Cob Jockey

Our co-op model's success is due, in part, to a model that requires the bare minimum of us on a day-to-day. The horses will be fed, watered, looked over, and where they are supposed to be, and that's about it. 

But that means there are a lot of "I'll get to that someday" things that pile up, and while I handle many of them myself, I can't handle them all. In fact, I don't think I could have signed on to buy this barn before I learned that lesson - that asking for help isn't a sign of weakness or a risk that cannot be incurred lest I take up too much space in someone's life, but it takes a lot of strength, especially for a card carrying independent woman like me.

Watering and dragging is about as much irregular farm maintenance as I can fit into my life on a weekly basis right now.

So a couple of months ago, I asked the boarders if they would be willing to give up a Saturday before winter for a pre-winter fall cleanup day. They all enthusiastically said yes. So that's how all four boarders, two significant others and the current BO spent a rainy (bless) Saturday last weekend doing well, all the things.

Fudge demonstrating one of many improvements installed on barn cleanup day: a coyote poop washing station in the wash rack

We cleaned gutters and cleared downspouts. We replaced the tines on the Parmagroomer, which had worn down by about 2" over the years. We raked the footing away from the indoor walls. We chainsawed bushes that were growing into the fence. We greased the slam latches on all of the gates and adjusted the hinges so that they close easily again.

He's such a keeper 💗

We replaced worn-out crossties and vacuumed the fans and auto-waterers. We did a lot to the water wagon - pressure washing the algae off the inside of the tank, drilling some additional holes and airing up the tires. We moved jumps from the outdoor to the indoor. We fixed a drippy spigot. We deep cleaned every surface of the barn, threw out anything expired and made a giant "Whose is this?" pile, which everyone went through, picked out their stuff and wrote their initials on it with a sharpie.

We also made a giant donate pile, both from us boarders and from the barn owner who is slowly getting rid of things neither he nor I want to keep from the equipment barn. The donate pile is going to a therapeutic riding barn, and included a barely used double-wheel wheelbarrow and an entire bag of pasture seed mix among many other things, so I can't imagine they'll turn it down.

But it wasn't just maintenance. We also made some improvements that will make our lives easier, like hanging a pull-out drying rack in the bathroom so that we actually start using the barn's washer, putting a 2x4 above one section of the arena kick wall so that we can store bag chairs there, and something I've wanted to do for a long time: replace the barely usable and always dirty fixed wire corner shelves in the wash rack with something much more functional:

Every horse gets one basket, and then there are two baskets for the barn (brushes for scrubbing waterers, etc). Most importantly, they all hang on hooks and can be taken off the wall for regular cleaning, unlike the old shelves.

It was incredibly cathartic to see the list disappear quickly under so many hands. I made a nice lunch for everyone, a Middle Eastern chicken soup and sandwiches, but it was the least I could do for as much work as everyone did. And at the end of it all, every single boarder said, unprompted, that we should do this twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall.

Meatloaf giving me the side eye because she was massively over my shit in the eighth hour of following me around the barn that day.

In all of the biggest and all of the smallest ways, I could not run this farm without these wonderful people in my life, and I will never stop being grateful.