Farm Sharing

Most people would think of FARM SHARING as me letting other people come here and utilize our farm for gardening or something but what I'm talking about is with the in-laws. They have 5 acres a couple miles away without any horses on it and I am running out of grass here, due to the super dry spring and summer we have had. So I asked if I could take all 4 horses over there for a month, until it rains and the grass has a chance to grow again. That way we wont have pastures of weeds here.

 

Here is there horse, Reign, in our front pasture.

They said sure, come over, we'll check out the fences. So off we go and what do we find? A total mess. No fence is complete or safe for horses, no water trough is clean or holding water, except one that is totally nasty but it could be cleaned and the pastures are all weeds. No grass is growing, its all weeds.

 

ALL WEEDS.

 

Our pastures hadn't been used in at least 2 years so they had plenty of grass when we moved in but also plenty of black berries. Lan spent a lot of time mowing them and now the horses have been grazing. The back pasture is bigger and has more stickers but less grass growing then the front pasture.

I'm thinking about buying some round bales to supplement the grass, just so they slow down a bit on the grazing. I'd love to have 10 tons stored in the barn before winter because I have a feeling this winter hay will be $500 per ton and I just can't do that.

 

All the dark spots are poop piles.

 

 

Poop and very weathered fencing.

 

 

I also want to take the tractor out there and scoop poop out of the front pasture. Lan and his dad think I can just drag it but horses don't eat around their poop so its got to be picked up.  I will do that later this week when its cooled off a bit and after I've done my daily workout, supposed to be only 75 in a couple days. Spreading composted poop is a whole other story, that's perfectly fine to do.

 

Last week we purchased 5 gallons of semi gloss white exterior paint and I'm going to repaint the porch rail and this fence. I wanted to pressure wash it first but with the sand in the well Lan said paint over the dirt if need be. Of course, I'll brush off what I can before I start.

 

I think the fencing will look pretty sharp when its finished.