Last year I figured out that on our 3 acres of property, that I actually had a good trail area to ride my horse Legend.  It has been a dream of mine to just leave my house and be able to ride for miles....but I live in California and I work in town.  I could accomplish that in two ways.  Either I could move out of state and find lots of places where you can just ride, (those of you who can are so very lucky).  Or my hubby and I could quit our jobs, move about an hour to an hour and a half out of town and buy my dream home.  We would just have to become some type of work from home tech people except out in the boonies you can't get wifi so I am unsure how this would work.  I have looked and looked and looked.  Well my third option would become a multi millionaire and I could afford something close to town with property that backs up to more property.  

I trail ride.  It's my thing.  Lots of horse people rope or barrel race, jump or do dressage.  I trail ride.  Before you say oh, Legend is only a trail horse, I would love to take you for a trail ride.  Legend is a trained trail horse.  He knows how to get me up and down hills, over logs, can side pass benches and large rocks.  He can ride by dogs, bikes, cars, boats etc.  It's his job to see things on a regular basis and not freak out.  He also has to get me up and down hills with both of us under his 4 feet.  It's harder than you think.  My back yard happens to be a redwood forest full of hills, downed trees and a lot of different terrain to navigate.  It's not miles in fact it's just a few acres but in those acres we can get a lot of practice in.  In order to do that I had to clear a lot of brush and blackberries.  If you have never lived with blackberry bushes, you are somewhat of a blessed person.  Blackberries are some of my favorite things but the bushes are horrendous.  You can't kill them.  They have gnarly thorns and they are invasive.  If you are not actively trying to kill them, they are actively taking over your property.

Enter the goats.  I never understood why people would own goats.  They seemed like something not worth feeding until I came into the realization that either I could be down in the forest with a weed eater for weeks or I could get a couple goats and see what they could do.  I had a friend with two male goats.  He kindly gave them to me.  One was not fixed.  If you have smelled a unfixed male goat before it is not pleasant.  They actually pee on their face in order to attract female goats.  It's totally disgusting actually.   They also only have one thing on their mind.  We named that goat Spade and Spade gave us a goat education. For future notice, if you get a unfixed male, you can get them fixed at a older age.  It takes about 5 minutes and a friend with a bander.  We lived with Spade several months not fixed.  That was probably the biggest mistake I made.  There are many other funny goat stories while we went through the learning curve of owning them that sometime I will have to take from my face book page and add to the blog.  I ended up falling in.love with the boys and now have Pinterest pages dedicated to the care and how to make life fun for goats.

When they aren't down in the forest for me, (which I have to say they did an amazing job.  They created a ton of trails for me.  I highly recommend getting goats if you are looking to do things like this), they now live by my arena which also has had a black berry infestation issue.  What started out as here, let's make a small area has now turned into how can we make their area bigger and their life better.

I am super cheap.  I hate spending money on something that I can make or repurpose.  If you know anything about fencing, it's really expensive.  You will spend thousands.  With goats, they are escape artists and I have one other eek factor.....I own five dogs, three are German Shepherds and they would love to get in with the goats.  The fence has to be strong enough to keep both of them on their respective sides.  This is where pallet fencing comes in.  I did a bunch of researching and found lots of people who use pallets for fencing.  I found a place locally that has really nice pallets and I can get as many as I want on a regular basis.  There is only one thing about pallet fencing that I don't like.  I hate the way they look.  They look like pallet fencing.  

We set up one area as a trial run to see if it would work.  It indeed did work.  We used metal t posts and pallets.  You put a t post into the ground every two pallets you secure together.  On the first video it shows you quickly how the fence is screwed together.  There are a ton of videos out there about how to do this and it's really simple.  I will say the first fence we did 1 t post every three pallets.  That would have worked ok for the goats but the dogs jump and are harder on the fence.  We did have a dog break through because of it.  This time we changed that.  

So here is some pics and video of phase one of the goat fencing project.  This is where most people would stop.  It is in fact a functioning pallet fence with a pallet gate.  Being that I love to repurpose things, I cannot stop there being that I do not like the look of it and I live in a beautiful area and I want to see if I can in fact create fencing from pallets that is not only cheap and painless, but is also attractive.  Making this fence attractive takes the "fast" part out of it.  This is probably why most don't go further because it is completely functional.  I just am not ok with just functional.  I would be if you couldn't see it but it's in the front of my property so now we are going to attempt to put paint on a pig so to speak and see if we can't actually make this fence functional and beautiful.  

So here is the video of the functional part.  You also get to meet Spade and Caramel who are worth watching the video just for them.  I explain in the video what I am going to add.  I am going to basically trim out the fence to get rid of the pallet look and hopefully bring it to really cool fence look.  I believe I will probably stain the fence as well once it is finished again for the look of it.

I hope you enjoy the video and the project.  Oh, and hubby and I bought ourselves a John Deere small tractor for our 25th anniversary and my hubby today was saying it's the best present we have ever bought each other.  We love the tractor and it helped us out today with moving pallets, trees and anything else we could use it for.

Watch later this week for phase 2!    

​I can’t overstate how dangerous it can be to go off of how you feel without having something or someone to check with. Your mind is very impressionable and without hard facts will think how you are feeling is actually reality.
I’ve given this example before but it happened again to me this week so I think it bears repeating. In the past 9 months or so I’ve lost 35 to 40 pounds, (I bounce around a bit in that range). I’ve decided that I’m happy where I am and don’t really want to put in much more effort to lose more and with that I have a bit more freedom. My personality is all or nothing so if I have a few days where I don’t eat perfect or close, my mind tells me that I’m gaining and I have gone back to where I was. It also doesn’t help that my digestive system is pretty sensitive so if I eat stuff I shouldn’t, my body feels crappy.
Today I didn’t want to get on the scale. I was afraid of reality. My mind was telling me it’s going to be bad and living in I don’t know land is so much better. You know you feel crappy, you know you weren’t perfect so it’s going to be bad.
Now the reasonable side of me knows a few things. First off you don’t gain 40 pounds in a day or even a bad week so how I feel isn’t possibly true. I still feel that way. Second I know that my success actually lies in getting on the scale. Living in I don’t want to know land is why I didn’t lose. I was always too afraid to face reality and so I just didn’t. I would say stuff like I’ll go off how my clothes fit or as long as I work out every day it will be fine. I actually didn’t start making progress until I got on the scale every day. Some days it sucked but it kept me honest and most of all, it kept me from gaining 10 pounds instead of 1. Funny thing actually is that I’m many pounds lighter and still wear a lot of my old clothes. They are just way baggier….but there’s 40 pounds difference. So going off of my clothes has a really large range.
Honestly this post has nothing to do with weight loss but everything to do with your mind is easily influenced and it needs to be grounded in truth. I stepped on the scale this morning and found out I’m at the top range of what I want. Basically I’m in the 35 range when I really would like to be 40 but I’m way within range. My feelings told me that I was way heavier and to give up. I’ve always listened to my feelings before. I always got too afraid of the scale and fear kept me from finding facts.
Your feelings will tell you that life isn’t worth living. I’ve had those days. In those moments it’s honestly how I felt. It’s not fact though because minutes, hours, days or seasons later I’m so thankful that I didn’t stick with how I felt because my life is a gift. If you believe no one wants you, that’s all you’ll see. Your mind wants to back up its thoughts with “evidence”. You need those who love you to tell you the truth. The truth might be that yes, you’ve been a lot lately. Maybe even a pain but I’ve never wished a loved one out of my life and secretly I am always pulling for them to do well no matter how frustrated I am in the moment. I’ve been mad at the people closest to me probably more than anyone else but if those people ever thought for a second that I didn’t want them it would break me.
Make sure that your not buying into the current trend which is because I feel like it I am. That’s how things like suicide happens. You need to align your thoughts with truth and your feelings will follow. Look back on your life at how you felt vs what you know is reality. Do you see where you are thankful that maybe you didn’t go with how you felt?
Feelings aren’t wrong, they are indicators. They tell me how I am doing but shouldn’t be what I am doing. If I am doing bad, the what should be what do I need to do in order for me to feel good again. Not my thoughts and feelings are true and my life is over. Ignoring how you feel is a bad idea too because you are ignoring your indicators. It’s like driving a car with the gas light on. You can either go get gas or run out somewhere. Your choice. The gas light isn’t a bad thing it just shows you where you are at and what options you might need to take to keep going. Emotions are like gas lights.