezing!)  I have these visions of having sanded down, stained and poly-ed all the wood so that it gleams… tucking the horses in with a thick bedding of bright clean shavings, and walking through the barn to enjoy the sounds of them peacefully munching their hay.  Maybe there will be a glass of wine to enjoy while we sit in a comfy bench by the tack room taking it all in.

I thought it would be fun to chronicle the journey from where we are today, to the realization of that vision.  Feel free to join me!