Warm, Wet and Windy

El Nino has arrived in the Northwest. In a few days we went from barely recovered from the summer's drought to flooding. And it is still raining...

This summer, we had to dredge out an area by the dam to accumulate enough water for the irrigation pump for the garden. Less than a week after the rains began, the pond overflowed. I took these photos on Dec. 9, mostly between rain showers. Or at least between rain downpours. We had almost 3 inches of rain in the 24 hours preceding.

Johnny dug trenches to direct the water off roofs away from our buildings.

I hiked down to the lower reaches of the creek that flows out of our pond and saw that Johnny's bridge was no longer reaching from one side of the bank to the other.

I could not get to Agency Creek this way because of water in the woods. The white stake marks the highest the river has come since the 1996 flood, when it flooded the lower field. We did not put a stake in that time. But we did canoe through our woods.

Our little seasonal pond has become a big seasonal pond.

This is the path down to what we call the "lake pasture", for good reason.

And these are the paths that go to our usual access point for Agency Creek (left) and through the woods alongside the creek (right). The water was over my boots both directions, so I turned back.

When the light rain grew heavier, I took refuge in an old shelter in the woods for a time.

As the rain eased somewhat, I made a break for it and forded the water flowing into our seasonal pond by jumping from hillock to hillock, then walked back to our little creek and the culvert, which was carrying the water just fine. This is looking upstream toward the pond.

And this is downstream. A bit of the snag that fell this summer is in view on the right.

The only access to Agency Creek was from the south horse pasture. Instead of a high bank where I usually stand to look down at the creek, there was just a few foot drop to the muddy water.

From there I walked up to the swamp, which has been dry for many months. It is now a swamp again.

We had had ferocious winds along with the rain the weekend before. They took down our garden netting and the white posts that hold it up.

We also lost power on Monday, Dec. 7, when a tree fell across the road half a mile from us. Later, we had power surges which mysteriously started the long motionless fan in the greenhouse ceiling to begin whirling at full speed. That fan and a light out front of the house are supposed to be turned off and on by a battery device that has not worked for many years.

It still doesn't, so we could not turn off the fan or the outside light. Johnny unscrewed the light. I leaned over the balcony rail and pulled the cord on the fan.

Whenever there is a break in the weather, birds mob the feeders. The chickadees grab a bite and go.

Chestnut-backed Chickadee

Black-capped Chickadee

The Pine Siskins, on the other hand, hang on in mobs.

Every morning I throw seed out for the ground feeders, including California Quail by the gazillion.

Johnny checks his rain gauge each morning and writes down the accumulation from the 24 hours previous. On Dec. 1st, he recorded zero inches of rain from the last day of November. In the next 12 days (last recorded this morning, Dec. 13), we had a total of 15 inches of rain. The weather prediction is for more of the same.

At least, it isn't snow.

Johnny's Many Projects

Over the summer and fall, Johnny has been working on numerous projects around the farm that he has been trying to get to for years. Or that I've been trying to get him to get to for years. He has this round completed. But, no worries that he'll get bored, I have another list started...

One project he finished before the rains arrived was new gutters and new gutter boards on his shop. I think this was inspired by my rain barrels at the corner of his shop, catching water off the one section of gutters that was still intact. He and everyone else kept backing into my rain barrel. So Johnny moved the big fiberglass water tank that had been sitting by the horse barn doing nothing for years to the back corner of the shop (inside my riding arena) and ran the new gutters into it.

Before he could put up the gutters, he had to put up boards to fasten them to. The old barn provided those boards. Our old barn wood has been used in many projects around here.

Another project was replacing the chicken wire around the turkey portion of the chicken house, which is currently open for both chickens and turkeys. The chickens were flying in and out at will. The turkeys were too dumb to figure out how to do that. As long as he was working on that, I asked to have a bigger door cut in the chicken house going into the turkey yard. I was tired of crawling on hands and knees through poultry droppings when I needed to shoo turkeys or whatever from the outside yard to the inside. Now I just have to bend over a little to get through. Hooray!

The peacock examined the finished project from on top.

Another project dear to my heart was replacing the "temporary" plywood sheets blocking wind in the northeast corner of the goat yard. Those temporary sheets had been propped up against the fence around the yard since the barn was built. Once again, old barn wood came in useful to replace the fencing for something to screw the metal sheets to. Those metal sheets came from Traumhof. One man's junk is another man's treasure.

What's left of the old barn looms in the background. It is still home to old barn lumber and other wood.

 

 And then there was the plywood project... Friends sold us their used plywood sheets that had been animal housing... lots of housing and lots of sheets. Johnny hooked the big flatbed trailer Dad had given us to his van and we drove over to get the plywood. We loaded about half of it on and decided that was heavy enough for the trailer. Then, in an ill-fated decision, Johnny decided to go back out a different way than we had come in. He had forgotten about a very steep hill with loose gravel. We got stuck. He tried backing up to get a run at it and almost made it up... but not quite. The next time he backed the trailer went off the road a bit and we were going nowhere forward or back. The guy who works there came with a little tractor but it could do nothing. So we unhooked the van, offloaded some of the lumber into the van, and drove home.

After unloading the lumber from the van, Johnny went back for more. At least, that's what I'm remembering now. Later that day (after I was done with morning chores), he loaded up several big jacks, come-alongs, and a zillion feet of heavy logging cables. First we offloaded about a fourth of the plywood into the van to give the van better traction. I drove the pickup and he the van. We hitched the trailer to the pickup, ran the cables from the trailer, under the pickup, up to the van that was perched on top of the hill, out of the loose gravel. This all sounds much easier that it was. It took several jacks and a come-along to accomplish this easily stated feat. Johnny drove the van gradually pulling the trailer while I drove the pickup. When I felt the pickup starting to do the pulling itself, I waved him to stop. We unhitched the pickup and rehitched the van to the trailer and Johnny pulled it out successfully. That was a very tense and nervous day but all worked out in the end. I guess you can do most anything if you have enough jacks, come-alongs and miles of logging chain.

I did not take photos of the fully loaded or the stuck trailer. It was too embarrassing and tense. Here is the trailer after the offloading and after successfully reaching the top of the hill.

 We went back the next day for the rest of the lumber and did not take the steep hill route out.

The old barn is the repository for all this plywood, which Johnny intends to use on his next summer projects of replacing the roofs on the shop and horse barn. The plywood will go under the new metal and we will no longer have insulation dripping from the ceilings and creating nests for mice and birds. Back when those roofs were put on (30 plus years ago), the recommended procedure was to use that insulation. Bad idea.

Plywood stored in what's left of the old barn

 Of course there have been many smaller projects to keep Johnny busy... a third stock tank heater, fence and gate repairs, equipment repairs, fixing a broken water pipe that had a steel fence post driven through it during the barn siding project, plus, Johnny says, "lots of other fifteen minute projects that took at least two hours to do."

In between his projects Johnny joined me on many bird monitoring trips plus got in our year's supply of firewood.

And so goes Johnny's "retirement" days... I don't know how he ever had time to "work".

A Late Report of an Early Thanksgiving

The California kids came the weekend before Thanksgiving, so they could be home before the traffic craziness. It was a short, fun visit.

It started with a visit to the horses.

Cedrus and Jessie Anne

Kestrel and Jessie Anne

Shirley was thrilled to have the boys here again. She hung out with Cedrus a lot.

Mister McCoy wanted attention too, but he is *so* big.

Steve and McCoy

Kestrel says hi to McCoy

Cedrus found the kitty, who our grandkids call Willow. We just call her kitty.

Whenever something else wasn't going on, Cedrus was playing the piano.

He is very good at the piano, but sometimes his position is a little odd.

Kestrel plays the guitar well. Here he is reading chords for a song from the web via an iphone (or something)

They had arrived Friday evening, the week before Thanksgiving Day. We ate our big turkey meal on Saturday. On Sunday, we went to Dallas to swim in the pool there. The boys love to swim. They both jumped off the diving board and tried diving off the side of the pool.

On Monday Johnny and the boys made sauerkraut. Here Kestrel adds salt to the shredded cabbage from Grandma's garden.

 It takes a lot of pounding to turn shredded cabbage into juicy cabbage..

Teamwork!

Munazza caught the action on her phone camera

Kestrel and Johnny poured the now-juicy cabbage into a plastic bag

Munazza took photos to document the procedure for Johnny's next talk at the boys' classrooms. It will take several months for the cabbage to ferment into sauerkraut.

 The boys wanted to hike to the river, of course. Here Cedrus stands beside his namesake tree, Cedrus deodora, in the arboretum. We're waiting to see how long it will take the tree to outgrow Cedrus.

 We crunched over lots of fallen leaves on our trip through the woods

The boys are way ahead.

Here come their mom, dad and grandpa

 
The creek was high and cold. Of course, Steve had to balance on a log jutting over the creek. The boys threw stick boats into the water.

There were lots of downed trees from a recent windstorm to get over on the way to and from the creek. Cedrus could go under this one.

 On the way back to the house through the arboretum, I had Cedrus stop the EZ Go by two other Cedrus trees, Cedrus atlanticas: Atlas Cedars.

This Cedrus atlantica is already taller than Cedrus

Two boys, two Atlas Cedar trees

 
Although it was Cedrus who did most of the driving of Johnny's EZ Go, now christened "Roustmobile Too", the photos I took were of Kestrel driving. He is the only one who goes slowly enough to get a picture of.

 While Kestrel drove around the arena, his dad snacked on rose hips.

 The night before they left for home, the boys gave us a concert. They alternated with Cedrus on the piano, then Kestrel on the guitar and singing. Grandma videotaped them.

 Although Cedrus has music books in front of him, he is not playing songs from them. He is playing other songs from memory.

 The photos below are still captures off the videotape.

Kestrel's dad served as a music stand

Kestrel singing and playing

 On Tuesday, Nov. 24th, they headed back south. They went through a snowstorm in the mountains between Oregon and California, but made it safely to Redding where they spent the night and drove home on Wednesday.

I'm glad we have videotapes to watch and remember. We're not sure where those kids got their musical talents, but very glad they did!