Joining in on this..

1. A view of the barn

I wasn’t really sure what photos to take.  When you drive in.. this is what you see.  Arena visible on the right, stalls everywhere else.

Another view of the arena.  It’s quite a large arena, I just don’t spend very much time in there these days.

2. Your horse’s living space


The barn has two large 12-stall pipe corral ‘barns’ (6 on each side, aisle down the middle), three 6-stall mare motels (3 on each side, aisle down the middle), and various other stall setups around the outside edges of the barn.  Here you can see tack rooms and tie rails on the left and stalls on the right.

Fetti has a 12×36 pipe corral stall; standard is 12×24.  It makes me feel slightly better about not getting her out daily.  Walls left/right extend 12′, as does the roof.  She’s a tough pony so I don’t bother with shavings in the stall since she seems to do just fine without.

No turnout, but when the arena’s open we are allowed to let horses loose in there.  We’ll send the Haffies in there to run off steam and for some herd-time when we can.

3. In the tack room

I almost cleaned it up some before I took the picture, but let’s face it: this is a pretty standard state of my tack room.  Three saddle racks I installed when I moved stalls/tack rooms, various hooks and nails and shelves elsewhere, saddle pads both on saddles and in chaos on top of mostly-unused stuff towards the back.  Blankets live in a box under the saddles, bridles on the left with one spare on the right.. supplements, Renegade boots, fitting shims, and just about everything else I might use frequently lives on the shelves in front.  Organized chaos, but it’s working pretty well for me – although after seeing the picture, a few things definitely need to get moved!

I have a separate tack room for hay.  I pay a bit extra for that, but it means I get more working space in the tack room, I’m not trying to negotiate around hay bales all the time, and I can fit more than one or two in.  Friends can pick up several bales for me at a time (or I can order several at a time).  No truck means I can’t just go off and easily pick up a bale or two.. I much prefer not living bale-to-bale.

4. Where you ride

The barn has a big arena and two round pens, but most of my riding is on the trails.

  Back woods, sometime last spring.

We go across a river – yes, the photo was taken IN the river! – and come up the bank on the other side.  The river goes up to her belly and generally just below my feet.

This is the headed-home view – cross the road and head back towards the river.  (Note the deer.)  It’s less than ten minutes walking home from this point forwards.

5. My favorite feature: trail access, easily.

All of these are within a 9-mile round trip, no trailering required!  (Very important, given my lack of truck or trailer.)  I could do 25 miles from the barn, more if we chose to and had time.  There isn’t much in the way of flat trails, but we have plenty of hills and a variety of microclimates in the parks.