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We Are Flying Solo

April 21, 2019

Capital Improvements: Farm Edition

Any farm is essentially a never-ending project & mine is no exception.  Should a farm-owner feel that they have completed all projects, have no fear, something will break/flood/fail & voila, new project!  I am too poor to pay people to do things for me, so Flying Solo Farm is also a very slow project.

Two big improvements I've managed in the past year:

1.  Stabilize & fill run-in shed (July 2018).

This was the most critical & I've included some of the steps here in case someone else is looking for ideas.  This shed is our operations center, with half for the horses & half for me/farrier/vet.  The basic layout hasn't changed much since it was introduced here, although it now has half-walls on both sides for the horses.  However, runoff was undermining one end & too much dirt was migrating from inside to outside.  By last summer, I knew I had to do some sort of retaining wall/fill before hurricane season brought the next round of torrential rain.

The corner in the background was even worse
I spent my usual extensive time on considering design, materials, anchoring, & cost minimization.  I generally don't have any help, so I have to be able to lift & manage any materials I get.  It was a little tricky since the base of the shed is steel on cinder blocks, so the retaining wall would have to be independently anchored.  And yes, my planning phases always involve Googling "how to..." because there are inevitably helpful tips on details I might not think of.

After leveling the ground for installation (which involved plenty of sweating since of course it was packed rock hard, with a zillion actual rocks), I ended up using treated 6" & 4" x 6" beams.  The bottom row is anchored with 24" rebar at even intervals.  These were super fun to drive into the ground with a hand sledge in July.  But those things aren't going anywhere in my lifetime!  I anchored the second row with galvanized landscape pins.
One of the galvanized pins
Thanks to Google tips, I put in a strip of drainage rock inside of the wall before I backfilled.
The one easy step:  dump rocks out of bags
Then it was a "simple" matter of adding 9 tons of limestone screenings.  Yes, it was literally 9 tons.  Tractor required.  Plus 1 more that I used to even out the crosstie area.  I originally wanted to just use fill dirt.  My go-to hauler did not have fill dirt, but he had screenings & $300 for 10 tons was cheaper than I expected.  Pro tip:  if you fill a wheelbarrow with stone screenings, you will not be able to lift or move the wheelbarrow.  Because stone.  I know this now.
I hope I never have to do this again.  But it is awesome.
I had not planned on buying any more mats, because they are expensive.  However, Echo found the screenings delightful to dig in & enjoyed his new sandbox far too much.  So now I have four more mats in the middle part of below pic.  Bad horse.
He dug a hole & rolled in this 30 mins later.  :/
I finished it by cutting the corners off at an angle where the horses would step over & sanding off the edges of the lumber.  This whole project took me two solid days, working all day.  I was afraid to stop because I was certain that if I did, it would be way too painful to start moving again.  At the end of the second day, I discovered that guess was correct. 

The shed is SO MUCH NICER now, though.  The drainage works perfectly (I also added a water re-direct, you can see one end by Echo's nose in the pic) & I can hose a horse in the crossties without flooding the shed or washing out the floor.  The horses have a dry place for their feets no matter what the weather.  And oh yeah, now the shed won't collapse & roll down the hill.

2.  North windbreaks/gates (November 2018)

This project was much cheaper & easier!  I never want a completely enclosed shed, since we are in the South & airflow is critical in the summer, but we can get some pretty nasty, cold north winds in wintertime.  Once again, I considered lots of options, including hanging plastic strips like you see on walk-in freezers, which I still might do in the future but are too expensive currently.  The front of the shed is 24' wide & I already had ~7' of half-wall on Solo's side, along with posts.  I decided to build a 5' scrap-wood gate on that side.
From the inside; pre-existing wall to left
This part only cost me about $20 & two hours.  Since I already had the lumber in my "salvage" pile, along with 2 hinges, I only needed to buy 1 more hinge & a brace cable.
From outside, after a coat of paint
For the remaining 12', the simplest option ended up being a standard gate.  I didn't have THAT much lumber, & even if I did, it would have been insanely heavy.  My neighbour helped me set that post, because I am very strong, but I cannot lift a 16' long 6' x 6' post & square it without probably crushing myself.  He also made the clever suggestion of leaving a human gap on the end so I can squeeze through without opening gates.  Um, I love this feature.
Both new gates + gap for me
If you're saying, uh, a wire-filled gate is not a very effective windbreak..., well, you are correct.  Which is why I wrapped it in a tarp.  It's not pretty, but it IS effective & it allows me to keep things nice & open for the rest of the year.
The winter version, complete with "rustic" weights
I remain really happy with both of these investments.  The horses definitely appreciated the windbreak this past winter, it was much cozier in there.  And I just took the tarp off two weeks ago.  The 5' gate can also be latched open & horses have plenty of space to lead through either side.  This also provides another layer of security, so if for some reason they were to break through the tape gates, they are still contained by these new gates.  That did happen once, I found horses outside the kitchen window last year -- I think it was a freak incident, but just in case...

7 comments:

  1. Your are correct about the never ending list of projects.

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  2. Well done!

    And lol to the wheelbarrow bit with the screenings. I do the same thing every time I move stone around and am always shocked that I can't move the thing. You think I'd remember that fact when I repeat the chore...

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    1. This makes me feel like less of an idiot, thank you!

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  3. "THANKS FOR THE SANDBOX MA!" - Echo, probably

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  4. Thanks for the detailed post on this. When we moved into our property we inherited a very rickety run-in that floods, and it was on our list to tear down and replace. Irma took one of the roof panels off last year so now it has a "skylight". Last week we had another big storm so now it is missing 3 panels and now we have arrived at the "we better fix this now" I will definitely share this post with the SO while we talk out our plans. :)

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    1. Yay, glad it can be helpful! Honestly, with pre-planning, this was not difficult at all & with two people would go much faster (or even faster if you can hire people, LOL). I managed to buy the only property in the SE that didn't come with a free shed, not even for scrap material, sigh. My shed is actually a wind-engineered structure from Carolina Carports at its core (& so is my hayshed) -- I have been super happy with them & they are very fairly priced, so if you are looking to replace or add more, I had two good experiences with them.

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