^As of now it's an informal agreement. We've been friends with his family for a long time (I know, I'm sure that's been said before and shit still happens), but we do trust that they are not going to try to screw us anymore than we would try to screw them.

His dying was hard on ALL of us. We are helping them, and investing so much, partly because of everything he, and at time they, have done for us. However, this is also the better option for us at the moment too. It's much cheaper for us to invest some money into fixing the place up (and in exchange, keep our horses there) than it would be for us to either buy property/build our own barn OR to have to board 6 horses somewhere.

Right now, we are leasing some land from a farmer and while it works, it's not ideal. The only upside is that the place is literally a minute down the road, and it's relatively cheap (paying about $250/month for the 4 horses we had there, though we only have 2 left there at the moment since we're in the process of moving them over, so it's $100/month now). But there's no arena, nowhere to ride. No stalls. Our only other options would be to buy land (super expensive especially since we'd have to build everything from scratch), or board...which, around here, would wind up costing us at least $200/horse...

Believe me, my mom and I especially have stressed over the amount of money that's been invested, but my step-dad keeps telling us that it's still much cheaper than if we had to buy property or board somewhere else, which is true. I imagine we'll be there for at least a few years, so it will be worth it in the end (ie we'll have spent less in investing than we would have boarding even where we are now). So really, it's a win-win for everyone involved.

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And an update, which is why I came back to this thread, lol.


Someone had approached my trainer's son-in-law and asked if they could cut down some of the big trees that were out in the pasture. This is something my trainer had wanted to do but never had done because it was somewhat of a long process, not to mention noisy, and it was hard for him to ride when there was a bunch of huge trucks and things coming and going. The beauty of it is that they paid "us" (trainer's SIL, though he used the money to put toward the barn stuff) decently for the lumber. So, we not only got the pasture cleared some more, but we got some cash out of it too.

The downside is that it's been wet and muddy here, and they got a bunch of trees down but couldn't take them out until the ground froze, or else risk getting stuck. And, because they were needing access to some places where we were going to put up the rest of the fence, it had to be put on hold.

Luckily though, the new shelter is finished and all that's really left is putting up the rest of the fence, which shouldn't take very long. I think (but I'm not sure) that they are done removing lumber and so trainer's SIL should be able to get the fence up this week. Once that happens we can finally get our last two horses over there and the process will more or less be complete.

The electrician also finally made it over and got our new electric lines installed, which will make it much safer to plug in the heated buckets. It's so nice! My trainer's other daughter (who lives a couple hours from here) came down to ride her horse yesterday and she cried when she saw everything that had been done. She was so thankful for what's been done to help improve her dad's barn.

We winterized the barn a few weeks ago (it's been so unseasonably warm that we didn't need to do it as early as we usually do). All the troughs have their heaters and all the stuff that might freeze has been packed and brought into the house for the winter. I hate winterizing!

So next year the plan will be to re-do the corrals near the barn, and the stalls will be last on the list as they're ugly but not unsafe, so they're lower priority. I just hate this time of year with all the mud. Everything is so gross.


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