Updates on Flooding, Repairs and Injuries on this Arabian Horse Farm

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With a break in the weather it was repair time around this Arabian horse breeding farm. There were lots of things to be tended to but none as important as the supports on our shavings shed.

The problems with the shavings shed were not something new. During at least a couple of deliveries the driver had clipped the edge of one of the poles supporting the roof. Despite my repeated warnings to Dave that these poles needed to be fixed, he somehow kept moving that job to the bottom of his ever growing list.

It wasn't totally his fault. It seemed that when the timing looked about right we might actually get the job done, the shed was too full of shavings to be able to do the work. When the shed was empty, Dave was at work or didn't have the help he needed. Either way, the job waited.

With our record snowfall in December the support provided by those compromised poles showed it was suffering. The roof of the shavings shed began to sag........... badly. We are very fortunate it did not collapse. That's probably a testament to the heavier than needed poles and such that Dave used in the first place.

Currently we can't get shavings even if we wanted to and Dave has no job. Hunting for one on the weekend isn't very successful but the weekend IS a good time for Dave to line up help to install the new poles..........so that's what happened around here today.

They had to jack the building up to put the new poles underneath. They also installed those new poles on the outside instead of inside of the shed. That way if we should ever be able to get shavings again and the driver accidentally hits the wall, the poles supporting the roof will not take the brunt of that mistake.

That's one big job finally completed and probably another dozen or more to go. After this round of flooding we can see what we need to do to keep that complex of stalls, feed and shavings storage dry. We're either going to have to enlarge the size of the pipe in our French drains or add additional drains. On the back side of that building we will need to add French drains there as well, these will have to be routed straight to the creek instead of into the pond.

The heavy rainfall also helped us to see what are problems with the location of the new stalls we are trying to construct. What we remembered happening with the ground water isn't exactly what happened. There must be modifications to those plans before we can continue on with this build. Better now than after, that's for sure. But it means it will take that much longer before I get all of my horses back at home.

On another note, I went back to the part today to leave notes for the horse owners there. Since I wasn't able to get much out of the park grounds keeper, I figured trying a more direct approach might work. When I reached the barns, I found all the stalls empty. I hope that means those horses were able to go back to their homes and their owners didn't sustain too much damage.

I still plan on doing some investigating to see if I can locate horse owners who might need help. But at least for now it looks like maybe these people in Orting did not have the catastrophic damage to their farms that happened in the early winter of 2007 to the farms in Lewis County. (Those folks are still trying to dig out and get their lives back in order.)

In the meantime we are still drying out a few stalls and cleaning up silt. It is slick work. That silt is every bit as slippery as ice or at least it seems that way to me. I've about fallen on my b*tt more than a dozen times. That makes this work on the slow side but each day I can see the progress. Maybe we'll get this farm whipped into shape before the next round of storms hits.

For those wondering about Richard, he did finally go see a medical doctor. They needed new x-rays so he had to wait for results. Richard and I use the same doctor. I happen to know from experience that he is NOT good at letting his patients know what their x-rays have said. So Angie bugged them until they finally got the results.

Richard actually broke four vertebrae in his back. One piece of broken bone is actually rubbing against the large portion of that bone causing pain. The only way to fix this is surgery. However, Richard doesn't have insurance AND (probably more important to Richard) the time for recovery is very very long. Richard has opted not to do surgery.

According to the doctor that is ok as long as Richard can tolerate the pain. Sooner or later it will go away as the bones heal. The doctor's assistant guessed it would take about a year before Richard rides another horse. Anyone want to take bets on that?

More to come on that story............and on me getting back into the saddle.............so stay tuned there's more posts on ground driving and still more to tell on Percy's kindergarten lessons, not to mention how Tag, Louie, Hope and Vee are doing. It's going to be an exciting year.



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