A Summer Thunderstorm

As I was driving home from work on I-10 (kids, don't try this at home), I took a picture of a rainbow.  If you look closely, you can see it is a double-rainbow.  That rainbow has deep meaning.  In Genesis Chapter 9, right after the Great Flood, God tells us that the rainbow is a token, a sign, a reminder of a covenant that God made with Man and all living creatures that He would never again destroy the earth by flood.  

As I drove eastward, the skies were increasingly dark.  I was hoping that the rain would hold off.  I had things to do and that put a damper on my afternoon plans.  Have you noticed, by the way, that the days are getting shorter?

I quickly changed out of my work clothes and put on my 'farm' clothes.  Tricia and I quickly walked out to the barn to do the afternoon chores.  It was about 6 pm.  And then, the bottom fell out.  It rained cats and dogs and possums and nutria rats.  The wind blew like a hurricane.  The thunder rumbled and the lightning popped too close for comfort.  All of a sudden the lights went out in the barn.  The fans grinded to a halt.  

She is very hard to see, but Rosie is waaayyyy out in the rainy pasture.  We had to go get her.  I ran back to the house to get my rain jacket.

We were protected from the rain by the tin roof.  Raindrops falling on a tin roof is a very relaxing sound.  If I had a hammock, I could have fallen asleep.  We gathered the eggs and killed time waiting for the storm to pass.

And then.  It did.  The ferocious summer thunderstorm passed on by, bringing its torrential rains and winds to our neighbors down south.  The thunder still rumbled in the distance, but the clouds began to clear out and the fresh scent of rain and wet leaves and broken branches filled the air.  The sun, with a last gasp of effort, cast its rays over the rain-soak landscape as if to bid farewell to the hot summer day. The chickens rushed out to find bugs and spiders that the storm had blown out of the trees and onto the ground.

Rosie tried to make up her mind whether she wanted to walk through ankle deep mud to go out and eat the wet grass.

She finally made up her mind to trudge on out there.  The storm dropped the temperature to a reasonable level and she was able to enjoy the cool air and eat lots of grass before it got too dark.  We made our way back to the house, but the electricity was still out.  In fact, four hours later, went I went to bed, the electricity was still out.  Tricia told me that sometime during the middle of the morning, the power came back on.  She got up and went to turn out lights.  I slept right on through it.  

When the Bough Breaks...

If the clouds are full, they pour out rain upon the earth; and whether a tree falls toward the south or toward the north, wherever the tree falls, there it lies.  Ecclesiastes 11:3

When I came home the other evening from work, I found that this tree had fallen toward the north, and as the Bible verse says, "wherever the tree falls, there it lies."  The China Berry tree snapped off and fell during a thunderstorm.  Thunderstorms roll through bringing torrential rain and straight-line winds that leave behind visible evidence of its power.

The tree fell across the fence from the patch of woods south of the property and in so doing, it trapped the two young bulls on the east side of the 'bull-pen,' their pasture.  We keep them separated from the cows.  If we didn't their amorous shenanigans would make it nearly impossible to walk to the barn.  The bulls had obviously been trapped for quite some time during the day.  They had paced back and forth, leaving the pasture looking like a muddy soup.

When I first pulled into the drive, I thought that a DEAD tree had fallen across the fence, but when I inspected closer, I realized that the tree was ALIVE and HAD BEEN full of leaves.  Those leaves had been all eaten!

The cows and the goats completely demolished every leaf that was on the tree.  This wouldn't have been a problem except in numerous searches on the Internet, I have found that the leaves, bark and berries of the Chinaberry tree are toxic to livestock!  This was quite troubling, but the animals had polished off all of the leaves prior to me getting home.  Eating "the forbidden fruit" had no ill effects, however.  The cows, goats, and chickens exhibited no symptoms of sickness.  For that, I was glad.

I got my double-bladed ax and went to work, chopping up pieces of the tree and tossing it over the fence.  The bulls kept getting in my way as they were tired of being cordoned off on the muddy stretch of pasture.  Finally I finished the job and the bulls joyously kicked up their heels and headed off into the grass to eat. 

The goats had other plans.  Seeing that the fence was broken, they breached the break and entered the bull-pen.  It took some doing, but I finally caught the nosy goats and deposited them on the right side of the fence.  I will have to get my come-along and pull the fence back out straight and staple it to the 4x4 when I have some time.  As darkness approached, I fixed it in true red-neck fashion - I used tie-wire to temporarily patch up the torn fence.

It wasn't a pretty job, but by-golly, it worked.  If you can't get it done right, at least temporarily get it done.

Expensive Fertilizer for the Garden

Last week we had some phenomenal lines of thunderstorms blow through, bringing with them torrential downpours of rain.  I measured 4.8 inches in my rain gauge, but there's no telling how much we really got. My rain gauge only has a 5 inch capacity, and I'm sure some splashed out of the top.  We also got some very strong straight-line winds, with gusts as high as 60 miles per hour.

Needless to say, this was not good weather for the meat birds in our new chicken tractor.  I was concerned about the birds and kept running out the front door and walking on the porch toward the west side of the house and peering out, trying to catch a glimpse of our Cornish Cross meat birds between the blowing wind and rain that battered my face.

You see, it was hard to see because our power was out.  It went out at 8 p.m. and didn't come back on again until noon the next day.  But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me rewind the cassette a bit. There was a tornado warning in effect, we had no power, and it was raining cats and dogs.  At one point I thought I saw the tarp blow off the chicken tractor.  I told Tricia that I was going to wait until it slacked up a bit to go check on the birds.

At about 10:30 the wind slowed a little and there appeared to be a break in the rain. We both put on our slicker suits and rubber boots and walked across the backyard toward the area where the chicken tractor was positioned.  My flashlight brought the chicken tractor into view.  Something wasn't right!  The chicken tractor lay on its side.  The wind had flipped it over.  As I panned across the yard with the beam of my light, I saw what appeared to be white rags littering the landscape in a 50 square foot area.  The wind must have knocked over someone's garbage cans.  Wait a minute - those aren't rags!  Those are birds.  Our birds!  Our soaking wet, shivering, half-dead birds.  I picked up the first bird I came to.  It was dead.  I turned to Tricia and said, "We lost all of our birds."  But as we walked around, there weren't all dead.  Some were alive.  Thank you, Lord.

I flipped the chicken tractor over.  It was in good shape.  Tricia helped me to walk around and pick up every single bird.  Some were dead - three for sure.  I stacked their cold carcasses outside the tractor.   The rest were suffering from the effects of hypothermia. Since our power was out, I couldn't turn the heat lamp on and warm them up.  I did the next best thing.  I stacked them very close together inside the chicken tractor where their body heat could warm each other up.

The next morning at 5 a.m. I wasn't sure what would be awaiting us.  Would ANY of the chickens be alive?  I opened the door and heard some chirping.  There were birds looking back at me - definitely alive.  In all 13 meat birds succumbed to the effects of the stormy weather.  When I got back from work in the evening, I carried several buckets of dead chickens to the place of interment.

When you hear the term "Bucket of Chicken," you normally think KFC - not this gruesome sight!!

With a few minutes of manual labor behind the familiar handle of a shovel, I dug a trench between the garden rows from last year's garden and deposited the fallen fowl into the shallow grave. I fashioned a crude cross for the 13 meat birds' final resting place, and God providentially sent rays of sunlight to illuminate the chicken cemetery.

Now I must remember, it could have been worse.  Much, much worse.  Maybe 8 or 10 years ago, I lost every single bird after a rain storm.  25 meat birds that were healthy and about the size of Cornish hens were dead.  We only lost 13 of the birds this time.

I also learned a lesson.  Although the center of gravity is low on the new chicken tractor, if we are expecting strong winds, I need to be diligent about staking the chicken tractor down and getting out to check on the birds EVEN BEFORE the storm subsides.  If I would have gotten out there a little earlier, I might have saved them all.

There is a silver lining to this sad story.   Like the Indian's fish provided nutrients to the pilgrim's growing corn, the chickens' dead carcasses will do the same later this year, feeding our vegetables and providing a bumper crop of delicious vegetables.  It's just doggone expensive fertilizer!