November 11, 2021

Barn Chores Saturday

I don't own a barn, but I do pretend I do sometimes!

Me and the BO working to take down a temporary electric paddock fence we don't need anymore

See the thing about the co-op is that the owners aren't involved in the day-to-day except for anything involving a tractor, so there are some "someday" chores that aren't in our AM/PM chores list but still need to get done from time to time.

What with needing to keep an eye on Disco and the weather being the best it's likely to be for months last weekend, I decided to knock a whole bunch of the things on our co-op Todoist "Barn Chores" board out at once on Saturday.

 

Rolled over Saturday morning and read the NWS Indy Forecast Discussion, as I do every morning, and even the meteorologists were telling me to get outside! It was our last few days of 60s and sunny before the weather is projected to turn sharply colder and wetter this weekend with no end to that in sight.

(In addition to just wanting to keep an eye on him, spending the whole day out there also gave me the chance to walk out once an hour, give him a treat, scratch him and walk away. This pony will NOT be hard to catch, I swear on the memory of every time I've walked Connor down in the pouring rain/snow/sleet/thunderstorms, I will not let that happen)


I scrubbed the feed bin so that we could dump feed into the right side rather than dropping bags in.


This is such a great feed bin. Each side holds more than two 50lb bags of feed.

I went through the feed room to get rid of anything that shouldn't be there, vacuumed the whole thing, and got rid of duplicate tools that were taking up space.

At only 4 feet deep, this feed room is too small to have anything "extra" in it

All of this is going to the equipment barn which is a separate building about 50 feet from the indoor

I put a couple of screws in to hold up the shelf that rests on the feed bin, and also finally got around to cutting the excess chain off of the hook I put in last year to hold the feed bin lid up. Previously, the BOs pulled the feed bin away from the wall far enough to rest the lid against the wall, but with the hook, we gain a few more inches of space in the feed room by pushing it back - and every inch matters in a feed room this small!

I cleaned the garage door between the barn and the indoor that we just recently started using. My old trainer never used it, but I find it a lot easier to push a button to drop the door than to close alllllllll of the big, heavy arena doors in the transitional weather. It should keep the stalls warmer, and I hope it cuts down on dust in the barn, although it probably won't - our dust doesn't come from our TruTex footing.

I wasn't going for completely clean - it's better than it was.

I took down the aforementioned electric fence. I did the step in posts and the rope, and the BO used the tractor to get the corner T-posts out. Now we can bushhog this hill and get back to using it for conditioning.

Meatloaf helped

I hung the last girth rack and helmet rack. We don't really need them, but we had them sitting around, so they may as well get used.

And I redid the feed board, as well as (finally) hung the feed board and calendar that have been sitting on the counter for the last year since I redid the feed room the first time.


 

So small, but so functional



It felt good to get so much done! These are the types of things that just itch my brain every time I see them undone, and so it's nice to go to the barn and feel like I can just enjoy myself. Winter can come now!

11 comments:

  1. Sounds like a very productive weekend!

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  2. It's so organized and nice - I love your barn! However, no, winter may NOT come now. HATE HATE HATE

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    1. Yeah...really not looking forward to that, especially since it's my first winter not on full care board ever.

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  3. I love chores days like that where you get a ton knocked off the todo list. I definitely need to remember that it's worth doing that at the house too, even though it feels like a neverending list that isn't worth bothering to get off the couch for!

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    1. Ugh yeah, let's not talk about all the house stuff I let slide while working on the barn last weekend, lol.

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  4. I lov3 those days of puttering but in a useful way. Doing it in warm sunshine makes it even more enjoyable.

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    1. Same. It's nice to just not have an agenda or a time limit and knock things out.

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  5. So nice that the weather cooperated for Disco's first weekend home so you could be productive while babysitting!

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    1. Yeah, I really could not have asked for better weather in November!

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  6. I fucking love how organized and neat everything is *goals* sigh

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