Safety of the Barn

Sometimes you just can't replace it. Yes, 24/7 turn out is wonderful and natural, and it's nice to have outdoor shelters.

But if Siaga had been standing freely outside last night, or in an outdoor shelter, three walled or not, he well could have been dead this morning when I went to feed him.

We had thunderstorms last night. Thankfully, so thankfully, Siaga was in his stall, safe from the lightning that struck a tree not even fifty feet away. There are major wood shards, ranging from one or two inches long to 4 or 5 feet long, all over the place, hanging in other trees or littered on the ground. The tree itself has a giant stripe that winds around it, from the tip of the branch struck all the way down to the ground, where the bark and the outer layer of wood was sheared away by the electricity.

The tree lost almost all of its branches and the roots are split. There's a rather large furrow in the ground where the strike landed.

Because Siaga's stall doors are double dutch and because the top door is missing, there were a few small splinters in his stall this morning but nothing big.

I'm so thankful that I leave the barn open to him and that he is always free to choose if he wants to be in or out. I'm also thankful that the barn is there at all, rickety and old and feeble it may be, but thank goodness it was there.

Here you can see the gouge torn in the ground. Keep in mind I can't fit my arms all the way around this tree.


A shot of the trunk and a pile of the branches that were torn out. Only the branches at the top remain, all the ones down the trunk were ripped off.


The tear spirals down the trunk.



One of the sets of splintered wood torn off the tree. This particular one is about 7 feet long and draped over a fence that boarders our property from the neighbors property.