A Few Shed Updates as we Move into Fall

Some shed updates. One beautiful weekend this fall we got our butts in gear a little bit and hauled all of our “outdoor stuff” down to the old horse shed. It was my grandpa’s machine shed for his farm when it was first built, then a machine shed for our golf course before I made it my horse shed years ago. My old horses were thrilled when I gave them this place with its South facing layout and North wind break. But I was still stunned because they already had a lean-to off the back of the barn that they refused to use. After several days of work, cleaning this place out, moving their red corral fencing and expanding their main fence I really thought it would all be for naught because, ya know: HORSES.

Or, more specifically, my scared-to-death-of-everything gelding, who once refused to come inside even with a -73 degree wind chill. I stayed up all night with him that night terrified he might brush an ear off on the barn… I’m not kidding.

That really happens!

But that wasn’t how it went.

In fact, the second I got the last of the fence up they were weirdly just waiting for me. Very patient. Very ready. Like folks who had been in line at the club for the last three hours.

Jazzy (my mom’s little Tennessee walker) was in front (of course) but then, shockingly, my Gargoyle just charged right in like he owned the place.

He came right to me, right inside on his own accord (unprecedented!) and was like, “Thanks, Ta!”

I was quite annoyed. “Seriously!? What about the last place you had?!”

“That one was scary!”

*MAJOR EYE ROLL* “FINE.”

As a horse owner though it was definitely the best thing I ever did for them.

Warning, sad stories:

Jazzy was mom’s girl. She was up in the field when she went down. The vet gave her antibiotics etc. We stayed with her most of the evening until she at least seemed to be resting comfortably. We gave Jazzy the opportunity to respond to the medication but, honestly, didn’t have a ton of hope. She’d been down a long time at that point.

Yet, somehow, in the middle of the night, she got up on her own and walked over a hundred yards to come right down here, to this place where we found her.

When we found Gar, he was right here too.

My point is that they just loved this little shed.

Of course I think of them every time I come down here and it actually doesn’t make me sad like I expected it to. This was truly their happy place and I still feel it. Does that make any sense?

Have I totally lost my mind?

When I come down here my losses is not what I’m reminded of. If fact its just my happy horses, basking in the sun and content as all heck.

For anyone who has owned horses you know exactly what I’m talking about. Horses get all sweet and cozy when they feel totally safe and happy, like a cat that got into the cream and is full bellied and satisfied.

So, for whatever reason that I will not question, that’s the happy I feel when I come down here.

Not the losses.

This little shed is now returning to its roots and giving us the yard shed we’ve always wanted. We went through all of our rakes, shovels etc. and both really enjoyed the process of purging. No one NEEDS eight snow shovels lol I think we all fall in the trap of keeping things because they’re still good even though we don’t need them.

Lodi brought the two “nice” plastic snow shovels we have while meanwhile I had six steel snow shovels ranging in age from 40-10 years old. I have no idea where they all came from and I basically hate them all.

It felt REALLY good to put four of them in the give away pile!

Besides that it was all any rural household just accumulates over the years. Rakes of varying sizes, pitch forks, hay forks, fence post diggers and pounders etc.

We had a couple of “tables” my dad had built that he gave us that Lodi cut in half and lined the back wall with them. They’re sturdy!

Having the tables in (definitely going to be calling them work benches from now on) really made the place feel like we were getting somewhere.

We hung the boat up and were stoked that we could get it high enough that we both can still walk under it. We still need to level the shelf and attach it to the back wall but that’s going to be REALLY nice to have.

We purged our hand tools down by over half so now I want to build a rack for them on the West wall.

I found that tool rack build at some point and thought it was really smart. One of the things I like most about it is how long they cut the 2x4s so they can hang several things in one spot utilizing the depth of space as much as possible.

We have about two of everything so that’s perfect!

All I need to do is hang one 2×4 level and then cut a bunch of pieces to make the hangers. Thinking I’ll make the hangers about 8 1/2 inches long so I can utilize an entire 8 foot 2×4 with no scrap. So the whole rack I’ll probably only need two 2x4s to build.

Another aspect of that rack that never occurred to me is all of our shovels can hang upside down because of the handles, utilizing the space even better than I had considered!

After that this place is just slowly evolving with plans based on what we have on hand and what we want to store down here and, of course, on how we want to use it.

This will definitely be our own machine shed so all of our car tools etc. will be coming down here too.

It’ll be really nice to have a place where we can be messy and not have to worry about staining the floor!

Right now our poor old “well house” is jam packed with outdoor furniture for half the year but it will fit down here easy. We’ll just back our trailer up to the deck, cover it with all of our outdoor furniture and then back the trailer right in here until spring.

Working smarter not harder lol.

And that will, finally, totally empty our little well house out for the idea of making a bunk house out of it someday. Also, even better, it will make our outdoor furniture accessible as the well house is tiny and just getting everything in there (or out of there) is such pain in the butt we never even used most of it this year.

Getting power down here eventually would be great too. We talked about trenching it in ourselves but I’m going to get a quote first from a pro to trench it in from the pole for us.

From there I could run a couple of outlets and lights which would be amazing and the first time this shed has ever had electricity!