Updating my Horse Shed – The Dog Days of Summer Winding Down

Updating my horse shed with plywood, a solar light and shelf and my tiger lily photo gallery! With August sliding away I am thinking along with the rest of my fellow Minnesotans: Where the heck did summer go?! August has always been my favorite month of the year. Maybe because I was born in February I am cold blooded – I wish I could take a heat lamp everywhere with me like I’m an iguana. There is literally nothing I hate more on this planet than air conditioning and, considering we shoveled snow for 6 months this last winter, I think my feelings are quite reasonable.

My tiger lilies this year were a for real: OMG!!!!! I am convinced that plants just pick people. I know someone who can plant any hosta anywhere, neglect it in every way and, regardless, those hostas flourish!

Me on the other hand, if I plant a hosta, it won’t matter what I do or where I plant it, IT WILL DIE.

Bleeding Hearts chose my mom and her bleeding hearts every year are literally jaw dropping. After killing two bleeding hearts I gave up on them. (Tulips are also totally doomed with me.)

HOWEVER, when it comes to peonies and, apparently, tiger lilies. I CAN DO NO WRONG!

I’ve had people ask me what I feed them, if I cut them back in the fall, what my secret is etc. My answer: “I transplanted them right there… sometimes I water the tiger lilies when I feel like it… I don’t water the peonies. I have no idea why they’re doing well but I sure love them!” (See my peony gallery here.)

A manageable to-do list was absolutely lovely because it meant I simply had a lot less to do this summer than I did last summer.

I’m down to only one “urgent” thing that I’ve been slowly (and literally) hacking away at.

For those of you have been following along you know I’m talking about removing the rock and stucco from my house. I literally spent this entire summer doing every single other outside thing that I could possibly think of to avoid doing that job lol

Is it still procrastinating when you get other stuff done?

I crawled under my deck and added extra support along the center of it. (Its something I’ve been meaning to do to take out a bit of bounce that I found extraordinarily annoying. The bounce got WAY worse after we had record snow falls in February and March this year.)

Talking about working in the heat!

Two hours crawling around under my deck digging in four new posts with a garden trowel and adding two new beams in what can only be described as A FRICKING SAUNA! I was totally drenched when I finally hauled the bags of concrete under there and got those posts cemented in and done.

Now I have a deck that’s practically indestructible with twice the support that it probably needed and that makes me very happy!

I moved my stock tank into the back of my garage this spring and did some work to the outside of it.

I had some sheets of 2″ thick foam board leftover from when I remodeled the little house. So I built a box around the front of it with 3/4″ plywood which I lined with foam board. I also cut the fence and put in two new posts to tidy everything up. Anytime I need to I can unscrew the L brackets from the garage and the box moves out of the way so I can slide the tank out to clean it etc.

I think it looks MUCH better! And, hopefully, this will save me some money energy wise as the tank heater adds a good $30 a month to my winter electrical bill.

The new location of my stock tank in the garage meant I haven’t yet had to fill it again since MAY!

Usually summer always meant I would need to fill the tank at least once a month but any rain we had went right off the steel roof of my garage and into the tank. I also didn’t lose water to evaporation like I used to either because its so protected here.

Besides that I did some work on my horse shed too.

It was a wide open space with fence giving my horses 1/3rd of it for shelter. The hay in the shed couldn’t be near where the horses were (or they would just stand there and eat it) so it ended up stacked awkwardly in the middle.

I cleaned out the whole shed and that’s when it dawned on me that putting up a “wall” between the horses’ part of the shed and the rest of the area would be ideal. It would give a good back corner to move my oats and “horse stuff” to so the hay could move to the West corner.

And having the hay in that corner is great because that’s as close to the hay wagon as possible! (Anyone who has ever hauled hay knows that every foot counts!)

On top of that it will give my horses three sides of protection against the wind too and I just so happened to have two sheets of 3/4″ plywood doing nothing in my garage… One full piece on the bottom and a second on top that I cut to size and it all fit like a glove!

Of course the plywood isn’t going to last forever but it works great for now and will last for many years. Fortunately my horses are not big “chewers” and when they are in the shed then they’re napping. I remembered I had an old shelf out in the barn so I brought that down for their grooming tools, fly spray etc. I also added some hangers for their halters and lead ropes.

Not to mention: I added a new solar light!

Summers its nice to have but it is the winters when that light is going to be absolutely wonderful (considering its pitch black by 5pm and well after that when I usually get home to feed them.) And it only cost $11 – totally worth it!

This used to be my Grandpa’s old machine shed which my ex trashed that I cleaned out and converted into my horse shed last year.

Its been working out so lovely it seems like it was made for horses!

I added bat houses across the front under the roof eves earlier this year. This is what I’ve read about bat houses: They’re best under an eve (trees are not great) and they must be south facing. That literally left me with absolutely NO other places to put them.

If they EVER get used I will be very happy but honestly I’m just glad I had a place for them at all because my grandparents’ made them decades ago and they’ve been on my summer to do list for the last five years!

I also had a nice spot for a bench down here too as I have three old benches my Grandparents’ made that are really starting to get old. They were down around my fire pit but were just way too fragile for that anymore.

So this one found a new home here out of the weather and its great to have a place to sit and talk to my beasties!