Hurricane Sandy

Sandy blew in and took out power for about 24 hours. During the height of the storm, Hannah and I stood at the back door and listened as trees fell like dominoes in the woods and pastures. We lost about 10 trees; at least three involved fences. Thankfully all gates, barns, and buildings were missed. We keep saying, "It could've been worse." Our prayers are with those that were hit harder than us.

Big branches fell from the oak tree.

Uprooted and took the fence with it.

Managed to split the two trees!

Just inches from crushing the fence.

Dominoes: there are three trees down in a row here.

A tangled mess of "widow-makers."

Firewood!

The clean up from Hurricane Irene continues:

The garden.

Lots of big brush piles... hot dogs and marshamllows anyone?

What used to be the corn.

What used to be the garden gate.

Just two poplar trees left standing.

Another large brush pile and piles of firewood. The hay shed is only slightly bent.

Cleaning Up

We've been cleaning up after Irene. We definitely have enough small kindling to last us several winters! Lots of branches and leaves are down. The girls think we should wait to rake them up until after the autumn leaves fall!

Our power returned on Tuesday. We had a great time sharing meals with the neighbors. Tuesday night's get together turned into a "Power's Back On" party complete with fireworks! My parents' power just returned yesterday evening!

Everything in the garden, except the tomatoes, was flattened by either the wind or the tree, or both. The hay shed was slightly buckled by the tree branches that fell on it. As soon as the hay is fed out from it, we'll take the shed down and the tree that's next to it that lost it's entire top third.

Only two trees are left in the rock garden. Both are too big and leaning too much towards the house for Sam to attempt to take them down. He has a friend who is a licensed tree remover who will come and do it for us once his business slows down!

We fared very well, and I love that the girls were able learn to "roll with the punches" this week. Having witnessed some people this past week, who refused to be flexible and grumbled (loudly) about every inconvenience, I am grateful that we all managed to keep our positive attitudes. We all learned to be a little more flexible, a little more creative, and how to make the best of every situation; skills every person should have!

Hurricane Irene

We are currently on generator power. We lost one huge tree in the yard. It managed to land squarely on the garden gate; the one thing in the garden that actually had some value. The plants are squished, but we did manage to salvage six tomatoes. Another tree lost its top half and will have to come down soon. The top branches landed on our green "garage-in-a-box" shed that houses some of our hay. We had thrown tarps over the hay inside it prior to the storm in anticipation of leaks, so none of the hay was damaged. The frame of the shed is bent though and may not be salvageable.

They are not giving any estimates as to when the power will come back on. We run the generator for a  few hours a day to re-cool the fridge and power the computer. In a few minutes I'll be firing up the campfire and making a veal stew in the cast iron dutch oven for dinner tonight. We'll be inviting the neighbors over for roasted marshmallows this evening.

A neighboring farm with large generators has offered us water, if we need it for the animals. We had stored nearly 100 gallons before the storm, but that is quickly depleting. If the power isn't on by tomorrow, we'll be taking them up on their offer.

Prior to the storm Rachel and Samantha were all excited about the possibility of the power being out. They thought "living like in the 1800's" would be fun. Here we are not 24 hours into it, and the novelty has worn off!