Melancholy Monday

I try to stay away from the melancholy wallow of self-pity, but it seems my blog is the best outlet for the trying times.  You see, I can pour my woes out into the vast universe of cyber-space, convince myself that someout there will listen, care, or maybe even sympathize....and maybe, just maybe - I will feel better having done so.

So here's my attempt at the above-mentioned logic.  Owning a farm is tougher than I ever imagined.  I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if you had a big enough place.  If I had ten boarders, losing one wouldn't be a big deal.  But when you only have a spot for one, or two at most, losing one will devastate you, in the financial sense.  All of a sudden, everything comes crashing down as your sole responsibility once again, and it can be really tough. 

I keep telling myself to hold the course, that everything will fall into place over time.  Sometimes, you just have to take a moment to wallow.  Come on - everyone does it.  I'm not going to pretend that I am any more emotionally mature than the next guy.  I have my breaking points, just like anyone else.  So this morning I have been wallowing, and now, I am trying to make the transition to doing something about it.

Here's my first problem.  I rent my farm.  I don't own it, so I can't afford to sink tons of money (not that I even have it, in the first place!) into the property, knowing I will never have any kind of return on my investment.   Secondly, the property is pretty heavily wooded.  I didn't find it to be that big of a deal, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that this will be a concern for a lot of potential boarders that we have shown around in the past few months.  Thirdly, we are not a fancy facility.  We are fairly basic, but I know we both take a lot of pride in the way we care for our horses.  But we don't have a nice ring to tote in advertisements, we don't have gorgeous three-board fencing, we don't have acres and acres of wide-open grass.  I have managed to be content with exactly what we have available to us - but perhaps that is just the pride of ownership?  Apparently that must be the case, because we can't seem to get anyone else to agree with us.

Okay, before this post gets any more depressing, it's time to evolve back to my chipper self, and share my plan.  I can't do a lot about problem one, the fact that I don't own the farm.  I basically have to suck it up and deal with it, and try to make the wisest choices possible.  The woods, however, I am preparing to tackle.  I put an inquiry out to my landlord to talk about doing some clearing on the property, and I should hopefully hear something back in the next day or two.  I am considering bringing in a professional to take a lot of the hardwoods out.  It would be a massive undertaking, when you consider the stump grinding, tilling, fertilizing, and seeding it would take to change around the property.  But apparently it may be warranted to make our farm a success.  So we are going to see how that turns out.  One step at a time, right??