Let it snow, let it snow

Snow again.

 Woke up to this again.  Of course it will be gone by early afternoon. 

Our first REAL snow of the year.

It snowed on Monday the 15th and we had 5" of heavy wet snow that really is beautiful.   I took this shot just at dawn on Tuesday AM, then went back to bed.   With a Level 2 snow emergency and no plows out yet, I decided to skip work, hole up and read a book instead.

Storms are brewing

Sure sign of Spring

Here are a couple of February scenes, taken at the bottom of our driveway.  Beautiful.......but don't try to beguile me, February, you know I hate you!

The new place - first snowfall of the year.

FLASH FLOOD!

We had a cloudburst on Sunday evening, with 2+ inches falling in 30 minutes. The main creek is usually about a foot deep and 4 feet across; the stream beside the old barn can be stepped across. It has actually gone down from its high point as you can see by the crushed grass on the far side of the stream. The main stream is now over 6 ft deep and 20-30 ft across in this photo.

I should point out - This was on the anniversary of the "Flood of '98", which set records in our part of the state for rainfall and flooding. 6 people were killed in Npble county. And its the 2 year anniversary of the Derecho wind that devastated downtown Cambridge and caused millions of dollars of damage throughout the state and region. Both times, we were without power for days on end, so I'm very grateful for just a few minutes of darkness!

Sunshine and 68 degrees

RAIN!

 Lots of rain here the past couple weeks.  We've gotten 5" already just in July.  It poured last night just as I got home from work, and the creek jumped its banks.  This creek is usually the jump across type and maybe a foot deep.  Right now, its 20 feet across and over your head.  It poured again about midnight, and the creek roared all night.  No damage, and no animals near it.  It was back in its banks this morning, and tamed.  But another big storm is headed this way, so it will probably flood again this evening.

Ode to February

Yes, its February.  The snow has melted, we have snow in the forecast.  The days drag on, short on sunlight, long on clouds.  The sheep's beautiful glittering white wool is getting mud tipped; more and more hay chaff appears on their necks and backs.  How does this happen?  We try to be so careful.  Do they?

Are they pregnant?  The ram has long since stopped courting them.....they seem fatter, don't they?   Any sign of an udder?  No, its too early yet, stop obsessing.   Wait, I think that one's vulva seems a bit puffier, don't you think so?  How many days is it 'til lambs are due?  Let's see, 16 more days of February, 31 days in March.  Seems like forever.....47 days....... WAIT!  Do we have enough CD&T?  BOSE?  What about Pritchard teats?   Where is the box of old towels?  How many bales of straw are up in the mow?   Check the box of baby lamb tags, count syringes & needles.

Only a month 'til we need to see about shearing.  Better call the shearer and make sure we are still on his list of farms.  Lambing pens are set up - after twice being filled with mud, sticks and leaves from flood waters this past summer.  Still have one less hay feeder than we have pens....better do something about that this year.

Yeh, its February.  Dark and dreary.  When will it end?   No wonder they only made it 28 days, we'd never make it through a full month of this.

BTW - Happy Mardi Gras!

Frosty morning

Xcite and his 8 lovelies this morning.  The sun was just melting the frost on the south facing slopes, and they were going out
to graze.  I think the one in the front just realized that Chuck had moved the electric netting and they had a strip of fresh new
grass to munch on.

Our "new" roof

This is our new roof on the shed, cov ering the damage left by the recent windstorm. 
After several hours clearing off the broken pieces, Chuck realized the slate is just too fragile to repair. 
Since this building is scheduled to be torn down and replaced, a tarp will have
to suffice for the time being.

This used to be a fence.  Its now completely covered with flood
debris, and the posts are leaning.  This will have to be torn out
and some sort of tear away temporary fence installed. 
There is a picture of how it used to look here:

A new hole has developed at the culvert which is causing all
this flooding.  This hole is at the edge of the road - actually in
the edge of the road.  Its 4 feet across, and nearly that deep.
Hope its not a fully loaded gravel or water truck that drops
into it some night in the dark..........

More rain!

No pictures this time, but we had a 4" downpour yesterday afternoon, causing yet another flash flood and flooding the barn and rabbitry.  I'm thinking of attending the next county commissioners meeting armed with a pitchfork and a torch.  If they don't fix that culvert soon, we are going to have words!  There is a HUGE hole at the edge of the road you could park a VW in.  Hope no one is hurt when the road finally collapses. 

I feel rather guilty - here we are, having 10.5 inches of rain in the past 10 days, while most the rest of the country is crying for it!  Honestly, if I could bottle it up and share, I surely would.

Last Man Standing

 Until last Friday evening, we had a grove of three big trees in the pasture above the house.  The sheep loved to lie in their shade on hot summer afternoons.   Now just one walnut remains; the other two falling victim to the derecho winds.  I'll miss looking out and seeing them each morning as I leave the house for work.

 This big walnut stood beside the road at the fence where the hayfield intersected one of our main spring lambing pastures.  Although it did not provide much shade to the pasture, it was a beautiful landmark for the farm.  Now its gone, a pile of brush and firewood to keep us warm this winter.

You can see why it came down in the wind, as it was completely hollow from the base quite a way into the larger branches.  After seeing this, its hard to imagine its looked as healthy and stayed upright as long as it has. 
There were other large trees that came down in the storm.  Chuck spend most of an afternoon driving the tractor along the lanes through the wooded ravines on the farm, removing 5 trees that had fallen across them.  There is still one HUGE old beech that blocks one of the lanes.  He'll have to go up and cut an opening through it so the tractor can pass through the trunk.   We lost some nice timber quality walnuts in the back of the farm, behind the ridge. 

POWER ON!

Our electricity came back on about 5PM last night.  We quickly did 3 loads of laundry, which was my biggest concern from the power outage.  Trying to cool the house down now in the face of this extreme heat is an exercise in futility, but at least we have ceiling fans now to move air in the house. 

Still no power at work, so I'm home, skirting BFL fleeces.  :^)

Storm aftermath

 Our new water supply.
Gallon jugs filled at the barn (from a spring) and buckets filled at the stock tank in the middle of the pasture.  Jugs are for "bathing" and washing dishes, etc.  Buckets are for flushing the toilet.  Drinking water comes from the store right now. 

My new best friend. 
For some reason, after the power came back on Saturday and Sunday, on Monday afternoon, it went on and off for a while, and then off for good at 5PM.   So back out came the generator, and its running the refrigerator (a new one, since the old one died Sunday) and the freezer.  Once in a while, we unplug the freezer once it shuts down, and get to watch a movie or get online.  Until this AM, we'd only had intermittant internet access, but so far today, its up.   There is NO word on when the power may come back on - just rumours running around the neighborhood in the little "town" down the road. 
We also don't have power at my office in Cambridge, so can't even go there to escape the heat for a while.   The local paper says 85% of Noble county is without power.  Most of the businesses along the main road in Caldwell are open and swamped with locals and travelers, but the ones in the downtown area are not.  Its the same in Cambridge; downtown is on the hilltop, and the wind damage was much worse there.  The outlying areas where the shopping centers are have power.  I ran into town yesterday and got groceries (only things we don't have to cook - getting tired of sandwiches) and rabbit feed. 
Maybe we'll get electricity later today????  If not, a country boy(and girl) can survive.  :^)

Last night's storm

Sky after the storm.  The trees were glowing gold, and the air
was pink.  The clouds to the east where the storm was still
raging was a deep lavendar-grey.

To the west after the storm passed.  Is this what they call a
"mackerel sky" ?

We made it through the storm OK, and the power just came back on.  It was off from 6PM to about 10AM.

I was in the rabbitry when it hit. First time I've ever been really scared during a storm. I looked out and the slate roof was blowing off the tractor shed like someone threw a deck of cards. The dirt on the road was swirling slowly. I ran back into the rabbitry, got in a corner, and put a bucket over my head. It was the only thing handy that might protect me if the windows started blowing out.

The barn is OK, and so is the house. We lost a lot of the tractor building roof, and a couple pieces of metal roof off the shed Chuck has been repairing this past week. All the roof he'd repaired held, tho'. The wooden bench on the front porch blew off, across the driveway and caught in the fence. Its broken beyond repair. My concrete sheep blew off the porch, too. Now that is pretty heavy. Several trees along the road either blew over, or the top snapped out of them. A BIG hollow walnut went down. Most the rest are locust, which are so brittle.  

Chuck started the generator this AM and ran the refrig and freezer. I'm so glad the power came back on quickly. We've heard that it could be 3-7 days for some people.

More Mess

Spent yesterday cleaning up the rabbitry and Chuck's workshop.
We won't know about the refrigerator, 2 air compressors, 2 chainsaws, some electric handtools, and my grooming blower for a few days after they have a chance to dry out.  We lost lots of paper things; books, owners manuals, etc that were in Chuck's toolbox.  I threw away most the paper and plastic in my storage cabinet.  Lost all my Calf Manna and grain treat mix.  They were in sealed containers, but still got muddy water inside.  Luckily, the rabbit feed was in a big trash can in a sheltered area that did not get the force of the water, so it did not flip over.
The buns were all high and dry in their new cages - I don't have the bottom cages in my stacks anymore.  The wooden frames Chuck built me were all covered with mud, sticks and leaves, but he hooked up a big pump to the generator and pumped creek water to wash down all the walls and floor and shelves, etc that needed to be washed off.
Once we got the electric netting that was near the creek untangled and replaced with new sections, the sheep went out to graze and sleep in the sunshine.  They'd gotten wet during the night, but since they had been freshly shorn, did not get all that muddy.  Neither the dogs nor the sheep wanted to go into the front sections of the barn.  Likely the water rushing through there suddenly while they were sleeping was an unwelcome surprise, and they are leery of going back up there.  LOL   All the straw bedding was scoured away by the water, so it must have been a scary few minutes in there!  The whole back section of the barn is full of wet, muddy straw with lots of woody debris, pop cans, and some trash mixed in.  The trash came from the across the road, where we store it until the trash pickup (on Monday, so we had a weeks worth).  We'll have to wait a few days until that dries out enough to be able to clear it out.

What a MESS!

This was my rabbitry this morning. Last night just after midnight, we had a brief but violent rainstorm which dumped 1.5 inches of rain in about 15-20 minutes.   The culvert under T Ridge Rd. plugged, causing a tiny creek about 6 inches deep and a foot wide to fill the ram paddock, flood a machine shed, &  wash all the stuff out of it.   Then a HUGE hole opened up above the culvert, which relieved the pressure and allowed all the pent up water to wash across the front of the main barn, filling it with 2 feet of water.   This morning, we have everything up to that level covered with mud, sticks, and leaves, and the barn floor has about 6 inches of pudding-like mud in it.  
So this is what the rabbitry looked like this morning..... that is my storage cabinet blocking the doorway - filled with mud and ruined supplies.  The refrigerator we have all our sheep meds in was also knocked over and filled with muddy water.  So was Chuck's BIG HEAVY metal tool box.  Both air compressors were in the muddy water, and everything on the lower shelves in his workshop,too.

The refrigerator (already picked up and righted) the big, heavy toolbox were pushed across the floor and flipped over by the force of the water. 

Those tires washed out of the shed across the road and down into Chuck's workshop.