February 2006

Lots of Changes

Where do we start??

Firstly apologies for not keeping the web site up to date. - life has been hectic, let us fill you in.......

We have not mentioned it before, in case it did not happen, but since June last year we have been trying to purchase      
Cripwell Farm, in Wymeswold Leicestershire.
A working dairy farm the owner was selling up to emigrate to Canada, we finally managed to complete on the farm on the farm on the 20th February 2006.
We are now the proud owners of 90 acres, a small farm house and lots of buildings.

Having been negotiating for nearly 8 months, it all happened very quickly, we ended up finalising the deal on Friday the 17th and moving on Monday 20th

We moved into the farm house, and took 6 horses to turn out, but left the rest of the horses at Arena UK.
Although there are lots of buildings at the Farm there are only 2 stables and no arena's to work the horses. So we thought it best to leave the horses at Arena until the end of March when hopefully we are going to have stables arena and walker set up.
A large task in 6 weeks.....

Moving the house was not too bad, Luckily we had Lauren and Paul (a working student) to help with the loading.
We had been packing stuff into boxes for the last month (keeping our fingers crossed the move was going to happen) so on the Monday we managed to load all the boxes and furniture into our 7 horse lorry and a friends 3 horse. they were full to bursting. - Packing all your belongings up does make you realise how much junk you accumulate!

When we got to the farm to unloaded everything into the 'Garage' (this is a shed next to the house the previous owners used as a garage) infant you could fit 5 cars into it and it would make a great stable block!
We only put beds and a kitchen table in the house as it desperately needs painting and new carpets.

We fell into bed on Monday night, stiff and sore from all those trips up and down the ramp!

Tuesday, we woke to a light covering of snow....ugg. At least everything looked pretty!!
Over the next couple of days Tanya collected 6 horses from the yard to turn out.  whilst Mark had a JCB & a dumper truck in and started clearing a barn we intend to put stables in.
The barn we call the cow shed had stalling for 120 cows so the metal stalls and earth beds had to be removed.

Cripwell Farm, not the prettiest farm house, but with 'potential'

View from farmhouse The old milking joins the farm house, so plenty of room for extensions and changes in the future. (The stables come first!)

This is the site of our arena, previously the Silage store, with sleeper walls 9' high it should be a great area for schooling. There is a barn on the farm big enough  to make an indoor school, so by next winter that will be in operation.

To make things even more hectic we had a trip to the States booked for the Friday. Despite the bad timing we could not cancel the trip it was organised ages ago, and people were counting on us. - It was a quick trip, we were only away a week.
Thankfully Marks brother Diddle flew over from Ireland to look after the place whilst we were away, for a few days to be relieved by his mother later in the week, we left them with a very long list of jobs!

Whilst we were away Tanya's parents were great and gave the house a coat of paint, it was joked if you stood still for too long you would be covered in Magnolia!

The clinic in California  went well, we only had one wet day the rest of the week was pleasantly warm, (much better than the terrible weather they were having at the farm!)
The clinic took place in the beautiful setting of Cottonwood Ranch which is an hour north of Santa Barbara.
Having cancelled our trip to the States over Christmas (we were expecting / trying to exchange on the farm at the start on January so felt we needed to be in the UK)  anyway it was great to catch up with everyone.

Hopefully things will have calmed down a little now, and we will be more up to date with the web site.