Update on Back on Track

Every day a new piece of the puzzle comes together! We talked to an excavator that was recommended to us by a couple of people because he's good and he also has a horse farm, so would be knowledgeable about that part of it. He was just who we needed to talk to. I've been thinking about doing a barn/house combo and have been in them and talked to people who live in them and they all loved it. But some of the reason I thought of that was to save money and in order to live over the barn, I would have to build a much bigger barn than I would normally. So I've been going back and forth about the whole idea. The excavator, Steve, really discouraged us from living over the barn, although he has a friend that does it and loves it. He sited safety reasons and said "You will build an outside riding ring, people will start to board here, and pretty soon you'll have people knocking on your door all the time!" So he really advocated keeping house and horse areas seperate and then told us about his farm and a run-in he had made he thought would work well until we really knew where we wanted to put things.

Steve's farm is only 5 miles from ours and we went over and he showed us a run-in, 24'x24', an open end on two opposite sides of the building with a gambrel roof where he can store 600 bales of hay! That would be quick and easy to build, possibly moveable and we'd have hay storage in an area where if it ever, God forbid, caught fire, you wouldn't lose a barn or horses, since they're free to come and go. He said his horse loved it. They had built a small house with a barn just behind it, and he wished they had built the barn much farther from the house. They had started with a wooded 4 acres in the late '80s and had slowly built their farm over the years. His wife came riding out of the woods on a beautiful 4yo Friesian stallion, and Alan was awestruck, thankfully by the horse, although his rider was one of those people that, upon meeting, you know are beautiful inside and out.

So Steve was the person we needed to talk to at the time we needed to talk to him. I do think having moveable buildings at this point is the smartest thing to do, and so the search is on for the perfect house plans!