More Work, but Inside

With the growth of my wife’s training business, we’ve ended up with more horses. As you might expect, they don’t all get along. We ended up separating them in different pastures, which brought about another problem.

Water.

We had one of the buckets freeze during the cold CO winter, and when we dumped it, we had quite the blog of ice.

Fortunately my wife had started me on a solar water heater. I used a plan from Gary at Build It Solar. Here’s what I ended up with.

We filled it one morning, had a 25F day, and overnight the temp dropped to around 4-5F. The next morning there was a thin layer of ice, but not much more than was in the tank with the 250W heater.

A success, which is good, but just sends me on to the next project.

Boarders, Benches, and Sawdust

With new boarders slated to move in this winter, I have a few projects to work on. The first one is a new set of benches and saddle racks for the tack room. I also need to add a new shelter for horses, but that's going to take a bit more time.

Our tack room is a little crowded, but we made things work better by building a bench along one wall and then putting saddle racks on the wall above them. You can see the end of one bench, and the start of the second one. The second one was my project this week.

I got some wood and screwed together braces earlier in the week, and with a quiet night, I headed out to put the bench together. It only took about an hour, mostly because I had to move slow and switch bits out 3 times for each hole. When I got done, it looked pretty good and gives us more space for storage.

Now I just need to get 3 or 4 more saddle racks together. That's on the list for tomorrow.

A Happy Customer

My wife has been traveling a lot, and that means you-know-who has to stand in as the chef and waiter on the west end of the property. After serving one round to the first seating, I found an extra customer that was left out of the group, and locked out of the middle seating area.

So I made a second breakfast, allowing this patron to eat by herself.

A happy customer.