Dear Ernie

 

I hope that you are doing well. We are both fine, over worked and underpaid….but what else is new?

You know that we have the barn and it is huge and empty at the moment? Well, a girl named Elizabeth bought some hay from us in June. She called a few days ago and she needed some more. We got to talking and she is unhappy with the barn that she is renting in Burlington. She decided that she would come the next day and look at our barn.

She came the next day, with her friend and the two of them walked around looking the place over. They were here for 4 hours, before I noticed that they had a dog in the truck! They than preceded to take 4 dogs out of the truck and let them get some air. It was warm, not hot outside but they should not have been in there that long……geeez..

As we were talking about all the stuff that she wanted to do and all the stuff that she could do, there developed a theme!  Les, do you know someone that I can pay, and he can build the stalls for my horses? Yes, I did know someone and he charges $10.00 an hour.

Les, do you know where I can get cheap wood or free wood?  Yes, I do know someone down the road and he has wood. You would have to pull out a lot of nails, but it would be cheap.

Les, I would like to put up another building that would be an arena. I would give riding lessons and clients could exercise their horses all year round. I can only pay $1000.00 a month for now, but I will give you a percentage of the stall rentals and we can talk about increases on paper.

Well, Garrett and I talked it over later that evening and it seemed like a lot of work that we would be doing and not being involved in the horse business. We were providing her the building, we were hiring our friend to build her stalls, we were getting the building permit for her arena, we were bothering our friend for free wood. She was running around getting money from this person to pay for that and so on. I thought this is not going to fly, besides, I didn’t want to run a horse business! She figured she could put up 40 stalls and rent them out. After a while, I thought that would be a lot of people coming and going from here and the thought of that was enough to stop me. I moved to the country for the peace and quiet, not the comings and goings of a lot of others!

So, when she called the next day, I talked her out of thinking about this place and it was over the money….that she didn’t have!

But we are going to rent out space for storage in the barn. I will have people drop off their trailers, motorcycles….whatever on a certain date, pay for the months that they are here and pick them up at the end of the time. That way, I am only dealing with them at the beginning of the time and the end of their time and they are out of here. It will be quiet during the day and I have the barn locked all winter. I am planning on taking pictures of their vehicles when they arrive and that way, if they say that this was broken or damaged while here, than I can show them the pictures and say it came like that. I will get them to sign the pictures on the back to prove to them that I didn’t take the shots after they left.

But now, we have to figure out what is a good price for storage. I am going to call around some other places here and see what they are charging.

It never stops Ernie, the thinking, the plotting, the planning. Especially living out here on the ranch. We have to cut firewood, although Garrett gets a lot of free wood from work. But there are a lot of things to do before the cold weather sets in. You, living in B.C; you don’t have to prepare for the snow and ice and short cold days! Remember those???  They will be upon us soon, and we are only 75 % ready at this point.

Take care my friend. Talk to you again