Tag: Horses

Epic Barn Project – Roof Completed

Post author By Ashton
Post date November 7, 2009
1 Comment on Epic Barn Project – Roof Completed

Well, I think we can finally say it’s all down hill from here.

When I started on this Epic Barn Project, I thought getting the poles all straight and perfectly placed was the hardest part of this barn. Then when I go to the roof, I thought that was the hardest part (as I’ll explain below). Now that we have completed those two difficult tasks, we only have walls left. These walls consist of 2×12 boards nailed vertically to the “cross beams”. Thankfully that doesn’t take a lot of thinking, measuring or calculating to make sure it’s absolutely perfect. We may run into a couple difficult spots (where the rafters come out of the wall for example), but I think it will be easy peasy lemon squeezy compared with trying to calculate where all the roof purlins go… explained below.

Putting up the Second 1/2 Roof

Pretty much all of the material we are using for the Epic Barn Project (including the tin roof) came from our neighbor’s barn. It was just as cool as my barn, but I don’t call it an epic barn because I didn’t build it ;).

Since the roof tin has already been used on a barn, all of the screw holes have already been drilled through the tin. We got very lucky on this first roof because most of the holes were the same distances from each other and lined up with the purlins (wooden 2x4s we screw the roof to). There was only one small area where the purlins and holes didn’t line up.

Unfortunately, the other roof was very sloppy. The holes were all over the place because the old purlins were not perfectly lined up. Even the length of the roofing varied by up to 5 inches!

In this picture you can see that the holes on the top line up with each other, but the length of the tin extends much farther and the second set of holes (bottom) don’t match up either.

So I had to measure every roof tin, put the measurements into excel and put them all in the proper order. Then I had to calculate where the purlins would have to go to match up with all of the holes. Here’s the first half of the purlins: (You can also see the progress on the “West Gable”)

Tags ceiling, Epic, Epic Barn, Epic Barn Project, Horses, Roof

Horses Trips & Activities

My Trip to Valhalla Farms

I recently took a very exciting trip for almost 3 weeks to Valhalla Farms in Wellborn, Florida. This was my first time to Florida and to Jean Brinkman’s 600 acre farm.

As a lot of you know I breed a type of horse called a Trakehner which is a Warmblood horse originating from Prussia. Jean Brinkman has been breeding Trakehners since the early 70’s and helped start the American Trakehner Association (ATA), which is amazing! I met Jean in November of 2008 at the ATA annual meeting in Los Angeles which I attended with a few of my horses. I told Jean I knew I had a lot more to learn about the breed and she very kindly invited me to come to her farm to learn. After I got home from Los Angeles I figured out the best time to go down there and arranged the trip with her.

I was gone from April 3rd – 21st and had an amazing time! Flying into Florida was the only horrible part about the trip. I left Montana at 9:00 am and didn’t arrive in Jacksonville until 5:00 am the next day due to the storms over Jacksonville. I stayed in a hotel at the airport and got maybe 5-6 hours of sleep then took a shuttle to the Jacksonville Equestrian Center to meet Jean and her Dressage trainers who were competing for the weekend. It was definitely a great introduction to the trip seeing the talented horses and riders from Valhalla at their best.

Competing for the weekend was Erin Brinkman on Imminence a young newly approved stallion owned by her mother Jean. Erin was also there with two of her dressage students so I was able to watch her coach them and compete on one of the horses. She placed 1st in all of her classes for the weekend which was very impressive! Also competing for the weekend was Iris Eppinger and her working student Anna Franklin. Iris was riding Prix St George on one of Jean’s mares Aura and did very well! Iris also rode a client’s horse Etoile who was purchased from Jean and the owner kept the horse in training at Valhalla. Anna rode her horse Walden at 1st and 2nd Level and won 1st place. To say the least there were a lot of blue ribbons hanging around our stalls.

Tags Florida, Horses, trakehners, Valhalla farms

Animals Ashton Anna Horses

Baby Mustange Gets Pet

Update: Our baby mustang now has a name: Maple (or pancake for short).

So as I mentioned before, babies pick up a lot from their mother, and it just so happens that Aspen is scared to death of humans. So when momma freaks out and walks away from “those two-legged creatures” the baby follows. But today, 7 days after Maple’s birth, Anna got to show Maple the goodness of scratching:
Ashton Anna's Foal

As you can tell, Maple just loves getting scratched. Near the end of the video she even tries to jump on Anna cause she loves her so much… go figure. =]

On a similar note; earlier today, Maple had a huge burst of energy and did sprints around her pen. She ran all the way over to the hay shed, and back, and around her pen. I wasn’t fast enough with the camera =(

Enjoy!
-AshtonAnna

Tags baby mustang, Horses, Maple

Ashton Anna Horses

Baby Mustang Running Around

Post author By Ashton
Post date August 23, 2008
No Comments on Baby Mustang Running Around

Here is the baby mustang running around at two days old!

Enjoy!
AshtonAnna

Tags baby mustang, Horses, Maple

Animals Ashton Anna Horses Ranch

AshtonAnna’s Baby Mustang

Post author By Ashton
Post date August 20, 2008
No Comments on AshtonAnna’s Baby Mustang

What a crazy morning.

(Let me first introduce the latest additions to our “ranch.” Anna purchased two wild mustang mares (females) at auction. Here they are:

Wild Mustangs
Nevada and Aspen.

After purchasing the mustangs Anna was reading through the pamphlet they gave her, and it said there was always a possibility of a wild mare being pregnant.)

Now that you have met the mustangs, here’s this morning’s story:

The first thing Anna tells me in the morning is it looks like the coyotes ran off with our chickens. She couldn’t find them anywhere. So we both went looking for them, and found them a good 70 yards from their coop on the north side of our house.

After we brought the chickens back to their almost franticly lonely duck (poor guy), we decided to take a walk down our driveway to see how our newly-planted, baby trees are doing. We’re about half-way down our driveway and Anna says. “What is that?!?!”

Remaining as calm as possible, I look over into the pen and see this:

Wild Mustangs
What is that in front of aspen? No way, it’s a baby! Enjoy the pics of mini-aspen: