Flooded By It All

      Flooded with rain, school work, unpacking, and out side yard work.

      With all the rain we have been getting, it has been flood conditions all over in these parts.  Our lower farm land is no exception.  It looks like we have a 2 acre pond right now.  Notice our broken fence as well.

Yesterday during the torrential down pour the
lower end of our driveway was under water also. 

      I am anxious for the rains to stop, the fields to dry, and to get our fencing all fixed so we can have this place ready to go for boarding a horse.

      We are getting six baby chicks tomorrow.  I am bringing them home from school after church.  One of our Biology teachers got them from a
friend so he could
use them in the classroom.  They are over 2 weeks old now.  Britney completely cleaned out the chicken coup when she was home last weekend and Dan has power washed it, given it a base coat of primer, and a top coat of white paint.  It looks really nice right now.  Joe has built some fencing to contain the chicks and replaced a window with a screen to get some air in there. So we are ready.

 
      Joe bought a new “tractor”.  It is more like a big riding mower actually.  But it has a larger mower deck, runs on diesel, goes much faster and is more powerful.  It has a front end loader and has already come in quite
                                                      handy.  Here it already looks a bit
worse for ware.  Not only does it make mowing go much faster, but we have moved sizable amounts of dirt around and even moved a big bolder from beside the corn crib. We bought a 300 gal. diesel fuel tank from a friend and used the tractor to get the stand we will put it on all situated on the west side of the corn crib.

     We cut down all the shrub from
by the drive, under the power line, which was a tangled mess of several different bushes and trees.  It looked disorderly and is going to block our view of pasture and interfere with additional fencing.

      I have continued to do some planting and transplanting and trimming of trees and shrubs between the rains.  We also moved the "wishing well" from the front pasture to the back yard and put it around the well head.  I stuck a fern in the well bucket to give it some eye appeal.  

     Below is a picture of the garden Joe put in earlier.  He rented a tiller to get the ground loose.  There were lots of rocks in part of it, but the soil is pretty good.  The photo on the right shows the Forsythia and Rose of Sharon cuttings (from old house) I am rooting next to our storm cellar shed.

As you know, I would much rather be outside working than in here.  The unpacking continues to move at a snails pace.  It is too big a task for me to tackle until school is out. Anyway, the urgent school work has taken precedence over all farm and house work.  It too is a daunting job.  I have to write my semester exam and review this weekend. 

     With all the brush piles here when we moved in (the previous owner was a rabbit hunter who want to encourage their existence) and all the sticks and branches we picked up in the yard plus everything we cut down or trimmed....we have been doing a lot of burning.  It is nice to take a rest from work and tend the fire. 

    
          In the evenings when it
     isn't raining, we sit by a fire in
     the pit by the house and reflect
     on our day's accomplishments
     and ponder on what's to come.