Hurricane @ LP Painted Ponys

[paintponylvr]

So, we didn't have too much damage, we seemed to be a "bright spot" in a world heavily damaged.  I am thankful and send out hearty, heartfelt prayers to all who have been hit sooooo much harder than us.  We now have a number/company to contact for well service to see what's going on there.

We lost 4 tarps - 2 on the boys feed shed (counted as 1), 1 on the hooped chicken coop next to the barn, the one over the wagon next to the chicken coop and on the dog pen in the back yard.  We've had metal/tin roofs come loose on the shed row barn, the sheds in our back yard and the one chicken coop in our back yard.  These will all eventually be replaced/tacked back down...

We did have a place in our pasture, not far enough away from our well pump house, imho, collapse.  We have plans to fix it.  The water flowing down the hill moved a stack of large lumber (telephone poles, 8x8's - etc) - we will need a tractor bucket and younger, fitter bodies to restack it.

Pics after 2nd rain event (the first was over the weekend of September 2nd) on 28 September 2016 -

This first pic is of our "pond" and shows some of the main pasture as well.  You can see water extending towards the barn a bit.  Little did we know what would happen in 1 week...



The road is partially under the glare at the top and to the left of it at the bottom.



for the next 48 hours (several times in/out), we'd go thru the hay field to the right of the fence post instead of on the road.  By then the road had been fixed. 



Another angle.  The "bank" is undercut almost 1/2 way to my 3/4 ton truck.  If I'd much further to the right, I might have collapsed that section and tipped the truck over.  Don't know, didn't want to find out... 



The pics above were taken around 7 am.  The one below was taken around 1pm - same day.  I had left the truck near the end of the road - checking out the road.  I walked quite a ways and had turned and was headed back.  The couple on edge of pond walking ahead of me are newly closing on one of the properties further down our road.  The sellers are shipping to Alaska and decided to sell rather than lease/rent out.  When I got back to the truck, I backed to the entrance of the road and drove back thru the hay field.  These pics really don't show how bad the road was...  Even just looking at the road, until I dropped to the ground, I had no idea - other than bad!



Ok, on the next post, I'll do pics of the day of the hurricane.

[paintponylvr]

Like the September rain event, the rain and wind socked into us sometime after midnight and we woke to a miserable time.  Critters were all OK at daybreak - no damage from the whipping winds yet at the time...  I took neither phone nor camera out with me, so no photos.  sorry.

We'd had breakfast (EARLY) and not long after, lost power.  Not knowing how long it would be before we got power back we were not really wanting to open the fridge for any reason and had nothing handy to heat food with (weren't really wanting to break out the Camp stove or grill yet, LOL).  Larry wanted to see how the outside world was faring and if there was any power out there - so he and Sierra braved the, at this point, not so bad weather.  I took a while doing up the pics - partially because some of them scared the "stuffing" right out of me and partially because I was MAD at them!!  BUT they did find the new Hardy's was open and brought hot food home!  So... maybe not so bad...  ??

The first pic they sent me from Sierra's phone.  We'd had rain for well over 8 hours by this time and it was slow sprinkle now, maybe even stopped? 



The pond.  Doesn't look tooooo bad, right?  Except for 1 problem.  The pond water usually can't even be seen from this far away as it's usually well below that tree in the left middle ground just to the front of the car.  And instead it's well out into the road between the car here and the tree hillock...



Uuuummmm, the water is flowing...  It's the muddy red color due to all the clay that's been washed down into it.  If the trees weren't right up against the road on the right, it's about a 15 - 20' drop there to the woods floor below.  Larry and Sierra did say that water was draining out of the 4" pipe - but water was also flowing over the road.  I'm not sure how he could tell if the road was damaged or not - did he just hold his breath?



well, the road had been repaired... sigh



Did I say the rain had stopped?  It's started again.  Hard to tell, but Larry did say that water was washing across the road from right to left here (from the hayfield into the road).

[paintponylvr]

It's amazing how little water on the road can create a problem.  This doesn't look like much and certainly isn't that deep...  Shortly after Sierra took this shot, this road was again closed here at the intersection (Hwy 690 - toward the right towards Vass, has been closed since 28 Sep - road collapsed completely dropping a 1/2 ton truck into the newly created ditch). 





The 4'+ refers to how high the water had to be to come across the top of the road from the normal height of this pond...



Thankfully, neither Larry nor Sierra went back out for the next 48 hours...  This had my teeth on edge -





That Hardy's mushroom thick burger tasted wonderful - good thing as it would be a while yet before our power came back the first time.  For dinner later, we did sandwiches and chips that didn't need to be cooked...  Missing coffee.  Hadn't thought to bring firewood into the house to keep dry (not used to that...) and so we didn't do a fire & camp coffee.  Soda had to suffice for caffeine at this time.  Ponies all appeared to be OK, so didn't go out to chores until after 4 while it was still a pseudo light.

[paintponylvr]

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With the stress of being told first we needed to evacuate, then we didn't, then we did.... 

Will attach the links to dam info.  This dam is at 230' and we are at 300' with a large, rolling hill that is between us and the flood plain is 360'...  According to the original flood plat, our road wasn't included in the evac that started due to a local dam developing a problem.  But they took that picture/layout down from online and amazingly, we've heard nothing or very little about the dam today.

http://www.thepilot.com/news/weakened-woodlake-dam-holding-for-now/article_f45d47f4-8fd1-11e6-989a-6bdd3fe8915f.html

http://wncn.com/2016/10/11/officials-woodlake-dam-in-moore-county-stabilized-evacuations-halted/

[Ryan]

Glad you are all ok Paula. Must have been very scary for everyone. 

Sending thoughts and prayers your way & hope that others around you are all ok too 

[Anna]

Oh Paula I do feel for you - I hate strong winds and flooding water, so much damage can be done.  Hope you are ok now and managing to get things back together. Is your power back on yet?

[dcwolcott]

Oh Paula, reading through this is almost like living through Hurricane Charley all over again.  The damage and aftermath of all the storms wind and rain are such familiar pictures.  When my pasture was hit, I had two Peruvian Paso horses in the field.  When I evacuated to a friend's block house, and returned home again, my two horses were standing in the "corner" of their pasture with their butts to the wind.  Trouble was, the fencing was entirely gone, as were 2 barns (tack and feed) -- completely gone!  Never did find any tack from my tack barn -- heck the barn was gone -- but there stood my horses right in "their corner".  Had to do some make-shift fencing that night.

And all the water and continued rain for days and days. 

I feel for you, and hope you are able to get some things back together to find some sense of "normal".  That was the hardest for me -- to put my routine back together with things destroyed, damaged or missing.

Sending lots of prayers your way ! 

[Holly]

Just wow. I am so glad your ok. That's a lot of water!

[paintponylvr]

It was a lot of water & now with the huge temp spikes - it looks like an eroded, bare "moonscape" or desert!  AMAZING & not the most fun.

Finally got our water/well back online!!!!  Turned out we had a variety of problems, some (or all?) started before the huricane but then then "Mathew" exacerbated the issues. 

Found this out:

- our well was only 28' deep.
- the pump was sitting on the bottom of the well (& shouldn't have been).
- it seems I still don't know all the well terminology... so bear with me.
- the well is considered to be 24" - the distance across the round cement "tower" that is the actual well.
- the water is only 8' down from the top of the well access - so the depth of the water in our well is sitting at 20'
- the well casing didn't appear to be cracked.


The pump was good.  The problems with it our water pressure/access were:

- pump had "sucked in" a lot of weeds and debris - while sitting on the bottom of the well.
- the pressure tank was not working correctly - had some holes in the actual tank and normal wear/tear damage to the piping leading to it from the well.  Therefore, it didn't have the pressure to move the water appropriately.
- the pvc/flexible pipe that the pump was attached to was pulled out of the tank.  The pump was checked, determined to be OK and the pipe was shortened by 3 1/2'.  Now the pump should not be "sucking in" debris or any weeds.
- the pressure tank was replaced
- the piping between well and the pressure tank was replaced

We now have GREAT water flow to both the pasture and the house - at the cost of over $1000.00...  But that is so much better than the $5,000 we were afraid it would be.  We do need to replace the roof on the pump "house" and the door as well, but that was already a planned project for this fall, hopefully before winter.  Since we are expecting rain and a drop in temps in the next week, we are getting the rest of the supplies to redo the roof this weekend.  We do kind of need a break from things going wrong for a while - the 401K plan Larry has had for the  last 16 yrs w/ the company he works for has taken a hit (several withdrawals this year - due to emergencies/large issues at once) and we need it to build back up ... 

**********

The round pen was dried out in less than 48 hours and now, 3 weeks later, is a manure/dust bowl!  UGH, it's awful.  Had planned on a "cat" coming over one weekend - would have been used to scrape manure together/out faster than I can by hand and then it was to be piled up for use on gardens next year (in a lasagne sort of way...).  Got the call that the "cat" had lost it's hydraulic lines - waiting for that to be fixed.  With 5 ponies in it right now (1 mature, 1 yearling, 3 babies), it's staying pretty nasty...

More later - have to run

[paintponylvr]

Just going to add a couple more pics - these show that the round pen had dried out completely by the date that Jynx was weaned.



and here are a few pics of the girls who had hooves trimmed yesterday on 3Nov16.  They are a bit light in the winter hair development. 





This looks like a lot of hair, but for this mare, it's not.  If she was groomed, this would all be laying down nice and pretty and almost no thickness or length.



Neither Flower or Koalah have their "winter feathers" on their pasterns yet.

[Silver City Heritage Farm]

So here's the question:  what kind of coat does rain roll off of better? I'm thinking that might explain the late coats and light feathering. Spanky doesn't have feathers yet either.

[paintponylvr]

I don't kno 4 sure, Julie.  I've seen it roll off of both coats - and not in the right conditions.

This is the 2nd time in her 8 years of life that Flower has rain rot and it was already hiding in her not so long coat...  Yep, it may well be a long winter.  I haven't checked everyone for rain rot yet.