Photo: The beautiful barn from the 1920's, withstanding sub-zero temperatures, complete with glistening icicles....and still standing despite my imagination running wild last night!
The current waking nightmare at 2:00 this morning (note to readers---this only happened in my MIND!):
The nightmare: The barn burns to the ground and we don't even wake up to know it's happening. Everything inside is lost, which (obviously) includes all of the barnyard menagerie which have been closed into the barn for safety. I start up from a sound sleep, panicking, and my brain commences to play out the entire gruesome scene from initial spark to igniting hay loft to crashing roof to smoldering remains......
A few days ago, while looking on-line for building plans to build a few stalls inside the barn, I came across a "thread" with hundreds of entries, all about barns burning to the ground, losing everything, and "safe" electricity inside a barn (IS there such a thing, with all the flammable bedding and hay and stuff that would go up in flames with the slightest spark?)
About the same time, I typed out a reply to a chicken group about what the area farmers have warned us about. (As transplants to farm life, we have occasionally had a vet or friendly farmer give us strong warnings about extension cords, heat lamps, and the risk of causing a fire in our noble effort to keep the animals warm). The one story that our friend Bruce told me is: A family moved to the country and burned down their 100 year old barn fairly soon afterward. They had a pet rabbit that they were keeping in the big empty barn, they wanted him to be warm, they set up a heat lamp over his cage, and......when the heat lamp broke or malfunctioned or heated the straw inside the cage to combustion temperatures, the rabbit and the entire barn went up in flames.
So, it's on my mind, especially with the cold. Have I taken enough measures to keep the barn from burning to ashes during the dead of the night?
We've cut way back on the use of extension cords, and currently have only one heavy-duty "outdoor" rated one in the barn, which provides the electricity to keep the cow water-trough from freezing solid. It stretches from the grounded outlet that Jeff installed, out the window, past the cow shelter, and down to where the tank de-icer plugs into it. The same extension cord powers the charger for the electric fence, when I need to use that. It's still a potential source of malfunction, but it's a necessary evil at this point.
Once in a while, I use a smaller extension cord to keep a 55 gallon barrel of water de-iced, but it's so cold out there right now that the bird-bath de-icer is no match for sub-zero temperatures....meaning that THAT particular extension cord is not one I can obsess over at 2 in the morning!
I no longer hang heat-lamps (those red ones that use 250 watts and could start a fire just by having dry material next to the bulb!). The animals are much healthier, too, without all the supplemental heat. And truth-be-told, unless the animals were very close to the lamp, the heat was lost quickly in the vast space of the barn. (One sick chicken insisted on sleeping directly under a lamp which was meant for smaller growing chicks, and had scorched the feathers on her back. Not safe, although it is rather humorous to imagine a scorching chicken running around and igniting flames everywhere. Or not....)
To get electricity to the rabbit shed, I have two extension cords connected, running under the snow from the outside outlet of the house. The rabbits have heated water bottles and a light in their shed, and there IS the possibility of fire out there because of the extension cords. Oddly enough, I don't sit up in a panic in the middle of the night because of a vivid image of the shed burning. It's always the barn.
So last night's panic revolved around the outlet that Jeff installed most recently. It's in the cow area, and is much appreciated. It lets me plug in a light, which is suspended securely (high enough that they couldn't break the bulb, secure enough that the lamp itself couldn't be knocked off a nail and land in the dry straw where the cows sleep.)
The outlet is extra-nice, in that Jeff also installed a light switch, so that I can turn the whole outlet "off" when I want to. I keep a nightlight plugged in, and the light, and it's got one of those low-wattage spiral bulbs in it.....but it still played a part in keeping me awake last night.
Why? It's a long, twisted story, and really shouldn't have resulted in any panic of any sort.
The spiders in a barn leave webs all over. Those webs gladly attract all the dust that chickens and bedding fluff up into the air. The spider webs then clump together in unsightly dusty masses. The combined webs are strong enough to hold bits of flammable material.
And this is a fire hazard because? All around the light, all around that particular outlet are dusty clumps of webbing, covered with tiny bits of straw and hay. I know that Jeff installed the outlet correctly, but at the same time, I'm being irresponsible by leaving all that flammable stuff right near a source of potential fire. Would you feel safe if an outlet inside of your house was covered in something so easily ignited?
At 2 in the morning, in my mind's eye, those bits of spider-webs somehow caught fire, started the cows' bedding on fire, which engulfed the entire barn in no time, and left a pile of smoldering ashes for us to discover in the morning and grieve the losses. (Yes, it's that vivid, like the worst nightmare when you can't get away from the tiniest details. The scenarios play out in my mind while I'm wide awake in bed and debating whether to throw on jackets to go out RIGHT THEN to right the situation! Scary!)
One good thing when this happens is that my mind won't quite playing through the most awful circumstances, detail by detail, until I truly give the whole situation up to God, asking Him to protect the people or critters who are in danger in my imagination. I am awake anyway, and can't get back to sleep. What better thing to do that say "God, I KNOW it's in Your hands. Please reassure me that I can leave their safety with You until the morning". Usually, that's enough to cause me to finally give up the hellish picture in my mind and be at peace again.
The other good thing about this "awfulizing" (my Mom's word? My Aunt's word?) is that it spotlights what needs attention. If you jerk awake in the dead of night over something you didn't think was a problem until just then, why not reason through it and see if there's a solution? Sometimes I can't do anything about it. Sometimes it gives me the task for the next day, which results in a safer environment for animals, children, family.....
So today's task, after the feeding, and the watering, and the milking? Cleaning cobwebs away from the beautiful outlet that brings much-needed electricity to the cow's shelter area.
I might wake up with a dreadful scenario playing in my mind tonight, but it won't be the same one as what kept me awake until early this morning, that's for sure!
God is good. (All the time!)
At 2 in the morning when my poor, overtired brain can't let go of a nightmarish "reality"? (All the time!)
Laura
http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/
http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/
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