May 2, 2012

Spring is always a busy time on the farm.  Kelsey graduates this year and we put a couple of extra projects on the agenda.  Matt tour out and is making a new front porch railing, the girls have repainted the white picket fence around their yard, they repainted the garage last weekend, I have help restyle some small areas in their home, and we have been doing all the usual spring yard work that comes with a 10 acre, two family farmstead.

Early Wednesday morning about 2:45 came an immense change to our lives.

No one was hurt. 

High winds or a mini tornado took most of the roof off of a sow gestation building.

360 sows normally call this building home.

By 11:30 a fabulous group of family and friends had the tin and 2 x 4's cleaned up.  Two wonderful friends helped Kelsy and I put lunch out for the 9 men helping Warren with clean up.  Matt and our herdsman, Doug spent the morning feeding the sows by hand and figuring out which one to move off the place and which ones could be housed and moved to other spots on our farm.  This meant that all our sows except the ones in the farrow house would be crowded. 

Note to my non hog producers readers:  Sows fight and sometimes kill each other when penned together.  Some will hog the feed and water so that the less aggressive ones come out weaken.  Also the fighting can cause abortions. 

In the afternoon 3 trailers and men hauled the livestock to a temporary location.  My brother spent the morning getting the building ready and took charge of the unloading at that location. 

The window in the office was broken.

Glass was blown all over the room.

A 2 x 4 went through the wall of the house. 

It came to reside between the bed and night stand in the master bedroom.

Malissa almost always has her car in the garage at night.  In addition to this dent the back window was demolished.  All four of their cars were out that night as Matt was using the garage in the shop for his railing project and they had not got the garage put back together from the weekend painting project.  Really lucky that only one of four was damaged.

A crew will begin on rebuilding the gestation building on Monday.  Work will begin on the house then also. 

Kelsy was heard to express great sorrow at seeing her recently painted fence is badly damaged.  But at the end of the day some of normal had been restored.