Puttin' in Fence

We knew that with the small amount of property we had that a dry lot would have to happen with having horses, otherwise our whole property would become a dry lot.  So we set to work right after moving in to get our dry lot in.  We wanted to get this done right away so we wouldn't have to keep paying every month to board our horses somewhere. 

We decided to go with post and pole on the dry lot. We liked the looks of it and it would serve our purose for it just fine.  We put a gate entrance from our driveway and another on the opposite side leading out to the pasture for ease of letting horses out to graze a few hours every day.  We also put a walk through between the fence and shop just large enough for us to slide through, but not horses to slide through and another walk through on the backside of the shop for ease of getting to the irrigation ditch. 

We also decided to grade  it so the water would run away from the shop and out to the pasture.  Next project in the dry lot will be building a nice run in shelter for the horses before winter hits.

First we had to remove the old building with the caved in roof.

The building all torn down and removed from the area

With the building gone we were ready to start cleaning up the area to prep for fence.

Bringing in the fencing

My muscle man unloading all the fencing materials

Bags of concrete for corner and end posts.  Tess's favorite spot during this process was staying cozy on top of the hay stack.

Digging the post holes

First section done!  There is a small walk through between the shop and the post just big enough for us to slip through to get to the ditch but not large enough for the horses to fit through.

This is about all I was allowed to do on this project, sit and take pictures.  The Hubby didn't want me hurting my back...I hate having back issues, BTW.  He said I was good moral support.

Horses are finally home!!!

Our First Project: Painting

One of the first projects we had to do came before we ever closed on the house.  Painting, painting and more PAINTING!!!

We had to paint the inside of the dairy barn, an old falling apart building, and what will be our chicken house because of risk of lead based paint.  We did this in 105 degree weather!  It was terrible and took several days.  We finally caved and went with the expense of renting a commercial paint sprayer.  I so wish we had done that on day one, it was worth every penny.

The Dairy Barn

It's a cute building from the outside, but the inside needed some serious work.

We had to start by removing all the stuff that had been piled in it over the years.

Then we went to scraping all the old peeling paint off.

Now let the painting begin!

I like to think of myself as "Sparkly" lol

The Chicken House

Before

 During

 After

The Old Falling Apart Building

Before

 After

We tore it down right after moving in.

 

Purchasing Our Homestead

The quest for the what we felt like would be the "Perfect Place" has been a long and drawn out process for us. We started feeling several years ago that we needed to be more self reliant.  But it seemed quite unobtainable to purchase a place that had enough space that we could do that.  I started researching things I could do to prepare me for this quest, so to speak.  I learned to can and dehydrate, we had small gardens (flowerbeds turned into gardens), we had 4 chickens in our backyard.  We always seemed limited as to what we could do, mainly because we didn't own our own place. For our family to be self sufficient, we needed to have our own place with more space.  It would take more then what we were doing to care for a family of six.

After several tried and failed attempts we were starting to lose hope.  Was this what we were really supposed to do?  We felt like we saw people everywhere with their pieces of property sitting and going to waste, why couldn't we get a pace when we wanted to put it to such good use.  We wanted to settle down with our kids and give them experiences and teach them the value of hard work.  It wasn't a bad thing to want, right?

Well, it finally happened!  We finally found our little piece of heaven.  It's quiet and beautiful and everything we wanted...almost.  Sure, we wanted a few more acres, but it will serve us well and we are happy with our decision.

So this blog is our adventures at our Little Red Homestead.  I decided to call it that because we have a red brick home and all of the out buildings are red as well...and it's relatively small at only 2 acres.  This will be our highlights and also our failures, or things we wish we'd done differently.  I will show you all the changes we will be making along the way, some of which we already have. So I hope you enjoy reading and learning with us along the way.