Gotta Love Sand!

I have been dreaming of sand for 3 years now. That is how long it has been since we put all that hard work of clearing, burning brush, bulldozer work and having 8 dump trucks of fill dirt brought in. I was happy to have a pretty level space to train my horses in. But there were still a couple things missing. Fencing. It was my next priority. I wanted to make sure that I had a safe place to ride and train. I had to have fencing. So after about 7 months of no fence, we were finally financially able to go out and buy panels.

I hated the hard ground. It became so compact and I just cringed when I loped my horses on it. But I had to ride them. I couldn't afford sand. We checked into sand prices, and it was just way too expensive. 3 years later....................

This is what I had been anticipating about for so long and it was finally here! The first delivery of sand!



My OH went out and talked to the driver to discuss the options of how he was going to drive back to the arena. We have 5 acres, shaped like a rectangle. My arena sits way in the back of that rectangle. We have a 16 foot opening in between the horse pasture's. We have had dump trucks back there before, but they have always had to back in. The driver walked out to the arena and felt he could drive in forward and still have enough room to dump sand and turn around and drive out. He had a transfer, which meant he could dump one truck into the arena, then go back out to our street and put the transfer in the dump and go back to the arena to dump another load. This prevents excessive trips out here from where the sand and gravel pit is. Since we were going to have 3 deliveries with 3 transfers, that works out to 6 dump truck loads of sand. 72 yards.

I wasn't the only one anticipating the sand delivery. Chance was checking out the big rig pulling up to her pasture. She wasn't that scared. Once he drove by her pasture, she would run a little, then come to the upper part of her pasture to see what was going on. Such a curious little thing she is.



The driver was able to spread as he dumped. It wasn't going to be perfect, but at least the 6 loads weren't going to be in big piles all over. That would make the job easier for us and our neighbor, who would be spreading the sand out as evenly as he could for us.



A beautiful sight to see.............



At this point, we still had another 2 loads to be dumped. This is when they had to back up to the arena.



Later that evening, I went over to my neighbors and asked if he could come over with his tractor sometime that week and spread sand. We had already talked to him about it previously and he said he would be over in a couple days.



Neighbor J spent hours in the arena. He was able to spread most of it, except for the edges, which my OH did by hand while I was out of town last weekend.



Just in time for me to take that cute Mustang filly of mine out and get some work done, in the new sand!



I still haven't had a chance to ride in it yet. I was out of town for a family reunion last weekend. But believe me, I will be out there this week! After 3 years, I can't wait any longer!