Champagne Tastes on a Beer Budget

My mom always used to tell me I had champagne tastes on a beer budget, and she is RIGHT. Granted, I don't drink anymore, so I'm always open to suggestions on a modification on the saying, but "100% grape juice taste on a Kool-Aid grape-flavored beverage budget" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

My latest evidence is that my horse trailer kicked the bucket, so I started window shopping for a new one. I set a strict $3000 budget, then promptly told my husband how excited I was for the PERFECT trailer and it's only $11,500!!!! Practically in budget, right?? (Technically, it's in budget, it's just not in MY budget...someone's budget calls that a good deal, I'm sure)

Our latest project on the farm has been indulging my champagne tastes without breaking our beer budget: I have ALWAYS wanted a concrete floored barn. It's so easy to sweep, keeps the dust down since the floors aren't made of dust and being kicked around by the horses, it looks great, it's totally level...I could go on forever about why I love concrete floors. However, they're not in the budget...like, at all. However, I couldn't go another summer with my dirt floors, needing to wear a respirator to sweep my aisles, and making sure the horses weren't anywhere near inside when I wanted to sweep (which SUCKS because I like to sweep while I wait for them to finish dinner, since it's downtime where I need to stay in the barn to let them out again after dinner). This is exacerbated by the horses assuming that if I am in the barn, it is because I am going to feed them something, and as we can all see from our round-bellied friends, they are obviously starving to death.

We're coming out of winter...this is the time for the horses to look skinny, but Maya has other ideas. I'm unwilling to accept responsibility on this matter.

So — concrete floors. It's not gonna happen, at least not for a while. Luckily, we had just picked up a box grater, which is a tractor implement meant to dig up dirt/rocks that are uneven and level them to a smooth finish! Oh, perfect! We bought it for our driveway, which had ruts so deep we couldn't get the Subaru all the way up the driveway without bottoming out. Charles spent a few hours fixing the driveway a couple weekends ago, then we needed a new project for our new tool!

Before and After - a bit tough to see just how deep those ruts are, so just take my word that this was an impressive correction!

With box grater attached, some determination, and a power washer, Charles and I set up to the barn to fix my aisle. We estimated it would be a 4-5 hour long project, so obviously it took us a little over 8 hours to finish. On our to-do list:

1. Pull all 14 mats out of my barn

2. Gather the 10 extra mats from Charles' barn/garage (including moving our finish mower, two riding lawn mowers, a snowblower, and a push mower off the mats, then removing them, then putting all those things back)

3. Stack those 10 mats onto the tractor and bring them up to my barn

4. Power wash the mats (Emma) while using the box grater to dig up and level down the aisle (Charles)

5. Pick out all the rocks that were dug up with the box grater and are preventing a nice level surface from being created

6. Hand-level the barn to perfection, since the box grater can't quite get to the edges of the stalls

7. Wet the floors to allow the clay to compact evenly

8. Put wooden boards down on top of the wet clay and drive the tractor over them to compact the floors without ruining the leveling - please note that we only had enough boards to basically cover the length of the tractor, so that was a slow-going process

9. Bring the mats into the barn and carefully choose which mat goes where, since most of them have some sort of cut taken out of them to fit where they used to be, and some of them are not the same size as others (most are 4'x6', some were either cut or just for some reason were smaller, much to my chagrin)

10. Trim the mats that don't quite fit where they need to go with a box cutter and a lot of frustration

In between almost every step, we might as well add "chase goats and chickens out since it seems like a really fun activity to them but they are making it difficult to do whatever task we are working on at that moment" for accuracy.

I tried to take pictures throughout the process, but I'll be totally honest in that I started to lose steam and just needed to push through til the end.

Before:

Machine Leveling

Power Washing

Please note Centipede Willow in the "before" photo on top!

Hand Leveling

Final Product

Seems to be Monty and Cheddar approved, thankfully!

I still have my "wash stall" to level (off to the right behind the gate in this photo above), but I'm not too worried about getting that perfect because

• I don't have any mats to cover it and keep it level

• I do want to dig it up to put a drain in and turn it into a wash stall in the relatively near future

• I am still recovering, many days later, from how difficult this project was on my out-of-shape muscles

• I'm lazy

Each stall mat weighs about 100 lbs, which seems like 10,000 lbs by the time you get to the end of the day and have nothing solid to grab onto, so you're just pinching a 3/4" thick piece of rubber praying you don't drop it. 24 mats moved out of and back into the barn, 10 of which had to also be moved up to another barn, is about 4,800 lbs that we moved in total. This cements my philosophy that gyms are rendered useless by farm work.

If anyone ever thinks, "man, I need a ridiculously intensive workout to occupy my entire Saturday", please call me. I have a long list of those to do, but am thankful this one is over and my barn looks incredible. I'm excited for a MUCH less dusty summer!