Silo repair - the fun way!

There is a man in that cage hanging from the crane!

When Dan noticed that there was a ring missing from our bottom-unloading silo, a 65' tall structure, he started looking for someone to come and fix it. Of course, the broken one was only about 10-15 feet down from the top, so there was no question of trying to fix it himself. Other times (at least twice) we had a fellow come who used climbers to shimmy up the side of the silo to re-attach the rings. The last time we had him come he told Dan that he had diabetes quite bad and probably wouldn't be doing that much longer. When he didn't get any answer back from him, Dan spoke to Keith Borgen (retired from Madison Silo) to see if he knew anyone who did that type of work. He suggested this fellow from Plover, so Dan gave him a call. He was going to come last week but the crane he had lined up wasn't going to be big enough. He also wanted to line up a couple of jobs to do while he had the crane (split the cost of the crane for us, too) so put us off until this week. From the time Dan first noticed the missing ring, two more came off, so there were three to fix. They showed up today (at least three men: one operating the crane, one in the basket and one on the ground) around 11:00 am and are still working at it (12:40 pm). The guy on the ground had a rope connected to the basket to help guide it where he wanted to go, and keep him from banging into the side of the silo. The other two rings were closer to the ground and may have been reachable by ladder, but not real handily because of all the snow piled around and the proximity of the barn. It's a good thing to have taken care of, but I don't especially want to see the bill....

They pulled out about 2:30 pm. They'll send the bill....