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Hi Everyone,
What a week! It is so hard for me to comprehend that Hurricane Debby swept through here just 6 days ago. It seems like it was at least two weeks ago. We spent half the day last Sunday preparing for strong winds and lots of rain—and all our preparation paid off. Yes, there are those times when the worst is predicted and at the last moment the storm changes course and totally misses us—and all our prep was in vain. This time though we were prepared—well all most prepared. Late Saturday afternoon when Mom and I got back from the Gainesville deliveries we spent about thirty minutes trying to figure out where to move the three week old broiler chicks to so that they would be out of the weather. The brooder house was full with one week old chicks, two week old chicks and three week old turkeys. We thought about putting them in with the one week olds—because we would be able to tell them apart size wise, but we also thought that it would be too crowded. Then we thought about the old turkey barn—but the rats had left behind too many calling cards and we figured that it would not be sanitary and we had no time to clean it out. Try as we might, we couldn’t find an answer to our problem—but when Papa went to check on all the animals Monday morning he found a problem. Hurricane Debby had spent the night huffing and puffing 20 to 30 mph, and was pouring water on us by the bucket loads and out of 25 chicks we had only five left alive. Those five were moved into the brooder house with the two week old chicks—and are doing just fine. The chicks were our only loss to life.
Hurricane Debby arrived around 3:00 p.m. Sunday afternoon, and by 6:00 the following evening (Monday) the storm had practically moved on its way. Once it began to rain it never quit for 24 hours. While our little home weather station only registered 10 inches of rain, the local weather says that our area got a little over 19 inches. There are roads all around that are closed and you have to go to Timbuctoo before you can get to your destination. I woke up at 5:30 Monday morning to the generator clicking on for we had lost power. Thanks to the generator that was really no big deal—except that Papa noticed that the propane tank was only 40% full and when full we have a three day supply. We would have to ration our usage for we didn’t know how long we would be without power. At 6:30 another loud pop was heard and we realized that the power to our well had gone down. Our house generator doesn’t work the well for it is on a separate power pole. So in the wind and the rain Papa headed to the barn to put the portable generator on the tractor and take it down to the well so that we could have running water. We got breakfast out of the way and got ahold of Penny and Steve to tell them not to come to work—no use driving in the storm and we had no idea if the roads from their house to ours would be flooded or not. I would have loved to wait until the storm passed before we headed out to milk, but the weather radar showed no such change before late evening. It was close to 9:00 by the time we got outside to get the milking done and by then we had already had close to 7 inches of rain and the wind was blowing from 15 to 30 mph. The cows were eager to come into be milked—but they were not eager to leave the milking barn. We had the tarps closed on the sides to protect us from as much rain and wind as possible, but the breezeway was still open and I had to hang a towel on the back of the cow to keep the rain off of the cow’s udder. We had company for a few hours. Just as we were heading out to milk my brother David called to tell us that he had no electricity and that he was bored and was going to come hang out with us for a while. He had a hard time getting to us due to downed trees and flooded roads—but he made it, and after a few hours when the storm started to get worse he decided that he had best head for home before he couldn’t get there. It was 2:30 by the time we finished milking the cows, bottling the milk, and washing all the milking equipment. By the time we got cleaned up ourselves and ate lunch it was after 3:30 and since the washing machine was going with our dirty wet clothes and the dishwasher was cleaning all our dishes we couldn’t turn the generator off. To our delight though, the electricity was turned back on around 6:45 that night. Some people have no choice when it comes to working in the worst of weather. Farmers and electrical workers are two groups that have no choice—rain or shine they have a job to do.
As the rains descended, the floods came and a quick look around our farm showed very little structural damage, but a couple extra ponds. We were grateful that we had moved the chickens, sheep, and cows to higher ground the day before the storm hit or the sheep would have been swimming and we would have needed a canoe to bring the cows in to be milked because the pond grew by leaps and bounds. One extra pond was found indoors—down in the milk house cellar. When we get a lot of rain the water seeps in through the walls bubbling up the paint and it comes in as a waterfall at the outside ground level. We ended up with about a foot of water in the cellar, and getting all the water out can be a chore. Many times Mom and Papa have done it by team work—Mom downstairs in the cellar filling up a five gallon bucket of water and handing it up to Papa who then dumps it and returns the bucket. A few times Papa has gotten pretty ingenious though and has used the water sprayer pump on the tractor and has rigged it to draw the water up out of the cellar—no manual labor involved. You can check it out here.
Tuesday and Thursday were spent cleaning up from Hurricane Debby—and we are still not done. Some things are easily fixed and some things will take time and ingenuity. The rain soaked the front door to our house and the door to our milk house—causing light water issues inside (but nothing that a few towels couldn’t handle). Because of the water on those doors—the house front door doesn’t open now, and you have to football tackle the door into the milk house—and woe to you if you shut it all the way while you are in the milk house, for pulling on the door knob doesn’t give as much strength as pushing on the door with you hip.
The garden faired pretty well. Some of the zinnias look a little worse for wear, but they are still blooming. The okra surprisingly was still standing and the cayenne peppers too—though they do have a slight lean. The rose arbor in the back yard came crashing down—on top of the rose, and of all the roses it is probably the thorniest we own, so fixing it will be a challenge. Out in the garden the end walls to the Summer Gardens were quite windblown. One was ripped all apart and Mom and I had to reassemble it and add more “strength” to it and the other walls. One wall we thought was left in perfect condition, but a closer look revealed that it had been moved backward a good three inches. Not only did we have to secure the end wall, but we also had to restring the netting over the sweet potatoes—for the deer had jumped in and wreaked havoc. Mom and I also decided to make the side fences taller by adding a four foot high green plastic hardware cloth fence to the top of the three foot tall hog panels that already go down the sides. So far the deer has not cleared the new six foot fence.
Since the fall garden season is right around the corner, I have been needing Papa to clean out the two chicken tractors so that the bedding can cool down some before I need to use it—but Papa has had no time. Well, Miss Debby made matters so bad that Papa had to empty the chicken tractors. So much rain had blown inside that the bedding was soupy—and we had to throw away a whole day’s worth of eggs. Papa wanted to clean them out on Tuesday, but his tractor died and it took him until evening to get a new battery. So on Thursday he was finally able to get around to it—and it overflowed the compost bin. Looks like we will have plenty of compost on hand between the three chicken houses (Steve also had to clean out a portion of the Poultry barn where the new egg layers are being raised) and the leaf mold/cow manure/chicken compost mix we made last winter.
The easiest thing we had to do was to put all the furniture back on the porch, but the hardest thing will be to clean up the mess down at our 1915 house. We have lived on this road for almost 30 years, and we haven’t seen one tree fall down on that property—but within two weeks of closing on the land/house Hurricane Idalia hit and the giants have been falling down ever since. The house was surrounded by large oaks and pecans—now only one pecan tree is left standing. We bought a wooded lot—but it will soon be a pasture (well, that is if we can ever get all the trees cleaned up). So far all the trees have missed the house—but Hurricane Debby toppled four trees down on a utility shed and the old barn. Idalia toppled a huge oak tree that took out one wall and some of the floor of the barn—but we thought that we could still salvage the barn. The roof is now on the ground, and the shed has no roof to account for. When we bought the place we thought that we only had to clean up all the trash and remodel the old house. Little did we know that we would soon be in the land clearing business!
The only other damage we had was to our barn lean-to’s tarps (temporary walls). The winds shredded the tarps. I wish that we could figure out what we want on the outside walls—metal or wood, but we are not sure yet, so it looks like we shall be hanging some new tarps soon.
I had grand plans of canning potatoes during the storm since we would be stuck inside—but we ended up being exhausted by the time we got all our work done. Plus, if we had gotten done early, and we did have energy we would have had to save on the propane so we couldn’t have used the stove, and the generator at the well would have been turned off too so we wouldn’t have had any water. Anyway, come Thursday Mom and I did manage to get one batch of potatoes canned. We have three baskets, and we were able to get one done.
Papa has begun planting the fall peas for the cows to graze when the grasses stop growing at lightning speed. So he has been busy rotating the cows and sheep through the pastures so that they can eat down the tall grass. Then he mows down what they will not eat and then he plants—though sometimes he plants and then mows it down.
Friday morning, just after we finished milking, my sister Nichole came over to return an incubator they had borrowed. She had just come inside when Mom came in to tell me that the cows needed to go back and their calves needed to be reunited with them. So I asked Nichole to come with me on what I thought would be a quick trip. An hour later we returned very HOT and tired. We got out to the pasture and found out that the wires were not open into the field where the cows would be spending the day. I got off the golf-cart to open the wires when Papa yelled at me from across the field. He told me that the field was not ready for the cows. He then told me that they needed a wire to go across the field so that they would only have half of it instead of all of it—and he told me where to find the wire. So I got back on the golf-cart and Nichole and I headed to the other end of the farm to get some step stakes and some hotwire. We didn’t make it all the way there though because the golf-cart was starting to die and the rest of the way was up hill. So we got out and walked the rest of the way—about 300 feet away. We found the wires—which were draped across another hotwire fence and I wasn’t too sure if it was off or on. I carefully took it off the fence, but in the end I do not believe that the fence was hot because I touched the wire a few times and never got shocked. We then walked back to the golf-cart and drove back to the new cow field—it was all downhill. We left the golf-act in the lane and walked to the other end of the field—about 400 feet. It was at this time that I realized that I had made a mistake. I had grabbed two strings of hotwire—which meant I had four handles. Instead of keeping two handles in one hand and two in the other hand, I put all four in one hand—which meant that I had no idea which two handles to hook on the fence so that when I walked across the field I would have two handles to hook on the other side. I do not know what the odds where—but they were not in my favor. I hooked two handles on one fence and walked across the field to the other side and hooked the other two handles on that fence. I thought that all was well, but as we walked back hooking the wires on the step stakes we ran into a problem at the half way point. The two handles that I had just hooked on the fence belonged to the same strand of wire, therefore instead of stretching across the field, it reached the halfway mark, and made a U-turn back. Therefore, we had to walk to the other side, get one handle and take it back to the other side, and then we were able to straighten out our U-turn wire. By this time Papa had arrived to help us finish up. Nichole and I then headed back to the cows to let them out. Once the cows were heading down the lane I let the calves out to go with their mamas—but two didn’t exit the panel pens so I had to go inside to shoo them out (and the weeds in there are up to my waist). I managed to get them heading to the gate, but when the first one went out the second one turned and ran down the inside of the panel while the other calf ran down the outside of the panel. By this time all the mama cows are down lane, except for Penelope who went back up toward the milk house to get her newborn bull calf. While I was dealing with a stubborn calf, Penelope finally came back to the lane and headed down to the field. I didn’t see her go by, for I was chasing another calf around, but when Papa asked if Penelope’s calf had come with her we told him yes—for the last thing I saw was the calf walking behind Penelope. Well, later that night when Papa and I went to separate the calves for the night Penelope met us at the wire mooing. We let her out and she went straight back to where she had left her calf. This time I made sure that the calf went back with Penelope. Anyway, by the time Nichole and I made it back to the house (yes, we did make it by the golf-cart just on the slow side) we plugged in the golf-cart to charge and headed inside to cool down. The heat index was 120 outside!
Saturday afternoon Papa made the deliveries to Gainesville, and I finished sewing a new dress—that was started many months ago. Mom spent a few hours outside mowing and raking. The grass is not knee high to a grasshopper, but knee high to a giant, for with all the rains and everything else that needs to be done she hasn’t been able to get much mowing done lately. It is summertime on the farm for sure—and there is never enough thyme to get everything done!
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare