One of the necessities that arose when my parents' moved from the country was finding a place to move Maggie. She's been a part of the family for 16 years so selling her was NOT an option -- we went on the hunt for the perfect place!
That place presented itself in the weirdest way -- we were sitting on my parents' front porch, in the middle of Vintage, when out of nowhere this lady came riding by on a horse.
That place presented itself in the weirdest way -- we were sitting on my parents' front porch, in the middle of Vintage, when out of nowhere this lady came riding by on a horse.
Seeing horses go by our house in the country was no big deal, but this was strange so of course we did the only thing we could think of: Took a picture with one of our iPhones, posted it on facebook and flagged her down to ask "Where did you come from?"
She turned out to be a fellow Vintage resident who was keeping her horse less than a mile away from the neighborhood. To further our luck, the developer of Vintage happens to own the land the facility sits on and said of course we could board our horses there, just pick a pen we wanted and move them in!
We scoped the place out and found all the pens to be occupied except for those attached to the oldest, most run-down looking building on the property. We managed to get the doors open and discovered the dirtiest, most digusting looking barn I had ever seen! The stalls were full of rotten dirt, the tack rooms were filled with all kinds of unidentifiable junk and the only occupants appeared to be a rather large colony of rats.
No wonder no horses lived in there!
Of course, it was perfect :)
Many years ago this place was one of the nicest horse facilities in Lubbock county. We decided all it needed was some steel wool and a little elbow grease. Okay, and maybe a tractor to haul in new dirt.
It took two full weekends of working nonstop, but when it was all said and done we had two stalls, the entire aisle-way and one of the tack rooms looking fantastic.
Why 2 stalls?
Because we knew we had to take advantage of such an amazing opportunity and get another horse. Maggie will always hold a special place in my heart, but unfortunately my feet drag the ground if I try to ride her so it's really not an option.
It was time to go horse shopping :)
But that is another blog for another day.... so here are some before and after pics of the barn:
Outside the Barn
Maggies Stall -- Before
Tack Room -- Before
Rob cleaning the walls
The turnout attached to Maggie's Stall
Maggie's Stall -- After
Tack Room -- After 
I am absolutely LOVING our "new" barn! :) It is such a blessing to us and it (along with Ken... more on him later) has allowed me to begin riding again so much sooner than originally planned! The arena is HUGE, and there are still plenty of fields around for trail riding... not to mention when we get moved into our new house we will be able to see it from our upstairs windows!
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