Dennis is scrawling madly on a yellow legal pad. He's got that "I'm designing something" look on his face. Is he working on the expansion to his orchard? Is he thinking about his new vegetable garden? Or the raspberry patch he's been threatening to plant for couple of years now? This is pretty much how my husband manages to get through the short cold days in the middle of the winter. You know, when you can't get a damn thing done outside. I'm going to hear that complaint a few more times before the spring.

I peer over his shoulder, and the breath rushes out of me in a long slow whoosh. Because what is drawn there is much better than all of the above. I see six large box stalls, and an aisle in between. Maybe even room for a vaulting barrel.

It's just a plan on a piece of paper. But we've made lots of plans on lots of pieces of paper over the years. And sometimes we like to stroll around our property and revel in the fruits of our imagination, and in what rolling up your sleeves can result in.

So today we are arguing about exactly where that new barn would go. And Dennis reminded me that just because the current plan has six stalls doesn't mean I can have six horses.

Unfortunately, we can't seem to agree on a barn site yet. But I expect we're going to have a very long time to hash this one out!

Posted by Kimberly on December 11, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

A friend loaned me this month's issue of Martha Stewart Living.

Here Martha is enjoying a resplendent Thanksgiving celebration in her barn with guests and her five Friesian horses Martyn, Meindert, Ramon, Rinze, and Rutger, who "alternately batted black eyelashes at the crowd and extended whiskered muzzles over rails. They received crisp carrots in return goodwill ... As everyone lifted their forks, the late-afternoon light settled over the snow, a lively hum rose from the table, and the horses neighed in chorus."

My. My. My...! I believe that my Percheron Toby would enjoy such an elegant event.

Posted by Kimberly on November 20, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

The evening that my husband Dennis and I finished building the horse barn,

Continue reading "Barn dance" »

Posted by Kimberly on April 5, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

My friend Sharon Hainer was the object of my big envy in the fifth grade. An only child, she got to take horseback riding lessons.

I recall thinking she must be rich when she showed me the riding breeches, pressed white shirt with a pin through the collar, shiny black boots and velvet covered helmet that her mother had laid out across her yellow ruffled bed. This thought in my fifth-grade-brain was underlined by the fact that the Hainer’s basement was decorated with faux leather Spanish furniture, red shag carpet, and a statue of a matador and a bull on the wetbar counter complete with harvest gold glass. A print of a white Lusitano horse hung above the insert fireplace in the basement corner. It was a far cry from the washing machines and discarded furniture that comprised the décor of most of the basements in our Cleveland-area subdivision.

Continue reading "A barn fit for a horse" »

Posted by Kimberly on December 7, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)