Things the ranch need

I found the septic tanks and had them pumped out by a local company.  Both tanks were steel, steel tanks haven’t been installed in about 20-25 years, mainly because they only last about 20-25 years.  Fiberglass, concrete or poly tanks are the new standard because they last much longer.

To have them replaced by the company who pumped them out the tank for the main house is roughly $15-18k. The smaller tank with little house and barn was $13-15k.  This is with them “giving us a deal” because we would do both tanks.  This price is ridiculous, I asked them if there is anything special to it and they said you just connect the drainage pipes that were there and that’s it. Fairly simple.

The large tank is about $4000 and a smaller one is closer to $2500.

Each would take a day to change out with a rental of a small excavator or using the local neighbor with one.

These need to be replaced because they are rusting and not safe. The tank for the main house is in much better condition than the tank for the little house.  The little house tank had rust holes and the lid was completely deteriorated.  

The barn, shop, arena… it all needs siding.  I counted 60 sheets that would need to be replaced Due to serious rot.  Roughly $50 a sheet, so $3000 in materials to replace all of that.

Once that is changed it would be a good idea to have everything painted.  I do not know a cost to paint it as I rarely take any painting jobs. I know paint can be expense and the prep work is time consuming.  I am up for the challenge to paint barns with sprayer to save everyone money and I have done it before. It is just not something I specialize in.  Replacing the siding however, I can handle that for us. 

The garage style doors on the arena have issues every week. They get opened and closed everyday and they are also ugly.

I would love to put in a sliding door like most barns have. Something we won’t need to fix every week and will also look much better than dented garage doors that open upwards.  

The tractor we use at the ranch everyday is great, for someone who wouldn’t use it everyday. 

It also has a huge problem we can not fix as you know.  The three point hookup, where we attach implements to the rear, that is broken so it is very dangerous when it does work but also doesn’t always work.
This makes out tractor good for its bucket but not good for anything else.  Such as using a tiller or box blade or brush hog.  Yes I can rig it up so it works, but it isn’t ideal.  While this tractor still has value I recommend selling it and replacing it with something slightly larger.  Something that can move more material faster and also something we can use attachments for.  Ideally a tractor that can cut, rake and bale the large fields which we currently pay about $4000-5000 a year for.    

Things are muddy, very muddy. If there was any budget for pathways that would be wonderful and I would match the contribution.  Where

horses get turned out is a 40‘ foot long path of mud that is about 8 inches on average.  
Rocks would be great and could be permanent  but wood chips would help tremendously too if we can’t afford gravel.  Having this much mud around makes the day to day operations challenging.  Not only that but when it dries out in the summer it won’t be pretty.  Anything to help this would be awesome! Even a few hundred dollars.