Just like old times!

Anyone hear of the hurricane force winds we had last night? OMG, we heard them, alright. ALL NIGHT LONG. Shaking the house, and when my radio alarm went off this morning I couldn't really hear it over the racket the wind was making. I've seen reports of gusts recorded at 98 mph - within 10 miles of here.

I was so concerned all night about the horses who are currently shut up in their pen and without access to their shelter, that I forgot totally about my normal wind paranoia. (The horses were fine, by the way.)

Ah, but that came rushing back when the girls came running back into the kennel this morning after taking the dogs out. They seemed a bit flustered. "The fence is gone!" Whoops! Guess we shoulda looked over the dog fence before heading out. Fortunately they acted quickly enough to get all the dogs back into the un-compromised yards, and just like that all of our morning plans vanished in an instant. Dave and Ginger had the shift / day off respectively -- so I got out to survey the damage first.



One post was sheered off at the ground and the two sections on either side had gone flying. The other spot at the end was a severe post failure as well.



The errant fence sections -- after I'd dragged them back to the fence, mind you.



And, once again we were back to the good old days of fence building! Boy, we haven't done any of this for a very long time.



Snickers was our official hole-seeker.



Four hours, many braces and reinforcements later, it was looking darn good, I must say.



We're sad to say, however, that we clearly can no longer ignore the condition of that fence. Guess we have a new summer project on the books now.

But the really annoying and ironic part about the impropmtu dog-fence-repair job that we had to do, is that it pre-empted the horse-fence-repair job we had planned that morning! Grrrr. Yes, the north pasture horses have been in their pen for the last three nights because the perimeter fence was, well, dismantled. By our neighbor.

Backing up, Saturday Dave and I took off to see a movie. On the way out the door, we were stopping by the neighbors' to drop off our Xmas Cards. Dave told me that Tom had come by to get the scraper blade, as he was going to scrape the ice on the pond so that they could ice skate on it. I was astonished -- "he's going to drive the tractor on the ice?" Well they weren't home but later we got a call from Tom. Dave chortled. Seems Tom's tractor broke through the ice, and Tom was calling to let us know he had to go into our pasture to get it out. It was after the movie that we got the message that he'd not only been unsuccessful in getting the tractor out, but as he'd had to take the fence down, he corralled our horses up in their pen.

Okaaay, we said. We promptly donned our outter gear and flashlights when we got home to survey just how he could take our electric fence down without cutting it. Amazingly enough, he'd broken through the ice right near a 20 foot section of the fence that is really just a patch between two major sections. So actually he COULD dismantle the fence without really doing anything to the fence. Yet that was still a 20 foot section that was open air, adjacent to the pond that we didn't want the horses any where near.

We were looking forward to getting down there with a camera to watch his efforts to get his tractor out -- which by the time we saw it was an exaust pipe, half a steering wheel and the top of the drivers seat above icy water. Alas, we didn't get any documentation. But we did witness from afar the tractor being loaded onto a trailer and taken away to be drained and dried out.

Our neighbor. :-D He reminds us that blown over fences maybe aren't really that big of a deal.