Chile: After last night’s powerful earthquake Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile September 17, 2015 First of all, I really want to say thanks to all of our extremely kind and thoughtful readers who emailed us to make sure that we're all OK. If you hadn't heard, there was a rather substantial earthquake in Chile yesterday that made international news. While the horses may still be a bit spooked, our team is fine, the farms are fine, and we very much appreciate the kind words and thoughts. If this were a different country my answer could have been dramatically different. Yesterday's earthquake measured an 8.3 at its epicenter with a very shallow depth of just 11 kilometers. Parenthetically, a lot of people think that the intensity of an earthquake is just its score on the Richter scale, but in fact there are many other factors involved. Shallow earthquakes can be much more destructive even with a lower magnitude, and 11 kilometers is considered quite shallow. So this one was pretty big. A few months ago an earthquake of lesser magnitude struck Nepal and devastated much of the country… because they weren't prepared. In Chile it's different. Earthquakes are just part of the deal when you live here. So even when powerful earthquakes strike, the impact is not ruinous. They don't ignore the... More