As we have to keep our mules off the grass most of the time, the dry lot is of course one of the biggest necessities for us. I had planned the lay out weeks ago, and when my summer break started I began to make phone calls and inquiries on materials, people who can help us, machinery, and everything else concerned. After one week on the phone I was exhausted from waiting for call backs, and had hands like claws from typing into my laptop (sending emails to dealers of materials, looking up phone numbers, doing calculations).

We have to carefully build dry lots here, as our ground is deep and gets very muddy. There is no way around using a drainage layer with a top layer.

Our dry lot was to be about 5400 sq feet large, with an automatic waterer in one corner, the salt lick in the other corner, and hay under a roof at the other end of the dry lot. I had planned an easy way to build it, using packed coarse gravel as a base layer and a top of a kind of pea gravel you find in our area, which makes a very nice top layer for dry lots and riding arenas. I had done the calculations, inquired about costs and found suppliers. I thought I had been very efficient already! I even knew which machinery we would be using!

It was Friday afternoon when Steph came home and I was proudly presenting my organizational skills. Steph said “make sure the delivery truck doesn't get stuck on our bridge!!”. Uh-oh I drove out there and measured the little bridge that leads to our new property. Come Monday and I was on the phone again. So the bridge was just wide enough for the big artic truck the supplier would be using, but when I told the supplier he would be crossing a bridge wide enough for his truck he said “Um, so how much can the bridge carry??”. Oh. My. God. Of course I had not the faintest idea!!! How much can a bridge carry? How would I know?! There wasn't any sign (usually we have signs on the bridges indicating how heavy the bridge can be loaded). I called a very nice gentleman from the local building authorities who said that as the bridge is old and they have no records on it he'd drive over during his lunch break and take a look. By then I was a pro at waiting by the phone. He called back and said well, the bridge leading to the village can load 30 tons. Yikes!!! I had totally forgotten about that bridge over there!! And then he said he wouldn't load our bridge any heavier than that anyway.

That was it. All my calculations, a whole week of research and getting price quotes and delivery times for nothing. I could have sat down and have a good cry, but instead of course I checked the battery status of my phone and went back to work. I called all the suppliers again and said the delivery truck could not weigh more than 30 tons, including freight. That at once eliminated all but two suppliers, as they all had artic trucks weighing in at over 40 tons when loaded, and it would be completely uneconomical to have them load less due to gas prices. Ugh!!! With two suppliers left I haggled with both and came up with a price for the material that made me flinch. This would not work. With over 200 tons needed for the base layer only and delivery charges exorbitant due to a truck with a load of only 9 tons (the only truck available apart from the giant one) I was looking at four times the numbers I had before the “bridge incident”. By then it was about mid-week and I felt like a walking failure. How hard can it be to organize the building of a dry lot??

I decided to rethink the whole plan. There are plastic grid mats available here that can act to stabilize the ground, if the ground is not too deep. Our ground is deep, but I thought we could put a thin layer of gravel underneath, put the plastic mats on top, and then fill them up and cover them with the pea gravel. Now those plastic mats are very expensive, but they would not end up more expensive than the first plan. So I spent a day asking for price quotes and comparing the different mats and prices. My eyes were red from staring at my laptop screen. I had a splitting headache. I was so tense you could have snapped me in two!

The next day I haggled with a mat supplier nearby and managed to get an acceptable price. Then I called the suppliers for the different gravels. I got all lined up and ready, and our two helpers (our hay farmer Ottmar's son and his son-in-law) gave me the dates when they would be able to help. Then Jan, the son asked: “So will the plate vibrator and the excavator be there?”

What the heck? The what? I had totally forgotten to get price quotes for the loan of the machinery. I thought the phone might end up fusing to my ear. At least it only took me half a day to order both. I will spare you a description of my humiliating experiences with suppliers (“What kind of plate vibrator do you need?” “Um” – “So what size excavator do you want?” “Err”). Suffice to say I ended up with the ones we need after consulting with Steph several times and feeling like an idiot.

Then the plastic mats were delivered, and Steph called me frantically from the new property (after running up the next hill because in the valley we have no cell phone reception!!) telling me to ask Ottmar, our hay farmer, to come over with his tractor to get the mats off the street. The truck driver could not unload on our property but only on the driveway next to it, and the mats were blocking the way for everybody! Thankfully it was a rainy day and Ottmar had nothing to do, so he came right over and hauled the mats on the property. They were packed too high by the manufacturer so they knocked over and had to be carried to the side by us (the first totally redundant task of many) by hand.

Next came the base layer. Ottmar's son Jan and son-in-law Stefan came to help, the excavator came as scheduled (almost new one, of course everybody wanted to operate the excavator!), the plate vibrator was picked up on time, and then the first mountain of work began. After digging they buried a water pipe for the automatic waterer, dug up and ripped apart the wastewater pipe (good thing, turned out it was dry and clean so we found out that way that the pump was broken) and made a ginormous mess by digging up tree stumps and things like that until after midnight.

The next day at 6 am the first truck with gravel arrived and then one after the other until 11 trucks later and in late afternoon all the gravel (over 110 tons) was there. They spread it using tractor and excavator, shovels and rakes. And then they wanted to use the plate vibrator And it got stuck. The material the supplier had delivered was too soft. It would not pack using the plate vibrator. By that time I was so exhausted I only smiled mildly and said to keep spreading, we would lay the mats on top anyway. That turned out to be a good idea and worked nicely, as the gravel packed itself then with the weight of the mats, some rain and us walking over it.

At this point I was absolutely done and could have happily hidden in my bed under the duvet. But the worst was yet to come. The top layer was being delivered. 90 tons of pea gravel that had to be spread exclusively by hand, as the first two layers could not be driven on yet with a tractor. At the same time the temperature went up to 100F, and Jan and Stefan could not help because they had to work at their regular jobs. That left Ottmar for hauling the pea gravel with his tractor to the edge of the dry lot, while truck after truck was unloaded at the edge of our property. That evening we had little mountains of gravel around the dry lot, and days ahead of shovelling into wheel barrows and spreading it. It's amazing how you can shovel and pant and sweat, and when you look up there seems to be just as much gravel in front of you as before!!

After several days though we had spread most of it, and I think it really looks good already. Now on to the next tasks: building the shed and fencing!