Storm Damage and Storm Prep for the Barn

Our barn's gutters took a hit from the snow.

We didn't realize snow likes to stick together on metal roofs. When it starts to melt it forms and underlayer of ice and the whole sheet slowly rolls off like a glacier.

The glacier caught the lip of the gutter and the rest is history.

Not that the horses cared. It wasn't food.

The gutter fell on Monday. A new storm was forecast for Sunday, so it got put on the list for Saturday's storm preparation. 

So naturally, Carrie started working on it Friday.

She figured out a system to over-engineer and reinforce the gutters that weren't falling off.

And she managed to hurt herself in the process

Carrie said that the metal of the roof slit her ring finger open so smoothly she didn't feel a thing. She just looked at it in surprise.

The question was: Would she need to see someone? It didn't want to stop bleeding and we didn't have any super glue in the house.  

Thankfully, it stopped before I left work (but not before it brought back memories of my bagel cutting oops!).

When Saturday arrived, Carrie woke me early in the morning. She was going to go to an Urgent Care about her cough before the storm hit. She rushed off without her purse, so Shane and I delivered it before I started on storm prep.

First step: Hay delivery.

We had been scheduled to get hay at the start of the month, but the first storm messed that all up.

I took down the screen and gave Shane a choice: Rake bad hay or pull up pallets. 

He chose pallets. That put me on raking.

The plan was to rake hay into the back of the gator and dump it in the woods. Carrie's been using the gator as a poop dump truck instead of trying to lift buckets (which means no more large hay runs). 

I was wondering why she kept a shovel in the gator, but I found out soon enough. Thankfully, I was wearing gloves and surrounded by sticks to help it along.

Then the hay removal commenced!

I kept Shane out until he moved all the small pallets. 

I  kept at the raking long after he went in to play Switch. I'd hoped to leave the hay stacked next to the gator alone, but it turned out I had to move it for the hay guy to fit his pallets side by side.

Carrie was still in town getting diagnosed with pneumonia and picking up her prescriptions for all of this, so I sent her pictures to stop her from worrying.

I was still outside moving things around when the shipment showed.

As long as we're repeat customers, this guy is happy to offload the hay on pallets and collect the pallets when he comes back next time.

I'm all for it. It saved my back! I plan on tipping next time.

The hay delivery came and went before Carrie got home. 

Shane and I went out to take care of the horses sometime after. We scooped A LOT of poop. I wanted to make things as clean as possible before the next storm came and stopped us from cleaning the lots all over again.

If I had thought that ponies stomping and pooping on snow would help it melt I was wrong. Instead, it all compressed to shit on an ice shingle. Maddy and Indy's poop was a frozen puree stuck to a solid couple of inches of ice underneath.

I filled many buckets with ice and snow. You can see the dividing line/step where I'd been working.

I had to stop, because of Carrie. She showed up to and put her sick butt up a ladder.

I offered to do it for her, but she said she had it down to a science. She was able to take care of the mares' gutter on her own, but there was a sheet of ice on the boy's side.

My job was to keep her safe. That included using a hammer to pound grooves into the ice before bracing the ladder with whatever footing I could find. Eventually, I noticed that I could hammer the feet of the ladder down into the ice for a better seat.

Once Carrie finished she was exhausted and agreed to go back inside. She and Shane rested and I worked a full 9 to 5 day.

The cats were interested in all the smells I brought in with me. I was more interested in a hot shower and resting!

We felt ready enough for the storm when it was all done. The gutters were braced as good as they could be, there was gas in the generator, hay in the barn, and food in the fridge.