You would think the school would want to err on the side of caution too, seeing as how penalizing people for following CDC guidelines will likely result in people not following said guidelines.
Surprisingly, our cases have been relatively low this school year.
Progress:
One paddock ready for horses!
The rest of the paddocks still look like this:
There is still no shelter in the fields. In a panic, I ordered a metal carport on October 4th. It was supposed to arrive at the store for pickup October 14th. I figured it would be something until we have time to build a shed. Well, it’s MIA. “In transit” somewhere, casualty of the current shipping crisis, nobody can give me the faintest idea when I may see it.
There are 3 remaining stalls on the property, but they are in terrible condition. Not only is the building ready to collapse, the sellers left them like this:
(ETA: this picture doesn’t do the stalls justice of how bad they are)
I opened the first stall to start mucking and the door fell off. So Mr. Texarkana is going to try to do some emergency carpentry this week to get the stalls sturdy enough for my bohemians.
The horses move next weekend, no matter what. Our lease on our farm is up to the next week.
Maybe it is just the picture but that door looks pretty narrow. This is pretty dumb - but can you take the fronts off the stalls and get in there with a front end loader? Or would the stalls collapse? This definitely is not a wheelbarrow job.
If the other fencing is just messy but still functional then a strand of hot wire along the top or partly down may keep the horses off the fence and out of trouble. Wire conducts electricity so much better than tape. etc. I like that stuff HOT 
. That discourages naughty behavior.
We don’t have a FEL yet. I don’t think it would fit anyway. I agree, not a wheelbarrow job. I don’t think they ever mucked out these stalls- just threw more straw on top.
The fence is coated high tensile wire with a hot coated wire on top. Very easy to fix, it’s just a matter of me not having the time to do it yet. No need to go messing with adding anything else to it, I just need to replace the staples and insulators that have come off the posts and tension the fence. Most of the tensioners have cracked, so those have been time consuming to replace on used wire. We got our fence energizer working today so everything is hot.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint… but we do need to sprint this week so the horses can be moved!
Best of luck sprinting to the MVP (minimum viable product) stage. You got this!
Yowzers those are some nasty stalls. What an annoyance to have that on top of everything else to do. It’s all gonna look and be lovely though!
You’ll be relieved to get the horse move done I bet.
I will be so relieved when they are moved. It’s been super frustrating getting to this point.
Using that shedrow was never in the original plans, even back when we naively thought this was a “normal” sale. We didn’t realize how utterly nasty the stalls were when we first looked at the property, I’m assuming there was new straw on top. But our realtor found out early on they never pulled permits on that barn. It wasn’t installed up to code and it’s in violation of the setbacks. At the time, there were other stalls and sheds on the property, so we were just going to have it removed or tear it down. When they stole the other buildings, we looked into getting the shedrow moved closer to the fields so we could use it more easily. One quote was $12k! 
Now we have exhausted allllllll of our other options so I get to deal with cleaning it. Not cool.
I understand. It took us 6-7 months to get our place horse ready and I was ready to pull out my hair and stab anyone in the eyeball at any time. It was bad.
That’s so crazy they took the other buildings.
Crazier to not follow the rules when building the shedrow. 12k! Heck that would go a long way towards a new barn.
With everything else you’ve been dealing with then to have to try and sort that mess out. Ugh. The good news is you won’t have to shovel that mess out ever again.
@Texarkana is that horse 
or cow ? It’s so much ! It’s like a hoarder collected a bunch of shit. Either way your new place looks like it has so much potential to be your dream farm. This is the story you cry and lament about in the moment and laugh about years later when you have everything perfect. So happy for you.
@ThreeWishes it’s horse believe it or not, just with months/years of compacting. Plus the stalls are in a low area and I can tell they have flooded.
The rodent tunnels through the layers of manure were unreal. First time I have ever cleaned stalls and had mice just running every direction nonstop for the first 30 minutes or so.
I am too old for this , both literally and figuratively! I was only mucking the manure into a pile since my wheelbarrow was still at the farm we rent, only got about 1 and 1/4 of another stall piled up.
Side note: I went to three stores yesterday trying to buy a new wheelbarrow. I figured I deserved a nice, new, huge one if I was going to have to tackle these stalls. Wheelbarrow supplies seem to be yet another victim of the pandemic. Lowes, TSC, and the local farm and garden store were completely wiped out of wheelbarrows. I didn’t have any more time to devote to the search.
I always pick up my Rubbermaid farm carts at Home Depot, but Ace Hardware is the largest purchaser of Rubbermaid stuff, so that might be another place to check, if you have one. Home Depot’s website (or app) has real time inventory that’s pretty accurate, so you can check without actually taking the time to GO.
What an incredible chore!
My God. What was wrong with those people. ? That is literally years of and ignoring good care of their animals. Breathe. One step at a time. You got your foot in the door to your dream farm. Who cares that the last owners were complete idiots. Kick the door in, buckle down and one day at a time make it your own. You got this!
If anyone working in the barn gets sick, tell the doctors you’ve been exposed to rodents.
There must be someone who wants thoroughly deteriorated poop for fertilizer.
How much does tractor work cost? Got any neighbors with a loader you can pay? Or get it in a pile and advertise composted manure on CL. YOU must load. HAHAHA!!!
Hansel and Gretel would have loved to be there when the mice ran out. They would have solved the rodent problem pronto.
This is not approved
OH MY LORD… I hope there weren’t animals in those stalls recently. That’s a lot of crap.
Looks like you’ll make a nice place out of it though. Can’t wait to see the progress.
The stalls are an accurate representation for how everything at this property has gone since we went under contract last February. Mountains of around every corner, literally and figuratively.
But like @lenapesadie said, we are soooo close to that MVP finish line. Once we are in, we can tackle everything else little by little.
I would have died when the mice ran out. That’s insane.
So close to getting the horses home, you got this!
I sure hope there was compensation for all the stuff they stole and the mess they left you. That is horrible.
Wow, @Texarkana. Kudos to you for slogging through all this and if it’s any consolation, the rehabbed fencing looks really lovely! Just from the pictures, the barn appears to have good “bones” and I have no doubt you will have it in top shape soon too, crappy location aside. The manure and rodent situation sounds unreal. I hope you’ve been wearing a mask when mucking to keep all the particles of nastiness out of your respiratory system! I also hope there’s a special place in hell for these sellers for keeping their animals like that, stealing your property, and leaving you with this disaster. Maybe not in the inner circle, but at least far enough in that it’s never sweater weather, you know what I mean?
Hang in there!!
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