floods

in all the rain we've been blessed with this month, we have run into some problems.  During the FIRST flooding- hurricane Irene- All 5 of us rushed out in our rubber boots and rain coats on Sunday morning with big rubbermaid tubs. we loaded bin after bin of soggy chickens and hauled them into the barn to dry out and warm up. in the process we realized that 2 feet of quickly flowing water in the fields is enough to soak up up to the armpits, even if you're wearing a rain coat, and fill up your rubber boots.  I ditched about half the outfit through the process and ended up in shorts and a t-shirt, barefoot, running 5 week old chicks back and forth from the field to the barn. We then drank hot chocolate and took hot showers.

After hurricane Irene we had to go out in the mud and harvest every onion in the field so we wouldn't lost them all.  poor onions will rot if they get soaked and then get war, and it did get warm the next week!  Oh, potatoes too for that matter.  unfortunately the potatoes were in an even mushier spot and we tried to harvest those as well.  totally didn't work. we were pulling up 4 lb. of mud for every pound of potatoes we dug up.  and there's 2000 potato plants out there.  crazy.  We gave up on the potato harvest and decided, "lets wait until it dries out." Unfortunately it HASN'T dried out!!  then suddenly 8 days later tropical storm Lee was upon us, unleashing a torrent of rain and our poor soil was already so utterly saturated from Irene that there was nowhere for the water to go but up up up!  Our creek rose (get this)  TWENTY FIVE FEET the day Lee came through.  Again, wednesday morning (this time it was Justin and I all alone) we rushed out into the firld to save our poor adult broiler chickens.  these guys are big 10lb birds and, sadly, we lost one in the water.  But I was amazed to find that chickens CAN SWIM!!  Can you believe it?  And boy that water was cooooold!  Tropical storms should be warm, right?  The coldness of that day was a lot of stress on those poor birds. we lost the one that day and then 2 more in the days after.  Rough going for those babies.

Later that day Brandon and Justin and I took a walk across the bridge to go see our other garden across the creek. Usually we just ford the 18inch creek but remember it rose 25 feet!   So we took the long way. And when we got there we could hardly believe that there was a very swift rushing stream through the carrots, beets, beans, squash, sweet potatoes, and kale that was up to about 5 inches past the top of my knee.            Mid thigh.            And that's as far out as I could safely walk to test the depth.  It was faster and deeper a few feet further into the carrots but I couldn't justify going any further into the current.  The creek totally re-navigated through our garden!  


Now our potatoes are going to come out of the ground whether it is muddy or not.






:)