Preparing for TrisKit

When we made an offer on TrisKit the owner wanted us to come ASAP. So we decided to go down that coming weekend which gave us a week to get the barn ready for a young horse. It was an extreme stretch, but I did it!

Here was the list:
-Spray the weeds...that took along time, but it was fun to driver the mower.
-Mow around the edge of fence.
-Trim all grass and weeds around edge of fence so that no plants were touching the hotwire causing the wire to not work.
-Get hay.
-Get pea gravel for the stall.
-Pickup the horse trailer from Ken.

And here's what happened...
Pretty much the week before TrisKit arrived was one of the craziest weeks of my life! MY boss was gone that week on vacation so I had the lovely task of filling in her position..haha! Anyways so that was pretty exciting except I had to stay late every evening to clean things up. So that took away lots of time for me to work on the property. I also had crazy random things pop up during the week that made it difficult to get things done.
So on Friday 8/8 I was finally able to get some more work done. Justin and I used Dan, my father in law's, utility trailer to go get the pea gravel. We wanted one yard of pea gravel, but the trailer could only hold 1/2 yard so we were going to have to make two trips. So we drove over to Lane Forest Products and they dumped a bunch of gravel in the back and we drove off. When we got back to the barn we realized hmm... this doesn't look like pea gravel..they actually gave us the WRONG ROCK!! Arggghhh!!! It was this very sharp gravel like they use for roads.. so we took it back and thankfully the gave us 1/2 a yard for free. So after a total of 3 trips we got our gravel and put it into the stall. It was then about 5:00 and we still needed to get hay and pick up the horse trailer by 6:30.....
Ok so we had to drive fast! We got into the Suburban and drove out to King Estate Winery about 30 min from the Porter's house... this was about the only place that still had hay for sale and it was $120 a ton which is the most I've ever paid for hay, but it was still better that the $300 a ton the feed stores wanted!! So we get out there to this beautiful place and we show up all grungy and felt WAYYY out of place hahaha! I go into the office to pay for the hay and there is no one in sight...I was getting really worried, but I heard a man cough in the back office so I called out, "Hello?" and the man came out. He had no idea they were even selling hay. Luckily he was able to find the secretary who had already left for the day, but had gone to the winery's restaurant to have dinner. She came back to the office and let me pay for the hay. As I was getting my checkbook out I asked if we could just by half a ton because we didn't think we could fit a whole ton in the trailer. She said yes so then it would only be $60.00! Yes I'm thinking, this is great!! Then I realized I had already pre-wrote the check for the $120.. so we just went ahead and bought the whole ton...I was optimistic we could fit it all in! So we drove out to the field to load the hay. Another obstacle, hehe, Justin really can't handle hay, his allergies just drive him nuts, so I had to load the hay all by myself...that was a challenge I'd rather never do again! Haha, however if I want to see horses in my future I have a feeling I will do that challenge again! Of course Justin was right and we couldn't fit all of the hay in the trailer and the back of the Suburban... so we ended up leaving 8 bales behind..sigh!!!!
So, while out in the boondocks, our phones were out of service and it we hadn't left the winery until 7:00 already a half hour past when we said we'd pick up the trailer and we still had to go hom and unload it... and I wasn't able to call Ken and tell him we're running late. We get back to the Porter's house and luckily Beth was home and she could help me unload the hay! Then we took off in the Yukon to get the trailer. We got to Ken's house at about 9:00 and got it all hooked up and headed home. Wow! What a loooooooong day!!!!!!! Sorry.. not much time to take many pictures..!