Farmin' Aint' for Wimps

This farming gig is no barrel of monkeys!  

How ever much we both love the peace and quiet on the farm...

 fighting Mother Nature negates our love ten fold!

Last night after 2 weeks of missing the heavy storms, it finally got us.

It started raining at 3:00 in the afternoon and just wouldn't stop.

At 10:00p.m. the sump pump wasn't keeping up in the basement. The outflow was underwater, so I trucked out in the rain to re-locate it back to the hill.  Steve trucked out to the chicken coop to locate a 2nd pump.  We saved the basement from filling up with water, but there was nothing we could do for the garden.

Our spirits broken, our will and determination....gone!  We both knew in our hearts the cucumber crop was washing away along with our hearts.  All we could do was stay up and listen for the pumps to keep working.

I swear, sometimes I feel like settlers from 200 years ago!!  

There must be something easier than this??

Farming chemical-drifts, Hail, Snow Drifts as big as the house, now Floods. What Next?? 

All you can do is go with the flow....

Keep the faith,

keep on keepin' on, yada, yada, yada!

In case you are wondering, we made it through the 8 hours of heavy rains!  Approximately 9" fell. Our rain gauge only measures 5 inches, we dumped it out once and collected 2.5 more inches.  Our neighbors one mile away measured 9.5"!! 

We both slept terrible! Worry, Worry, about everything....the pickles, the basement, no flood insurance, no way to get out of here.  I had a dream a helicopter was flying around our farm looking for us.  When I woke up this morning I felt like Dorothy must have felt! Jeeeshhhh!

I threw on the clothes I had last night and got outside as quickly as I could. Expecting to see water everywhere....to my relief, it had all ran down stream and only the usual water holes remained in the yard!!

The sump pump kept working while we slept a few hours.  The worst evidence of the torrential downpours was the road to the west of us.

The culvert is still in place, but totally un-passable.  It's a three foot drop from the road to the rocks!!

As far as the cucumber patch goes...in a few days we will know.  The vines are thick and will drink up a lot of the water!!  They are sitting in very saturated soil, and it will be a real challenge picking cucumbers tomorrow!

But, at least it wasn't hail!  It was really hot and humid today, they will dry out eventually.  God forbid, we get anymore rain soon.  I guess we'll take each day as it comes. Try to stay positive and look for that rainbow in every situation.

Which reminds me of my original thought....

today I needed flowers.  In my time of despair and stress, why couldn't someone just show up with some flowers...just for me!

Didn't happen, I went to work in the pickle kitchen.  And now here I am with an old snapshot of some flowers.....beautiful, anyway.

And after I have my favorite dinner (B.L.T. and corn on the cob)

I am going to watch the sunset and think happy thoughts....

                                        There's no place like home...

There's no place like home....

                        There's no place like home.