Horse Shelter

I wish I'd started this blog right from the day we moved here, that way I'd be able to tell you all the funny mishaps that we went through each day. Believe me, there were a lot.

We used some old logs from the property to build the frame, and then bought the supplies to do the rest. Using the logs was a great way to recycle materials that were already here, and we liked the idea of keeping the shelter as natural as possible. Horses do have a tendency to chew on things, lol, so we thought why not give them trees as posts. Of course we took the bark off and smoothed them out. That was a challenge on it's own!

We didn't have any fancy tools, so we did everything by hand. It took us days to strip the bark and smooth out the logs, and as you can see, the boys got super creative when it came to installing them in the ground! lol. What we didn't find out until nearly a year later was that our geothermal pipes ran along the very same area we built the shelter, yikes! Luck was definitely on our side as we somehow managed not to hit a single pipe.

The kids helped after school.

We even recruited family to help when they came to visit :)

Libby was very helpful...

...as was Ruby

They made sure Mike was doing a good job, offering pointers as he worked.

Ruby & Libby have arrived :)

About a week after Roxy came to be with us, Ruby and Libby arrived. Roxy was happy to have friends :) They all got along right from the start. I wish I had videos to show how much fun they had running in the fields together, so cute!

Next project: a shelter for all the girls...

Roxy

October 2011

The fences are finally completed, now it's time to go shopping. We need water troughs, mineral blocks, grains, hay feeders and oh ya, hay! 

Brytann (our vet) told us about the hay she brings in, it's excellent quality and all her horses have always done amazing on it. Okay, deal! Wait...he only sells 1000 lb round bales...yikes!

Now would be the perfect time to look for a tractor! We were sad to learn that Brytann was in the process of moving to her new place in Kelowna (which meant she would no longer be living just down the road). On a good note, she was more than happy to stay on as our vet and still had a lot of regular clients in the area so we'd still her as often as we'd like, whew! 

In her process of moving, she had decided to sell us her old tractor, which was perfect because that was about all we could afford! It had certainly lived a good life on her farm, and now it was about to get a new home. Now we had a way of moving the 1000 lb bales. 

Mike arriving with our first load of hay!

Luckily the property came with an old barn, perfect for storing hay.

Now that we have hay and supplies, we were eagerly waiting for Libby and Ruby to arrive. A couple days later, we got a call from Brytann. Some clients of hers were about to head south for the winter. They usually take their horses with them but this time they decided it wasn't a good idea to take their older mare. They were worried that they'd have to put her down because they wouldn't have time to list her for sale and weren't sure anyone would buy her. She was still in great shape and excellent health and they really just wanted to find her a good home, but had to do it quickly...that's where we came in. 

Meet Roxy... 

We fell in love with her right away. She's so kind and gentle. In her younger days she was quite the barrel racer, and believe me, Mike found that out pretty quickly during our first arena session! Our tenants (they rent the 2nd house on the property) had left up some barrels in the arena. We didn't think anything of it until Mike gave Roxy the go ahead to go faster. The second she saw the barrels she knew what to do, unfortunately, she didn't convey her racing abilities to Mike until it was too late. Before we knew it she had raced to the end barrel and when she came around it Mike's foot had slipped out of the stirrup, Roxy felt this and immediately banked to slip his foot back in then headed for the 2nd barrel. Luckily she listens extremely well and stopped as soon as Mike said whoa. Let's just say from then on out, we make sure there aren't any barrels in the arena ;)

Meet Libby & Ruby

Shortly after arriving here, were fortunate to meet a wonderful vet name Brytann. We were ecstatic to know that a highly sought after vet would be living just 5 minutes from us! As we started to get to know her, she told us about some horses she had for sale, and after meeting us she knew we'd make a happy and loving home. It was a match made in heaven!

There was one horse in particular that we were going to meet. A gorgeous black and white paint named Libby. She was only 2 but had been started with excellent training.

Needless to say, Mike fell in love right away!

As Mike got to know Libby, Brytann mentioned she had another paint mare, very dear to her heart, named Ruby. Ruby was 4 and ready to ride with lots of training behind her. She was way out of our price range but we thought well, we're here, let's at least see her.

As Mom and I were walking around the field, Ruby would follow close behind, nudging her nose into our coats, being super friendly and lovey...yup, she knew what she was doing! SOLD! Mom and I decided to purchase her together, she absolutely stole our hearts :)

So now the race was on! We had just bought 2 horses and needed a new field to put them in. There were a few areas on the property that were already fenced in and ready to go, but since the previous owner ran cattle, all the fences contained barbed wire. That had to go! Then we started looking at the large field that was basically our 'back yard'. We couldn't think of a better spot! This way, we'd get to keep a close eye on them every day :)

So, we ordered new fence posts, new barbless wire, rented a post pounder and away we went!

Dad had to clear a few bushes out of the area to make it safer for the horses...meanwhile I'm pretty sure he just about tipped over a few times, lol.

The new posts separating the 2 large fields.

Once the posts were all in, it was time to drill 5 holes in each post and run endless miles of wire. We wanted to get it done as quickly as possible, and since Mom and Dad were only home on the weekends (they worked in town during the week) it was up to Mike and I to string all the wire. We worked as fast and as hard as we could, it was not an easy job. But it was worth it to know we were building a safe fence for our newest additions :)

August 2011

How we got here...

It's hard to know where to start. We are fairly normal people (I used that term loosely!). We had jobs, the kid's had school, we had finally bought our first house after nearly 10 years of following my husband all over Canada as his career advanced as a pilot. Our life wasn't that different from everyone else's. After spending 10+ years moving almost twice a year, we were very excited to finally be settling down into the 'norm'. House in the suburbs, regular jobs, great community, you know how it goes.

I met some amazing friends, life was good. I met a lot of great people within the community as I became more involved with local businesses. I loved networking and especially loved getting small businesses out there through marketing and trade shows. Aside from the many things I did while working from home, I had found out there was a new gym opening up in our area and thought how fun it would be to work in a constant environment where motivating people was what it was all about! I was thrilled when they hired me and couldn't wait to start work. The people were amazing, the clients were always happy to be there and the gym was one of my favorite places to be. I was able to work in all of the departments and loved being involved in so many aspects. I definitely loved my job.

My husband however was loving his less and less. Stress was getting higher as the health of the owner of the flight charter company was declining, as was their airplane selection, making career advancement tough. He was always going to exciting and exotic places, and would even spend weeks on owner's yacht. There were also weeks that he'd spend stuffed into a hotel room with no where really to go, but the exciting trips often made up for the less exciting ones. He'd fly clients to their location and be on call until they were ready for their return flight home. While there were definitely some fun perks to the job, there were many days when he also missed the basic flying from when he started as a bush pilot. The corporate lifestyle was not nearly as fun as the early days where your boss's were like family.

After a while, some friends of ours acquired some horses at a ranch near by and started inviting us to go with them, get to know the horses, hang out and just have fun. The bug had officially hit us! Being around horses, on a ranch surrounded by nature...that is where we were truly happy. We started looking into getting some horses of our own, but as we looked into boarding them (very costly in that area) and started crunching the numbers, having horses was a hobby we just couldn't afford. So we spent the next few months just hanging out with our friends and their horses whenever we could, and that worked...for a while.

Seeing her first 'fresh' egg

Meeting our friend's horses

Our girl's (the 2 in pink) with their favorite friends!

Then one day, no seriousness attached to it, we started thinking how great it would be to get together with our family and buy a big campground, that way we could work for ourselves in an outdoor environment and have enough land to have our own horses. So just out of curiosity, we started looking at listings for campgrounds for sale. We needed to know just 'how' crazy we were! We looked at places close to where we were living so my husband could keep his flying job to help with income, that wasn't so easy. So then we started looking at places that were a turn-key operation, meaning we could just buy the campground and take over an already established business, one that was already generating an income. We did find a few of those, but they were all in areas that didn't allow us any open land for horses. We expanded our search to BC. We always wanted to return home to the mountains and that's where all our family lived too. Although we did find some great ones, they were all extremely remote which meant no schools anywhere nearby for the kid's, let alone doctors, groceries and all the other things we still wanted to be close to. Then we started a new direction. What if we found land, zoned for everything we wanted, and built a campground from scratch? It was cheaper than buying a turn key operation and now that our parents wanted to join in on the adventure with us, we had more resources and more hands on deck (otherwise known as unpaid employees! lol).

Our parents were all excited to do this adventure with us. We had a 3-5 year plan. We figured it would take about 3-5 years to find the right location and have enough money saved up to do this. So, we got a real estate agent who specialized in farm land out in BC (hired her over the phone) and the search started. We had a lot of things that needed to fall into place with the land we were looking for and fully expected the search to take a very long time, just waiting for the right property to open up, but we figured it wouldn't hurt to just start looking so we could get a good idea of what was really out there.

We found a few places that might work. So, since we lived in Ontario, we sent our parents out to look at these places with our agent. Although they all had a certain amount of potential, they also came with their own issues. Buildings falling down, or land wasn't what we wanted, not zoned for horses, too close to neighbors, not close enough to schools, you name it, it just wasn't right. A few weeks into our search our mortgage broker mentioned hearing about a place not that far from where we were looking. It had just come on the market and the owners were fully expecting it to be listed for at least a couple years before selling. It had a house large enough for us to all live in plus a second house as well. It had the acreage we were looking for and the zoning we wanted but nothing else. It would definitely be a 'start-up' business, we'd have to develop the entire campground and horse areas. We thought well, why not at least go look at it.

So, our parents (my Mom and Dad as well as my husband's parents) and our agent went to see it, and we waited by the phone out in Ontario, expecting to hear all the not-so-good news that was sure to follow, like all the other properties we'd gotten our hopes up for only to be disappointed by what the listings didn't show/ That's not quite the news we got. Our parents all fell in love with it! They wanted to make an offer right then and there! And we're not too innocent on this deal either, we fell in love with the pictures as soon as we saw the listing and were really hoping this was the one! Yes, common sense went right out the window and excitement took over!

That night we all had lengthy conversations about this particular property, and before we knew it they were going on a second showing.

A few days later the papers were signed...holly crap! What did we just do! I should probably tell you just how insane we were when it came to this deal too...the property was listed a high price, but we knew if we sold our houses and cashed in everything we could possibly cash in, we could get the mortgage. Once all the paperwork was evaluated we were beyond excited to realize that not only could we scrape together enough of what the bank wanted to approve the mortgage, but we also had enough start up capitol to really pull this together! Then things crashed down...after all the back and forth with the real estate agents trying to negotiate, we were literally one signature away from making the deal happen when CHMC came in and undervalued our property by a good 10%. We were told by our mortgage broker and agent that this was a common thing, that the house and mortgage association almost always did this, and always by 10%, but we thought no way. The houses and property together were already worth more than the selling price, no way could they undervalue this! Oh, but they did! And now, with less than 24 hours ago we had a very tough decision to make. Let the property go and start all over again, or jump in with both feet knowing ALL of our start up capitol was going to have to go directly to the mortgage. Any smart person would have backed out, knowing that starting a business without capitol would be foolish...but we're not that smart, lol. We decided to go ahead! Knowing it would be more hard work than we'd ever thought to make this happen, we still decided to jump in! And that was it...papers were signed!

We immediately listed our houses for sale (us and my husband's parents), it was GO time! My husband and I started all the reno projects we had always meant to do when we bought our house 2 years prior. What better time to start then 30 days before you need it sold? Yup, we were insane! We hired a real estate agent who advised us on all the things she thought the house needed for us to get the sale price we needed.

Kitchen reno, starting with fresh paint and new back splash. The whole house got new paint and updates.

Even the kid's helped out with all the work :)

Now that the reno's are almost done, it's time to put as much as we can into storage!

The kitchen got reno'd, walls were painted, furniture updated, 80% of our stuff went into to immediate storage and it was the craziest month of my life! Then the showings began. We were constantly kicked out for showing after showing, nervous wrecks each time and hoping for an offer! Houses weren't really selling in  our area at that time so we really had to work hard to make ours appealing. A few weeks later we got 2 offers. The first offer made our hearts sink, wondering if we were really going to have to take a $30,000 hit on our asking price, not something we could afford since we needed a certain amount of money to be able to put into our new business. The 2nd offer was awesome, very close to asking price and we accepted right away! Whew! And that was it. I quit my job, my husband gave notice, and before we knew it, we were planning a drive across Canada once again, hopefully for the last time!

With the kids in the van, we were off!

A 5 day drive across Canada...Mike driving the U-haul and trailer, and me and the kid's following in the van.

Every day was an early start. We tried to get to our stops in time for the kid's to have some fun in the hotel pools at each of our stops. After sitting in the van for 9-12 hrs a day, it was nice for them to enjoy some swimming and playing before bed. 

The day we arrived at the house was the first time we'd ever stepped foot on the property. Although our parents had all seen it and loved it, this was a first for us. Honestly, we were just so excited to start the new adventure that the house could have been in shambles and we wouldn't have cared, but we were lucky. The former owners had just finished building their dream house when they put it on the market, and we loved every inch of it. Mostly, I love that it's large enough to fit us all and still have room for guests and a even a little extra room to help maintain some sanity! lol.

So there we were...adventure started!

Let the adventure begin...