A trailer for me - I call it Serendipity

Don't you love it when something good happens to you when you least expect it? I had something like this happen to me this weekend.

We've been in the market for a small horse/livestock trailer for some time. I don't know what the prices for used trailers are in your area, but in our part of northwest Oregon, prices are *insane*. People routinely ask $1500 for a 30-35 year old, dented and rusty trailer that has its floor rotting out. Since I don't need a trailer that frequently, paying so much for something that is rarely used just wasn't going to be a good investment for us.

But then... something happened that I never even considered in my wildest dreams. While on a walk the other day, we noticed that a neighbor of ours, who has no animals, suddenly had a horse trailer on his property.

The next time we saw him, we asked him about it, thinking he might be willing to loan it to us on occasion. It turns out, though, he had been given this trailer in trade for some work he did and his intention was to pull it apart and sell it as scrap metal! My husband immediately told him he'd be willing to buy it from him and the neighbor said that he would consider that and would think of a price he felt would be fair.

On Saturday, our wonderful neighbor came to our house and said that for $250 we could have this little trailer. What are the chances a neighbor with no animals would find himself in the possession of the perfect trailer for us - and want to sell it to us? Talk about serendipity. I love country life!

Now, this trailer will be called flat-out ugly by most, but to me, she's lovely. She's completely covered in rust, but she has no dents and the rust seems topical. Her body is sturdy and, inside, her wood floor is sound and solid:

We never wanted anything fancier. The best thing is that she is the PERFECT size. We wanted something that could carry the donkeys, if ever necessary, and Kai llama this spring when I need to take her to be shorn. This is an ideal little trailer for exactly this:

After we got her home, we needed to go to the hardware store to get a proper connection so we could hook it up to our truck and see if the trailer lights worked:

And, then, just as it was getting dark, my husband put on a light show for me:

I've got a trailer! She may be a rusty bucket of bolts, but she's sound and she's sturdy and she's all mine. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to find a country neighbor who wants to sand her down and paint her for me. :-)

Now we get to practice climbing into the trailer nicely when asked: