Construction and destruction

 opps somehow this didn't publish on the 17th.

So on Friday Max sent some photos of them putting the trusses back up on the reinforced heifer barn. All that's left is putting the steel back on the roof. That's the post I was going to write over the weekend. There's even video. 

Unfortunately, yesterday we got a new video from Max.

If you are trying to figure out what that is, it's what Max saw when he walked out of the milkhouse after the tornado hit. Sounds like it was pretty scary in there waiting for it to be over. No one was injured at the farm or the village. In the village ten house lost roofing sheets, (sceifer, the cement/asbestos most people have) and one lost the entire roof, trusses and all.

 The farm was hit bad. as you can see in these photos. The hay shed went down, the steel that was supposed to go back on the heifer shed is twisted, the other heifer barn lost some steel off the roof, and the sceifer was torn off the roof of the dairy barn. Two cows were injured and had to be slaughtered. A board went through the window of the van. 

They are busy cleaning up, the roof will need to be replaced before winter on the milking barn. You can see the new dry cow shed they were building looks intact, and the heifer barns, except for the steel. Thankfully no one was hurt. Who would think that in the middle of a war, we'd have a natural disaster at the farm...

Back home again

 Garry landed safely back in Winnipeg after about 36 hours after he woke up Saturday morning. The other guys had an early flight, so they were up around 4:30 am, then he went to breakfast with Cezary, who was in Warsaw for meetings. 

He went to the airport early to retrieve his carry-on that had been waiting for him (he had checked it and it did not get on his plane from Warsaw to Toronto, it didn't arrive until he was already on the train and they don't send them into Ukraine.) He then checked it again.

He had to pick up his carry-on and big bag in Toronto while going through customs, and put them on a belt to somewhere. Apparently in the next five hours they did not get on the plane to Winnipeg, because he landed about 12:15, we left the airport about 1 am, after he didn't see his bags, and filed a report. (They were delivered to the house Monday afternoon.) I saw a rabbit while I was waiting.

So we made it home just before 3 am, and went to bed. We did not make it to church in the morning, Garry slept until 11:30. He's doing okay with jetlag. It's not quite as warm as it was in Ukraine. The apricot trees were blooming when he left the village, and the storks had babies in their nest at the farm. The last spring before the war was the first year the storks made a nest on the water tower, but they didn't have babies that year.

Finished

 

Garry is, as I write this, on the train, waiting to cross the border into Poland (it is scheduled to take three hours). About ten hours ago, there was a half hour stop in Kyiv and former student Karina came to say hello at the train station. 

Eventually they will end up in Warsaw, where they have flights from on Saturday. Garry arrives in Winnipeg after midnight.

 I'm really busy so you'll have to just look at some photos of the successful morning on Thursday moving the roof sections off the heifer barn. Garry sent them to me as it was happening between 1 am and 3:30 our time. Max hopes to have the crane back in a week to put them back up on a reinforced barn. 

 

Monday

 Monday was April first and I thought the message I got from Garry Monday morning had to be an April Fool prank, but there were photos.

At first, I thought it was a problem with the new shed they were building, but it was the second heifer barn that was built five years ago. Monday was windy, and Garry was on the other side of the cow barn when he heard a big boom sound. Luckily the roof landed on the center cement wall and no heifers were hurt. They think the dry cow shed they took down last week may have been a windbreak for the barn, but who knows why it fell down this week. 

Since then, they have most worked on fixing the mess it made. By Tuesday morning, they had taken all the steel off the barn, and were working on fixing broken sections. Thursday morning the wind is supposed to be minimal, and they have a crane coming to pick the sections off the wall. Max has a plan on reinforcing the structure. They actually added some reinforcement to the first heifer barn, just in case, although it looks like that one had a slightly better design on the footings. 

Garry leaves on the train Thursday evening with the guys. He thought they might be about 75% done with the new dry cow shed by then, but they haven't done much on it since Monday's accident. They will hopefully get lots done before he has to leaving tomorrow evening.