Upon entering our F-shaped pole barn, you will find yourself in the main aisle, with 12 stalls on either side, fully lit with aisle lights. The barn is air conditioned in the summer. To your right is another wing of stalls with 7 on each side. To your left is a small feed room. If you walk to the end of the aisle, you will find another wing of stalls to the right, identical to the first one. Going straight will take you to the office, and to the left is the large tack room. Three doors exit the barn, shown as spaces in the outline reachable by the link above.
The stalls of our large barn are box stalls, each measuring 12 x 12 feet. We use straw for thick, comfortable bedding on top of the mat-padded concrete floors. Although the stalls close completely, with bars over the top of the doors, they are sometimes left open and a webbed stall guard is put across the lower half to allow the horses to stick their heads out. Above the door are brass nameplates, which are affixed permanently. Even if the horse dies, they are not taken down, a second one is merely added below it. On each stall door is a peg on which the horse’s halter and lead rope are hung. Inside each stall, there is a wall-mounted salt lick. Opposite corners hold a wooden hayrack and an automatic waterer. The hayracks have a small portion sectioned off to hold feed/grain.
Immediately to the left of the barn door is a small room, the feed room, where we keep storage bins of grain (the hay and straw are stored in their own barn). Feed cards are arranged in large blueprint of the barn stalls that specify how much of what each horse is fed. Here we also have the sink with running hot and cold water, and extra buckets. It’s something of a “catch-all” space to put the items we need most urgently while on the way out of the barn.
The tack room stands next to the office (through an inside door, it is actually connected). In the spacious room, one wall holds our saddles, sitting atop their saddle pads. Bridles hang on the adjacent wall. The third wall is mostly made of shelves, and these hold baskets of personal grooming supplies for each horse…and also have general use items including shampoo, first aid kits, clippers, etc. The fourth wall holds turn out rugs and cooling sheets. Tack trunks, used at shows, are against the back wall and make handy seats for cleaning tack.
Finally, the office is at the back of the barn, a comfortable little room for work or relaxation. The bookshelf on the side contains horse training books as well as binders of information and copies of the horses’ registration papers. In the corner, the small wooden desk holds the old computer, a worn wooden chair behind it and the horse calendar above it. A storage shelf/desk holds all the little things that spill out of the tack room, or lost items picked up in odd places. There are also a few cute little figurines. Sunshine spills in through two windows in the back of the room. Photographs of our horses past and present decorate the walls, while a couple of paintings add an artistic splash.
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