Cob Jockey

I am officially under a 3 year contract on the barn as of July 1. Some moments it's terrifying to try to think of all the things that have to happen between now and actually living there, but most moments it feels so right. I am finding joy in things I never did before.

Like tending to the long neglected garden beds:

I didn't take a "before", but just consider what its neighbor on the other side of the indoor still currently looks like and you'll get an idea:

There's roses in there too...somewhere.

There's also joy in getting a hundred bales into the barn right before a big rainstorm. I am inheriting the greatest hay guy, who prefers to store my hay for me and just bring me a hundred bales at a time on a few days' notice as I need it throughout the year. He's worth his weight in actual gold.

I'm getting a crash course in pasture management and everything that goes along with it. Rotating fields, seeding, weed control, toxic plant identification, herd integration, managing fatties, the fact that Connor gas colics when rotated to a pasture with too much clover in August. Those kinds of things.

Poor, sick buddy. Nothing some banamine and electrolytes didn't fix right up, thankfully.

And also a crash course in facilities management, like, do downspouts that stand up to horses exist? (Probably, although anything is better than the original aluminum, and we're going to be installing them soon.)

The consequences of aluminum downspouts and horses

Side note - the downspouts in the above photo tie into drains that run from here, underneath the indoor, across the trailer parking area and into the 80ft deep ravine that separates our property from the subdivision. When I say these barn owners thought of everything in the construction of this place, they really thought of everything.

I'm not saying we'll never have to replace these either, but 1. they're cheap and available at the Lowe's that is two minutes from the barn so who cares, and 2. I took a flying leap and jumped onto this one several times before taking this picture, so at least they'll take more than one hit, unlike aluminum.