Saturday, March 19, 2011

Kasper

Kasper thinks cameras are for nibbling on.


I finally got organized enough to get him into the arena. He was a little nervous.


Noises outside the barn worried him.


But he settled down really well and we worked through a few of the easier Stage Three exercises (see previous blog entries) and he remembered all kinds of stuff that he hasn't done all winter. In this picture he's trotting circles around me. He stayed focussed on me in the arena even though he was off the lead rope the whole time, and he didn't seem worried that he'd left his friends behind. All very encouraging. A good start to the season.

Barn Cat Moves Indoors

At first, living indoors was pretty spooky for Ginger.


And then he discovered beds.

Friday, March 4, 2011

The Next Big Project

This is the next big project. It's not a horse. It's not a cow. It's an equestrian centre! I moved here in January, and am settling in. (And somewhat snowed in). The place has a barn with stalls and runs, several paddocks and some small pastures. Here are a few photos. These will be some of the "before" photos. I hope, by the end of the summer, to have "after" photos.

The first project in the spring will be new fencing. (The barn in the back is my neighbour's barn.)


This is my barn, which houses a riding arena, stalls, hay storage and tack rooms. It's thirty or forty years old. It's made of post and beam construction with huge pressure-treated posts. Which is great. But the posts have heaved with the frost and now the barn sides and roof swoop up and down like a sine wave. Apparently, post by post, this can be fixed. So, after fencing, the next project will be to change the foundation around each post to prevent heaving, level it all out, and put on siding. I'm thinking red tin.


This shows the swoop in the wall from in the arena.


Here's a shot of the central hallway.


This is the south side of the barn where the horses access their runs from their stalls. Snow is an issue! When the roof slides, the doors are plugged and have to be shovelled out. The roof slid just before I moved in so I didn't have to shovel that. (Phew!) But it's set to slide again...