Diary of a Modern Homestead: After The Storm

"Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness. Selah. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest. Destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongues: for I have seen violence and strife in the city." Psalm 55:7-9

We knew we were having quite a bit of rain early Sunday morning, but who would have thought that we would awaken and find that we were in the midst of an actual tropical storm.

It just goes to show, take nothing for granted. We're fortunate to live on a hill, in a house on poles, so flooding is a non-issue. It would take one of Biblical proportions, and we know by God's word that will never happen again. David, Lianna and I got out as soon as the rain stopped to go take a look at the pond and creek. We could hear the seasonal creeks on both sides of the house roaring like snowmelt time in the mountains. Pictured below is normally a path, not a small creek.

We found the dam on our little pond breached, which didn't really surprise us as it had been compromised for some time.

The culvert was right there and we needed to work on the pond and dam anyway, so we considered it all blessing.

The only other damage we found was a culvert out on a road that runs the perimeter of the property and a low water crossing at the far end of our land almost out. Neither was really an issue for us.

We estimated that we ended up with about 8 inches of rain, which filled both mudholes, oops I mean "ponds" here at the house so the ducks and geese are happy. The garden, with all the rain we've had this year, is overtaken by grass and past resurrecting, but we do have a great crop of seed for next year's garden. More on that in my next post.

Tropical storm Erin seems to have ushered in fall, with maximum daytime temps the last few days in the low '90's and night time temps in the low '70's. I've noticed lots of fall flowers blooming about 3 to 4 weeks early, which I find interesting and makes me think I may need to get busy with winter preps. Saturday, before we knew we were going to make history the next day, David and I went on a backroads trip to forage for edibles and medicinals. We didn't find as many elderberries as we would have liked, as the county mowed the majority of the patch we had spotted. We did bring back some poke berries to dry for medicinal use and found a buckeye tree, which is something we've never seen here before.