Last weekend, as I was dragging our riding ring, I decided to make a list of the things you have to do`if you keep your horses at home or in a cooperative barn`so you can ride those animals who seem intent on costing just as much aggravation and money as they pay back in fun and accomplishment. The trick, as you may know, is not to let these “jobs” keep you from actually riding the horses you`re working so hard to keep.

The No. 1 job, of course, is the immutable stall cleaning, from which there’s no way to skip a day. (If you do, you end up on Animal Planet`s Animal Precinct show.) Every day you also have to fill and clean the water buckets, and you have to sweep or rake up the mess your horse makes just by walking in the barn and to which you add by grooming him, dropping hay, and cleaning the stalls. And, regularly, you have to buy and unload grain. Plus, you have to pick up or at least stack hay, and then you have to buy and store bedding`the other side of that stall-cleaning problem.

Then you take a look around at all the other things you should be doing if you want your barn or farm to look like a showplace. Well, first of all, accept that your place isn’t going to look like Calumet or Hunterdon if you aren’t paying people to make it look that way. Unless you win the lottery or someone invents a 36-hour day, you don`t have the time.

That’s why, whenever you have a spare hour or three (when are those?), you get to do things like de-cobwebbing, repairing the floor under the stall mats, cleaning and reorganizing the tack room, replacing the latches on the stall doors, painting or repairing the jumps, painting the paddock fences, and painting the barn. What are you sitting there reading this for?

There is one job at which you spend most of your time sitting (on the tractor), but it still seems to get overlooked at many small and large farms. That`s probably because it’s a challenge and it takes a lot of time. I`m talking about pasture maintenance, about which I’ve become a bit maniacal since our five acres have to support two or three horses and a pony.

My wife has given me several books on the subject for Christmas, but I’ve never found one that was useful or detailed enough to satisfy me. I suspect it’s because climate, soils and other conditions vary so much across our vast country that no one has tried to write a book called “How To Grow And Care For Your Horse Pasture In All 50 States.” (Nevada: “Don’t bother.” Vermont: “Just keep your mower blades sharp.”)

So I’ve read, I`ve consulted with “experts,” I’ve seeded about four different kinds of grass, I’ve sprayed for weeds, I fertilize and lime each year, and I watch The Weather Channel to pray for more or less rain, depending on the conditions. And, of course, I mow.

It’s rewarding to see that green stuff grow, but there’s no more powerful feeling than hitching up the bushhog and cutting it all. The view in the next day`s early morning light makes you feel like “Super Gardener” as you survey what was a hodgepodge of uneven vegetation that you’ve converted to a smooth, dew-covered greensward awaiting equine consumption. Now, if I could just convince those picky horses to steadily rotate their way around the pasture to eat it evenly, I’d really have this thing licked.