Most of the herd are out on the summer pastures. Those too infirm to make the 5 mile walk stay at the winter barn all summer. Although there is enough pasture for them to graze, they prefer staying indoors during the heat of the day. Here is a bunch of them chilling on the rubber mats.
Due to acid rain, metal roofs don’t last for ever. If they aren’t recoated periodically, every 15-20 years or so, they will deteriorate and the buildings will not be protected.
The barn, actually three buildings in the complex, is quite large. The oldest building was getting to be in bad shape and on the verge of being lost, if left go any longer.
Fortunately Sridhar has stepped up and made a substantial contribution to cover all the roofs with aluminum roof coating. He made a large personal contribution and personally elicited more donations from his friends who also made nice contributions.
The day I took the pictures it was too hot to be working on the metal roofs so no one was there. I didn’t follow up with a call to Ranaka to ask how many square feet there is to recoat.
To give some idea of the scale of the task, here is a picture of the paint needed to coat one building. Some of it isn’t shown because they were already used and in a different pile of empty ones. These are 5 gallon (19 liter) buckets.
