Pullin' Chocks: November 2019

We often think back fondly of the farm life that we left behind when we left the Shore in our RV in 2014. We had a fantastic run at Cloverland Ranch for almost 20 years. Below we have assembled some of our favorite views from the farm.

The view up the long gravel driveway. That was no fun to plow when we had heavy snow :-) I see Max the rescue dog sniffing around the pasture fence frame right.

This is the 36'x36' concrete block barn we built around 1996. We used reclaimed lumber from the old poultry house that was on the farm when we bought it. That lumber built all the stalls inside the barn.

The back patio and deck. Lindsey Murray Concrete poured all of our pads and walkways at Cloverland Ranch. We had a 6-person hot tub on the patio, boy do we miss that!

Ocean City lawyer Hugh Cropper purchased the farm across the road for hunting. He planted sunflowers several years to bring in the Mourning Doves for his September hunt. They sure were pretty to look at. We fashioned our mailbox to look like a 2-horse trailer. Everything at Cloverland Ranch was horse themed, just our cup of tea.

The shot below shows the run in shed that we built one fall in what we called the Martin Pasture. We had installed a Purple Martin house in that pasture for several years. We finally got the Martins after a few years, but then they never came back after a couple of years so we removed the house. We had plenty of Barn and Tree Swallows that ate all the bugs just fine. There's Max still providing surveillance over the situation.

12'x12' stalls in the run-in shed with a 6'x12' secure dry storage. Also constructed with reclaimed poultry house lumber.

We built the pole barn around 2005 to store our horse trailer and other supplies. Delmarva Pole Building built it for us. The crew leader's name was Lonny, so we named this building the Lonny Shed. I believe that was a 40'x24'x14' high barn.

We noticed that there were a lot of Eastern Bluebirds on the property when we first bought it. Once we got organized we hung between 10-15 Bluebird houses around the farm for probably 15 years or more. I can't tell you how many clutches were born and raised there, but several houses produced two clutches each year. Occasionally we saw a house produce three clutches in a single year.

We loved to watch the Bluebirds. This one is feeding the hungry young-uns.

This was our barn pasture, the garden in front we call the Well Garden.... because the water well was in there. We put that 325' x 4" well in with inheritance money that Grandma & Grandpa Fletcher left us.