Storm Season

Its storm season out there, and I want to take a mintue to remind everyone to be smart and to be SAFE, because scary storms can happen anywhere, as my family learned a year ago.

It was a warm July day, and there were tornado warnings and sigthings in our area. I was working at the DQ in town, and we had almost 40 people packed into our food coolers because the tornado sirens were going off.  We were sent home when the sirens quit, and Mom called as I was driving. "The hoop barns are gone." Gone?  

South Barn

We had just finished this barn about 4 months before the storm. There were 600 lambs housed in our two hoop barns. Fortunately, we only lost one lamb!  You can see overturned feeders in this picture - They had been filled with corn just that morning. 

The north barn

Twisted beams!

We were so lucky to have not lost our house, or more animals! This experience made me very thankful for our neighbors. That night, we had several visit and offer to help clean up the wreckage, even though it was almost a month later when we finally started ripping things apart and attempting to salvage posts and hoop sections.

A year later, two new hoop barns stand in the same spots - It's almost as if the storm never happened. I keep a bolt that is bent to a L on my dresser to remind me to never underestimate mother nature - and now I really really don't like storms!!