Last night was…eventful. I was sitting on the porch at 8:30p when I got an emergency alert on my phone about a tornado warning and advising me to seek shelter. I checked out the map and we were on the far right side of the endangered area; the valley didn’t look too doom and gloom so I decided to wait a bit to see if it blew right over us. In the meantime, I started wondering where we would shelter if a tornado ever did decide to stop by and when AC popped her head out to check in, I told her that if it comes down to it, we’re heading for the raised barn because it’s lower rooms are made of cinder blocks.
About 30 minutes later, out of nowhere, the sky turned a strange color, the lightning seemed to be right on top of us, the winds picked up, and the rain poured down. It felt a bit late to make the mad dash to the barn so we took shelter in our inner most closet which does still share a small bit of space with and exterior wall. From the closet, AC watched the radar and I quietly prayed that our first full day on the homestead was not also our last.
I’m not sure how much time passed, but we heard a break in the storm and decided that was our chance so we busted out of the closet, through the front door and high-tailed it across our swollen stream to the barn. On the way there we discovered that part of our field turns into a shallow pond when it rains that much (luckily, it also dries quickly!).
We sat on logs in our barn bunker and anxiously waited out the rest of the storm.
The wind died down and the rain became just a little spit right around 9:15pm, when the emergency alert was set to expire. We stayed in the barn a few more minutes just in case, then timidly emerged, afraid of what we might find. Suprisingly, the standing water had already started to soak into the ground and, as I was admiring that, AC said, “Woah! Look!” I looked up to see our farm actually sparkling. In yesterday’s post, I described our farm as sparkling the first time we drove onto it as the new owners and in the daylight. But now, the fireflies were putting on a spectacular show and it looked like our land was covered in tiny little blinking fairy lights. No video or photo could do that scene justice, but here’s our best attempt at capturing the magic.
We went to bed – well, AC went to bed, but I was too hyped up to sleep much last night after all that happened – and woke up to a beautiful morning. We took a walk to survey the damage and all we found were a couple of small branches blown into the field and our poor blueberry bush lost a limb. All the standing water had already soaked through the ground and into the stream.
But there’s always something to be done on a homestead, even when there aren’t animals yet. So by 9:00am this morning, I had already walked the fields, dug up a stump to make room for a second blueberry bush, aired out the chicken coop (it was giving off a funky smell after all that moisture), and cleaned the chicken water bucket!
There’s still more to do, for sure! But first, a bit of paid work 😉
Until next time,
Charli
So glad you all are safe and weathered the storm (literally).
Wow what a crazy first night!
So scary. Glad you have identified your ‘safe place’ for any future storms!