We continue the saga of our nightmare with Zoning.

The week before last, Linda Pedersen, the Lake County Council member for the Antioch area, told us Stormwater Mgmt would be out to finalize the location of the wetlands on the property on July 25. This is supposedly the last thing we needed to do. However, the people from Stormwater Mgmt. are telling us we are scheduled for review on July 27, but they are at least a week behind. We’re taking bets on when they will actually come out? I’m guessing it will be way into August.

Rachael has called and emailed Linda Petersen since to find out what is going on, but Linda has yet to respond at all. (For anyone in Lake County, Illinois, when re-election time comes around, might be a good time for some new blood).

Then, last Tuesday, we got an email from the Building and Development part of zoning saying we needed to change something else on our engineering maps.

Rachael called and talked to the Director of Building and Development and they set up a call for Friday. The engineer we use is conveniently out of the country, but the director said if we agreed to the changes they want we could move forward.

After that call, it was agreed they would give us an interim permit to construct the driveway and the pole barn once Stormwater Mgmt has done their thing. (A week or two or more from now, who knows?) Then once our Engineer finalizes the maps and we resubmit (the 8th time) we can get our complete permits. Assuming Stormwater Mgmt is okay with the location of our wetlands?

Fencing
Since we don’t have electricity, we are using solar to power our electric fence. We had a small solar panel connected to a car battery, but most mornings we would go out to feed and it would be squealing cause there was no power. So we just bought this bigger/better solar panel and this morning, no squealing and the fences were still zapping if touched.

The horses don’t bother the perimeter fencing (thank goodness) but the internal fencing around the paddock areas, they do. Having the fences electric is important because we’ve had two horses get tangled in the fences so far. One was Titan and he mangled his leg pretty badly.

One of the reasons we use electric rope fencing is because we thought it would break if a horse ran into it, but it apparently doesn’t break easily and if they get tangled and no one is around to free them quickly, they can get hurt pretty badly. Makes us want to rethink wood fencing, but horses can get hurt very badly on broken wood fencing too. So, keeping it consistently electric, for now, will keep them away from it and less likely to try to escape through and get tangled.

Electric and Well
Now that we are pretty sure we will be going into cold weather without buildings, we are wondering about how to get electric to the property (we need a place for a meter and electric panel) and also we need a place to put our well tank. A space we can heat. We are looking at these at the corner of Rte 83 and Grass Lake.

If anyone has experience with pouring a concrete foundation for one of these types of sheds, let us know.

Shelter
We also need more shelter, so we ordered one of these VersaTube shelters from Menards. It’s a kit we put together and then buy the medal sides and attach. If it works well, we might buy another one and possibly separate the herd into two herds.

Each herd would have their own shelter and we’d put the old horses and the more gentle ones that get pushed around into one herd with their own shelters and hay; and keep the pushy, alpha type horses together with separate shelters and hay. That way, everyone gets shelter and everyone get’s hay.

So, that’s about where we are now, for anyone who wanted an update. Thanks to everyone who has helped us so far and is keeping us in their prayers. We couldn’t do this without you all.