Getting the farm Horse-Ready
To start with, we’ll just include one part to this post, but there will be two feature documentary length vlogs in here eventually. It’ll be followed up by horsey-part tour when the other temporary delays (like the paint not drying, and now the corvid infestation) are over. We’re holding off doing finishing touches to temporary (3-5 year) horse housing until these issues are overcome.
Part 1: June to October 15th 2024…
When we arrived, the dairy building looked like this:
It had no water supply, no working electric, and no safe stabling. It had a VERY dodgy roof at the back end which wouldn’t have survived Storm Eowyn, and there were internal pipe leaks, inadequate guttering and blocked drains.
Outside, the field had fallen down dykes (dry stone walls), broken or missing gates (see image) and the entire 19 acre parcel was unfenced internally.
An old boundary gateway for the field, mangled by cattle and held up with twine and barbed wire.
We needed to house 3 horses: A 10-year-old spaniard, a weanling, and a flighty-in-the-stable unbacked 3-year-old. They were arriving on October 16th. The race was on (amongst everything else we were doing at the farm), and the budget was TIGHT.
The 55-minute vlog below covers everything we did to get from day 1 in June, to pony-arrival-eve:
That took us through this whole before, during and after, inside the dairy:
55 minutes was long enough for one video, especially with the amount of very sketchy bits health and safety wise, so we’ll circle back with Part 2 later.
Part 2: October 16th to November 3rd…
This part is coming soon and will include the final [rush] jobs, the horses arriving, fencing, finishing touches to the Dairy for a very bad winter, and us all settling in, next!