It's raining again...

Friday afternoon when I got home from work the sun was shining and I was looking forward to trying to work up the garden to get the fall crop in.  I knew that if I got the seed bed ready Friday afternoon, then I could plan out the garden that evening and get the seeds all ready for sowing in the morning.  It's always so exciting to plant seeds.  And then the bottom dropped out:


Raining while the sun shines

 It doesn't seem to bother the cows one bit, they keep right on eating grass. 


Heads down eating, oblivious to the liquid sunshine

Rainwater falls off of the roof and into one of our rain collection tubs.  We'll hand carry this rainwater to water the animals or the garden.  Last year was a drought.  We were down well over 20 inches of rainfall for the year.  This year in September, we're already over our YTD Average rainfall amount by over 20 inches. 

30 gallons collected in no time

We have had so much rain lately that the ground is absolutely saturated and won't absorb much.  In no time, the back yard started to flood.  The rainfall by the end of the day was 3 inches, but it seemed like so much more due to the saturated soil causing run-off.


Rain bucket is full and so is the back yard

Genesis 6:14 So God said to Noah, "Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood..."

Since we couldn't locate gopher wood, Russ and Benjamin pulled out The Garfish, our canoe, and proceeded to paddle it around in the backyard with a watchful eye for animals organizing themselves by twos. 

The first mate and the skipper too.

In the picture below, right above Russ' head, you can see the chicken tractor that houses the pullets.  They are old enough and can hop up on the roosting bars to get out of the rain.  One year, however, in a rain just like this, I lost 25 cornish cross broiler chicks that drowned.  We learned a valuable lesson through that ordeal.

Genesis 8:4 In the seventh month on the seventeenth day of the month, the the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.  And then the occupants of the ark disembarked (ha ha) and jumped into the rain barrel.  Remember the Hasbro toy, Monkeys in a Barrel?  Which monkey is in this barrel?

 

Who is this?



Well, it's Benjamin in the barrel.

 One other thing happened on Friday, Tucker, our baby squirrel opened his eyes.  Check 'em out.



Tucker can see!

I will be delayed in planting the fall crop as I wait for the ground to dry up for 4 or 5 days, but at least the boys had fun playing in the rain.