Yard work doesn’t bother me in general. Weeding, mowing, planting, cleaning stalls. I can find pleasure in it all.
Except raking. I despise raking. Not only is the actual act of raking annoying but then you need to pick up all those piles and figure out what to do with them. Raking is a never ending project. I hates it.
Once the arena was fully torn up, it was time to tackle all those clumps of grass and weeds. They needed removed and this has to be done by hand. With a rake.
No joke, literally 20 hours of hand raking through all the clumped sand to pull out the grass and weeds left me with all of 1/32nd of the total arena done. It looked super nice in the tiny corner I finished. At that rate I might have a workable arena again by next spring. If I’m lucky.
This wasn’t going to work. Sure the footing was looking amazing and I was getting some baller abs from all the raking, shoveling and scooping, but every time I looked up and saw the hundreds of hours still ahead of me I wanted to die a little.
It was time for a plan B: use the front loader of the tractor and just scoop the crud out.
While this method proved to be quick and way less work, it also was removing too much. The entire effort was in retaining as much of the sand footing as possible while still removing the crud and this method was removing everything.
I hopped off the tractor and sighed. Not going to work.
It was on to plan C: use the grooming fork part of the drag to break up the clumps of sand as much as possible in an attempt to lessen the amount of raking.
This proved a good compromise. The rake broke up the major piles and spread them thinner so it was quicker and easier to hand rake through. I started attacking the arena with a new vigor.
Then 10 more hours later I looked up and saw I had completed roughly 1/16th of the arena and the other half I had yet to touch at all was regrowing grass as my pulled up clumps had re rooted. Add in a ton of rain killing off days or weeks at a time where the arena couldn’t be worked and this entire project was seeming a bit daunting.
On to plan D: call in a professional.
The Roaming Rider 
You have so much more patience than I do. I would’ve worked for approximately one hour, cried, threw the rake, and started Googling professionals.
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It’s more an issue with my type A must have all the control personality. Even I know my limits tho and this was just insane
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holy cow i am tired just reading this! LOL I agree with KC an hour maybe 🙂
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I’m stubborn and cheap
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Oh man, I would have rage quit in about fifteen seconds, forget an hour+!
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It was a close call a few times
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I spent hours and hours raking the rocks out of our new ring- before the sand came. It killed my shoulders and I couldn’t do it again. I wonder if a chain drag would collect the grass and weeds? Once grass sets in, it can take a while to convince it to not keep growing.
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I’m not so secretly hating the old owners for not taking the time to drag the arena every once and a while to prevent this.
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That is a massive undertaking. At least maybe now after having put so much sweat equity into it it’ll be easy to remember to keep up with the maintenance once it’s finally done? Here’s hoping some professionals can ease your pain tho- literally!!
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It angers me the old owner didn’t drag it to keep up. Having a pro out today to discuss. Hoping it isn’t expensive or else it will be back to raking
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If the pro is too expensive, consider getting some “helpers” from Home Depot and getting it all done in one day. I dunno what they’ll cost in your area, but even here we’ve picked up guys for fairly cheap for a few hours of gravel wok in the past. You might have to buy a few more rakes, but you could get it done in a day.
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Never thought of that. It’d take a lot of helpers. By hand we have probably 100 hours of work left to do
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Maybe it’d go faster than 100 hours if more people are doing it at the same time? I dunno.
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