Diary of a disaster, day 2.

Yesterday (Tuesday) was horrid.  I'm certainly feeling the effect in my aching body this morning.

After I got home from taking the girls to school in the morning, the cage had collapsed further.  The top layer of netting and snow was on the ground.  My concern was that I could only find 20 chickens and had to assume the rest were under the collapsed structure.  I spent the next 2 hours trying to locate them.  Some were out on the lot and some had walked into little hiding places under the net.  I found the last five after two hours of searching.  They were trapped in little air pockets.  I can't believe they all survived and feel so relieved.  I did however managed to almost get myself trapped rescuing the last chicken when the wood that was holding her little air pocket gave way and came crashing down on top of me.

Ian came home from work at the point and we set to work clearing.  One of the myriad of emotions we were experience was embarrassment about the collapse.  We reflected that part of our error was to try and save the entire cage the night before by clearing snow from the top.  If we had just cut the nets and let the snow fall through, we would have lost some netting but saved the rest of the structure.  However, during the clearing process we found the root cause of the collapse.  One post and it's concrete base had lifted out of the dirt suggesting that it was the ground that gave away first, not the structure.  This made Ian feel a bit better as the architect and builder of this project.  We were also finding that not much of the wood had broken, and so can be reused.

His relief soon ended when as we started to put the outside layer back together.  Ian dropped a piece of 2x6 lumber from the top, right onto my head as I was bending down.  A quick trip to the walk-in clinic for the all clear and then back to work.

We have now got almost half of the outside posts back up and the snow cleared off the netting.  I will carry on today clearing and prepping for the rebuild.  Ian has gone back to work.

Yesterday was certainly hard but we learned our lessons and have done enough to see a way forward.  There were certainly some tears, anger, frustration and self loathing flowing throughout the day.  It's so disheartening to see all the hard work lying on the floor and knowing that we have to do it all again but we feel relieved that it can be saved.  I wouldn't exactly refer to this as a 'Phoenix from the flames' moment but there is a small spark of fire.

We were extremely touched by the outpouring of support from people.  Although there is not a lot people can do until we make it safe, we had lots of offers of help during the day.  You really get to know who your friends are during challenging times.  Thanks you to all that contacted us yesterday with offers of help and words of support.  We will always remember how your kindness picked us up and motivated us to keep going.

The post that came out of the ground bringing the rest of the structure down.

Repairs underway.  Believe it or not, this is progress.