At the barn #18 - And a good time was had by all

Despite the closing on my farmette being delayed until next Tuesday, I'm moving ahead with improvements, namely a new full sized arena. I envision 100 x 250-ish, comparable to what I work in at my trainer's place. I have cleared and mowed the area in preparation for the tons (literally) of sand that will be needed to bring it up to grade. It was a pond at some point in the past, and has been a marsh more recently, but is thankfully very dry at the moment. This will have to be done bit by bit as finances allow.

In the meantime I'm researching arena footing and have set up a temporary area to work in... especially for Cowboy and Lorraine to do some jumping. It will be a good project for Val and I to transition to working outside of our paddock as well. We also used up a stack of leftover lumber for the boundaries. Gotta love free materials and recycling :)

                                     

Val and I had a nice cool morning ride yesterday. We worked on transitions, not avoiding the suddenly scary corner (that was fine on Wednesday?!) and did our share of turns on the forehand. After evening feeding there was a cookout at the barn celebrating our new situation. There were burgers, dogs, marinated portabellos, some adult beverages (!) and plenty of carrots. FYI -  neither Val nor Cowboy care for potato chips. We hung out until the mosquitos tried to carry us away.