Plans

Since moving here in June of last year, most of my time was spent getting the house ready to open as a B&B which I did in September. Once that was accomplished, I turned to getting a barn up for the horses and to house guest horses as well. The bulk of it was up by Christmas and it is about 85 % complete now. It is certainly useable but I need to get the concrete poured for the tack room and wash rack. It would be great to get the tack room in and organized. It is so difficult to have to search for everything you need as we all do after any move. I hate disorganization and the shed where my harnesses and other horse related stuff is closer to chaos. To add to the pressure, I have a wonderful weekend planned to introduce guests to carriage driving in late April. I will talk more about this later but for now I am under that deadline to complete the barn.

I also have plans to add divisions to all of my pastures. The farm was only divided into two large fields and two small paddocks. I have enclosed a large flat area for my riding and driving which also serves as turnout for my stallions. It is challenging to plan out a way to enclose an area and yet keep the farm open enough for people to hike/walk/ride/ carriage drive without having to open gates at every turn. It is important to get the most production from the pastures as well as provide the most open arrangement for guests to be able to wander the farm.

I have cut some trails through the woods that are suitable for walking, riding, or an ATV. The goal is to have several nice loops open enough for a carriage to pass. The layout of the trails is nearly complete with one more loop to go. Next will be the more tedious clearing of little stumps, roots, and debris to make the path clear and safe. Eventually I want to add a foot bridge as well. There are several crossings of a stream that is dry in the summer but active the other three seasons. The complication will be to make it high enough to survive storm runoff. I think the benchmark was set last week with the flooding following our 6 inches of rain and will give me a good idea of what to do.