When we took posession of the farm, the indoor arena footing was essentially 8” of red clay, a little bit of sand, and an enormous amount of hay and manure. Here is the indoor in 2005.

One of my first farm projects was to fix the indoor arena footing. I also wanted to spruce up the structure. On the walls were filth and dirt debris from years of neglect. I invested about 200 hours into hauling out over one hundred tons of old footing; grading the clay base – a nearly impossible task due to its level of compaction; adding 110 tons of limestone screenings and levelling this new base; power washing the walls and the cedar kick wall; and washing the rafters. Six months later I added another 90 tons of limestone screenings. The result is a much improved and completely usable riding arena.

It struck me recently that we’ve just finished up our first year on our farm. There is still much to do. When one project is completed, two projects take it’s place, so it’s easy to feel like more could have been done with the time we’ve been given so far. Still, we worked our arses off and have made tremendous progress. Over the next few days I’ll be posting a series of May 2005 photographs together with their 2006 counterparts, just for fun. To begin the series, I’ll start with something unusual. Me.

Here is what I looked like 12 months ago. Before we moved to our farm I had benefitted from my first year as a hobbyist carpenter, and the increased activity had helped me drop from 200 pounds to 185. Still, at the time I had more fat hanging around than I cared for  If I was to be honest with myself, I looked like your typical run of the mill pasty faced suburbanite.

Here is what I look like today. Another hard day’s work out of doors, digging some post holes and setting 6×6x8 posts in concrete, among other daily chores. I think people are changed as much by the land as they change the land itself. If the person working the land is sensible and hard working, I think both change for the better.

Eef’s first time at a USDF sanctioned event: Five ribbons and a 68.846 from an “S” judge! A great start for a great horse by a great rider.

Today I launched BigDaySmallWorld.com – An Independent Regional Guide to Wedding Professionals. I began this project on Tuesday. Today, it is Thursday. My revamped proprietary modular content management engine is working very well. Being able to drive multiple web sites with a shared code base – and allowing each web site a distinct look and feel appropriate to the industry being served – is a true luxury. I wish I could say that I just whipped up the code in a matter of weeks. The truth is that I’ve been refining my content management engine for six years. BigDaySmallWorld.com will be a directory of wedding professionals – photographers, videographers, caterers and so on. There are over 20,000 photographers listed on Marketingtool.com and many of them have been asking me to publish a wedding-oriented directory to further penetrate that market for them. I’m happy to oblige and look forward to further developing BigDaySmallWorld.com. I get the sense that in a few years it may become my greatest success.

Nancy headed south to Pinehurst, North Carolina this afternoon with Jordan riding shotgun and Eef (our 5 year old Friesian) in tow. The girls and I will be heading down there on Saturday. Until then I’m doing double duty  This week’s weather has been terrible so I’ve put nearly every farm project on hold. Tomorrow I’ll be doing some pasture maintenance and spending most of the day with my girls. More later, including photos from the horse show!

Okay, maybe not. I don’t think I’ll be meeting my psychotic and self-imposed deadline of finishing the fence installation by Wednesday. But I’ve now set all eighteen of my posts:

My piece of sh$! Earthquake E43 power auger bit the dust early on in the job. It’s pull cord assembly rapidly disassembled itself. After my repair of the assembly lasted only a short while, I decided some therapeudic problem solving was in order. So I set the cord asssembly on a board, picked up my sledgehammer and smashed the blasted thing to bits. To be truthful, I wasn’t really solving a problem, but it sure was therapeutic

So I continued the job using a good old fashioned person powered post hole digger. To be honest, I dig holes just as fast by hand than I did with the anemic Earthquake E43. It’s too light a duty power auger to be worth a damn in Franklin County Clay. I’ll definitely be purchasing an industrial strength PTO driven post hole digger before I start work on our four rail oak pasture fencelines. I’ll order a replacement assembly for the E43, purchase a 3” auger bit and relegate the E43 to future landscaping work. It would do a fine job digging 3” holes for perennial bulbs.

In other news I mowed four pastures over Sunday and Monday. I’ve got another 20 acres to mow this week. Mowing is good for the soul, especially with such nice weather as we’ve been having down here on the toasty eastern side of the Blue Ridge.