These have been busy weeks on the farm. It has finally been dry enough that the guys could get in and start working on the ring again. It went from being a very sad, soggy mess:
To being laser leveled, and having the next layer (M10) installed:
I am pretty excited about the progress (and the extra 20′ we added to the long side…) and am definitely getting excited to see the footing delivered in the next few days. THEN we’ll have another project to do; we are going to edge the arena in landscape timbers, I think. I don’t want all that fancy footing washing away down the creek in the next downpour. That is certainly going to be a big project but after literally months of waiting – on weather, crews, dirt and so on – I’ll be super glad to get it done.
We’ve also made a bunch of progress on the barn.
You might remember that we had decided to finish the tackroom… it was functional before, but not totally weather tight and definitely not as pretty as I wanted it to be. This is what it looked like when we bought the place:
You can see from the picture that there was an opening under the roof and the “window” was just like the ones in the stalls. There were gaps in the outside wall where the boards had weathered over time and although you can’t see it in this pic, there was also a gap at the bottom of the outside wall where it didn’t quite meet the floor. We had it insulated and finished with beadboard walls and then I painted it and put in a nice light fixture.
Next job is to put up all the pretty brass fixtures – that is scheduled for tomorrow but for now, it looks like this:
The outside of the barn got a makeover as well!
We really wanted dutch doors for the stalls, and decided that while we were doing that, we might as well put new siding up, too. Here is the before shot:
And here is the after version!
The barn also got all new skylights and had the roof cleaned off. Looks so much better!!
There is still a lot more to do. I am also re-finishing the grills and frames on the stalls themselves. They are functional as is but I like them better painted black.
Hedgerow Farm 