PrintI boarded my first horse, Tory, on a 1000-acre cattle farm just outside a major city. The horse facilities, if you could call them that, at the farm consisted of a run-down barn with stalls cobbled together from old cattle pens, concrete cattle feed troughs and lots and lots of barbed wire-fenced pastures, which would have benefited from some serious fertilizer. The scant wooden fencing that existed was chewed halfway through by bored cows and horses, and then it was patched together with more barbed wire or baling twine.
Oddly enough, our horses flourished on this program. There was minimal maintenance, minimal vet care and clueless help, but the horses were uniformly fat, glossy and happy. The farm grew its own hay and feed, and although an A-show trainer would have flinched at the care (or lack of it) the horses got, we had very few injuries or illnesses related to stable-management issues. Our horses were tough.
Beside the barn there was what could generously be referred to as a riding ring. Between the rocks, the weeds and the guy-wire strung across the middle of the track to hold up a light (the arena did have a light for nighttime riding during the winter, I’ll say that for the barn) it only remotely resembled a real arena. But we spent most of our time in the vast pastures or exploring the forest behind the barn. The farm backed onto a national forest, which meant that we had miles and miles of paths to explore, creeks to swim in and logs to jump.
It never occurred to us that a paint job on the exterior might have spiffed the place up a little, or that cleaning the cobwebs off the rafters might aesthetically enhance our environment. All of our time and energy were spent on the arena. We’d get work-parties together with scythes (we couldn’t afford a weed-whacker, and the farmer wouldn’t lend us his) to hack at the waist-high weeds and trim enough around the light-pole that you didn’t decapitate yourself riding under the guy-wire by accident.
We had a couple of decent instructors who came to the barn to give lessons every once in a while (these visits were always “coincidentally” scheduled the weekend after a weed-whacking work party), and I had a regular group of students that I coached at local events and hunter shows.
Jump Building Required Ingenuity
In order to provide suitable training for the kids, we knew we’d need some respectable fences to train over. Since we weren’t in a financial position where we could just go out and buy jumps, we were forced to improvise. There was a lumber mill down the road, and we discovered that if we sent the right kid out with a pathetic look on her face, (she could leak tears on command) she would almost always come back with some scrap lumber of suitable size. On two separate occasions, she came back with the makings of panel jumps. (Someone at the lumber yard had cut a 3x10 foot plywood panel just off the true measurements, and the buyer refused to accept it.)
We scavenged old tires, old oil barrels, traffic cones (no comment there), and old broom-heads. The father of one of my students, a pediatrician, had just finished repainting his office. He went in for a lot of cheerful, bright, eye-popping colors which his wife refused to let into their earth-toned house. We scavenged the leftover paint and brushes.
