Saturday Farm Update

Hot and humid today; the beginning of our summer. Finally! It's been so cold and wet that very little is growing well in the garden. Well, the strawberries, of course. And the peas were doing great, until one of the goats got loose and had peas for lunch.

We have rat(s) in the chicken house. I planted a small flowerbed in front of said house with bittersweet, marigolds and sweet peas, which were supposed to bloom red, white and blue in time for the 4th. The rats ate them. Unless it was that goat...but my money is on the rats.

Today John is finishing our horse shed out in the east pasture. Just a 3 1/2 sided shed, but they'll be in out of the rain and wind, and that's good enough. Wakiya had never slept anywhere in her 5 years where her head was covered; she spent her 6th birthday waiting out a rain in our cowshed. So they'll be more comfy soon. Wait for fall, when our barn construction is slated to get underway. They won't have stalls for this winter, but next winter, they'll be spoiled, pampered girls.

Speaking of rain, we had some nasty storms yesterday. As I drove Mary to VBS in the morning, I had to pull over for the rain and hail. I usually handle both well when driving, but this was no ordinary storm. The amount of rain and the direction of the wind combined to make the image out of the windshield remind me of being submerged. Then the hail started. Less than the size of a lima bean, it still hit the truck with the sound of gunshot. It was a scary couple of minutes, even if one of the (snotnosed, non-driving) teens later told Mary I was a wimp.

While painting the dining room, I got a call from my brother-in-law telling me that a tornado had been sighted just west of us, heading east. I checked the internet, and found that that storm passed just south of us. Later, I heard that it actually split just west of Marengo, going right around our town to the north and south. Lots of wind and rain, trees down; one right on top of a lovely old barn west of town. But not much else, besides flooding.

In the evening, John took a break from work to have dinner with us in Rockford. Mary and I intended to see a movie right afterward, but the clouds made the two of us nervous. We weren't enchanted at the thought of being inside a theater when a tornado hit. We needn't have worried. Driving home, a torrential downpour hit, making the one in the morning look, well, wimpy. Coming around a curve, we ran into water running over the road, deep and wide. We raised quite the splash. Mary had been trying to get me to do that, ("It's so neat, Mom!")but has since decided that experience was too scary to repeat. The car behind us, thanks, no doubt, to our spray, went into the ditch. We stopped to help, and rescued 4 college-aged kids on a date. The girls informed us (after our noses already had) that our spray didn't affect them as much as the alcohol the guys had been drinking did. Just before the ditch, they had been telling the driver to slow down and put away the beer. We waited until someone came for the girls, who left the guys high and dry (well, sorta,) and another car stopped to pull the guys out. We left them to figure out how to start the car.

The incident gave me the chance to practice the phrases, "What have we learned from this, girls?" and "Next time, don't get into the car, CALL YOUR MOTHER." We all laughed and they said, "Never again."

Today things seem to be drying out. Good thing. We'll need room for the rain that we're expecting tomorrow.....