Horse facility prep continues

Well, flood or no flood, we continue to prepare to bring the horses home before hurricane season gets underway.  Mark and Jerry set the posts for the three individual paddocks yesterday.  Jerry is out there painting them with that Flexcoat elastomeric paint as we speak.  It's more of a rubber coating than an actual paint, and it's supposed to last a lot longer.  We try to choose products we figure will last 20 or 30 years when we can -- that way once we aren't able to do much maintenance anymore ourselves, and are retired and too poor to pay someone, there won't be much that needs redone -- we hope.

When Gustaf came through, Mark had just begun building the barn -- it was just those huge structural posts and beams and a plywood roof with tar paper.  The metal roof  hadn't been installed yet.  All that happened was the tar paper blew off.  The structure was completely unaffected.  So now that the barn has been completed (double walls  - cement board on the outside, heavy plywood on the inside covered with high-density polyethylene, and insulation in between), we're almost ready for the horses to come home.  All three horses do have inside stalls over at Al's place, but his barn is metal and surrounded by enormous live oak trees, and our horses are in the stalls just inside the back door nearest the trees.  So if one of his trees were to fall, it's possible it could crush those stalls.  Here at the house, our barn has no large trees near enough to fall on the barn, and Mark reinforced every stage of the barn construction to withstand hurricane-force winds.  I guess it's possible it could be damaged by a worst-case tornado, but I doubt that any hurricane could be intense enough this far inland to do it serious damage.  So if we DO have a hurricane, I not only want our horses here at home by then, I want to gather up the rest of the critters and ALL go stay in the barn!  It's probably sturdier than the house! 

Mike, Jerry and Mark -- observed by Joey who's sneaking up on them from the right.
That crooked metal post at the corner of the chain link dog yard is going to be removed and the chain link fastened to that heavy wood paddock post.  Should look a lot better.

Mark relaxes and enjoys the view of the finished fences

Fence around the perimeter is done -- just need the paddocks finished now



Jerry and Mark cement horse paddock posts in place



Mark says he built the barn the way he did because he figured if he was offshore when a hurricane hit, I would go out there to try and keep the horses calm, and he wanted to be sure I'd live through it. Thank you, dear!