Hello Everyone—

        Here’s an update on the efforts we’ve been making to help the horses and people affected by Hurricane Katrina.

        This week we saw a lot of progress. We had lots of help and made some new contacts. Last Friday, Dr. McConnico at LSU called me to ask for help getting feed into New Iberville, where a distribution point is being maintained for horse owners.

        Fortunately, Lori Summers, who’s from New Orleans but presently making her home in Gainesville, had volunteered to take supplies in as she made a trip to help with the clean-up in New Orleans. I asked her to take in a load of feed to the New Iberville station. Early Tuesday morning she drove in to my farm and together we caravanned to meet Laurie Kelly at an exit on I-10. Laurie had donations and a trailer full of supplies for us and had also arranged to have a local feed store meet us with a pallet of feed. It would have made a strange snapshot of the times if anyone had taken the picture: Three rigs and a feed store truck in the parking-lot of a closed down Hardees. A windy, cloudy morning. Four women loading 50# sacks of feed, laughing, looking at maps. Next door, a gas station with a sign out front: NO GAS.

        We loaded Lori’s truck with feed and sent her on west. Thanks Lori for your help! Laurie and I spent the next hour moving supplies from her rig to mine, and I headed to my next stop. I just want to say that Laurie Kelly is one of the people I want on my team, especially when things get tough and complicated. Awesome lady.

        My next stop was at the home of Leslie Timmerman, who had contacted me to donate 50 bales of hay. (She grows and cuts her own.) She told me on the phone that her son, Sean, would be there to help me load the hay. The caveat was I had to wake him up. Sean has an impacted wisdom tooth and his pain medication allows him to sleep like the dead! I had to call Leslie once just to be sure I wasn’t battering down the wrong front door, but once Sean came to life, I sure was glad I persevered. What a great guy. Even with his toothache, he was delightful, hard working, and glad to be helping the hurricane victims. Thanks Leslie and Sean—you guys are terrific.

        So, there I was, ready to face my day, covered with sweat and hay. Thank goodness the Love’s truck stops have squeaky clean restrooms and hot water—and, of course, diesel. After tanking up (fill-ups are running about $80 now—ugh) and cleaning up, I headed to Mississippi to meet Janet McCarrol at the Harrison County Fairgrounds.

        The drive this week was improved considerably by the fact that the crews have finished repairs on the outer bridge at Moss Point. This meant all four lanes were operating, which eliminated the delay that sometimes was as much as 40 minutes one-way. That cut about an hour off my drive. Yee haw! Cruisin’.

        At MS exit 28 I headed north, looking for the fairgrounds. Again, driving north from 1-10 made me realize the devastating power of a big storm. Here, there are a lot of horse farms, and many of them have a lot of damage—fences down, big pieces of debris littering the pastures, barn roofs gone. They haven’t been wiped out like the places south of I-10, but, still, they’ll be awhile getting things right again. The horses looked pretty good, but their grass is going. Again, the trick is going to be keeping the hay coming into this area.

        I found the fairgrounds and met Janet. I’m beginning to think I could pick these women out of a crowd without ever having seen them. I know how it sounds, but really there is sort of a halo around them that makes them stand out. Women like Janet just roll up their sleeves and go straight for the toughest job—all the while thinking about how the whole thing could work better, help more people, foster more recovery. I asked Janet how she came to be in charge of this huge distribution point supplying all the horse owners in Mississippi. She said, “I’m just the horse lady they knew to call.” I’ll bet they did.

        The organization of this place is like a big Good Will store for horse owners. There’s one area for baled hay, another for sweet feed, another for pelleted feed, another for halters and first-aid products; a rack for dog collars, a table with horse wraps and blankets; one whole barn for rolled hay. Janet told me they’d had a truck bring 1,000 bales in on Friday. They were already down to about 400 bales when I was there on Tuesday. I asked her about logistics for the winter and how long they were anticipating needing to help the area horse-owners. “Farther out than I can see right now,” she said. I told her I’d put her in our loop for supplies. One of our volunteers is working on getting a semi-truck of hay paid for by her local dressage clubs. With the price of fuel, the estimated cost to deliver it to the Harrison County Fairgrounds is $6,000. Ouch.

        I’m trying to identify hay growers in the areas immediately adjacent to the disaster area—growers who have product for sale and who can take it in without so much over-the-road cost. If anyone has knowledge of where and who these growers are, please let me hear from you.

        Going home I talked to Kelley in Kiln. (This is Kenny Ray’s daughter from the Lakeshore feed store we’ve been working with.) I told her I would be back in Lakeshore next week. “That’s good,” she said. “Daddy’s about out of feed.” I asked her what Kenny was going to do about getting the feed store up and running again. She told me she thought the whole thing would have to be dozed. “I don’t know when he’ll get to it though,” she said. “He’s got so much going on.” She told me that Kenny had finally finished gutting his house. “Are they going to be able to rebuild the inside?” I asked her. “I think so,” she said. “They’re going to spray it down with bleach and see how it comes out.”

        I thought about Kenny Ray on the way home. I remembered the last time I saw him and Teresa, how worried he was about her—how hard a time it was. This week when I was getting ready to go to Mississippi, I realized how tired I was, how much I didn’t want to go, how much too old and busy I am to go, and how I just wanted everything to go back to normal. “Just don’t go,” a little voice said. “You’re wearing out your truck. You can’t afford another truck. You’re going broke. Your colt needs work. When are you going to work your colt? Your boss is looking at you funny. Do you still work here? If you just don’t go, your life goes back to normal.”

        But I can see Kenny Ray in my mind’s eye. Out there working at the circuit box trying to get the electricity on. I can imagine him shoveling the mud out of his house, pulling down the ruined walls, hauling and scraping and hammering and clawing his life back together. Feeding horses. Looking for his uncle’s lost goats. Helping with the funeral arrangements for a friend whose tractor turned over on him while he was clearing debris. I don’t know for a fact how old Kenny Ray is, but I’d guess he’s 75 if he’s a day. I’m also guessing this isn’t the first time he’s had to start from scratch. Maybe it is the first time he’s ever had to rebuild a life mostly for those who will outlive him. And that’s what I see in everything he does—his love for Teresa and Kelley and the other members of his family and community.

        So, I think I’ll quit whining, and ask you guys for more donations, and head back to Lakeshore next Tuesday. We need feed and hay and money for fuel.

        Cheers!

        Sara Warner

        Donations can be made at Florida Farm and Feed on Weems Rd. in Tallahassee, or to me at 1939 Sand Basin Road, Grand Ridge, FL 32442. Or, if you have hay to donate I will arrange to pick it up.

        P.S. I’m copying you all on an email exchange I got today. Anyone with info about the goats, please let us know.

        Thanks,

        Dana Davidson

        (228) 861-2429

        Hi Dana—I will send out your appeal to everyone I know. I don’t know the where-abouts of any goats and I did not rescue any when I was working in the area, but I’ll do what I can to help you find them.

        Good luck.

        Sara Warner

        You bet.

Kenny Ray Ladner, Lakeshore MS, September, 2005.

Lakeshore home

Pearlington home

Lower Bay Road, Pearlington

Pearlington oak