'Normal' day on the farm...

Today was a kind of a spring cleaning day for me... Maybe when talking about bachelor living, one could say that seasonal cleaning is actually,  probably accurate. The day started at 8:30 with opening up the barn and feeding the animals, because the fam is out of town. The geese were squawking, Miracle had a smile... and the goats & the sheep... well it's hard to tell with them. Then I caught up on laundry, vacuumed, did the dishes, changed the sheets... you know... the basics. We had a little sun here and there but it remained pretty much chilly all day. Caught the end of 'The Insider', with Pacino & Russell Crowe... good triumphs over big corporate evil in the end. Not without a few bruises, but I always like a good, redemptive ending ;-)  And an amazing thing last night... I spoke to a friend in India over the computer... A cool download allows you to talk for free any where in the world. It was a trip... but then again I'm behind the times in the geek world... so it always blows me away. Any way, she and I spoke about trying to sell some Indian wares on e-bay... We'll see where that leads. Kind of exciting.  

Here's Loyd ... the only other goose I know by name... Quackmire being the other. Loyd has been getting real friendly with me lately. I guess my probation is over because now he's always underfoot. Quackmire being the Alpha is usually the first to butt his beak into a situation, but now it seems Loyd always checking things out... Doesn't matter if I'm running the tractor or shoveling mud... his glued to my side. I can actually pick him up at will now... He just snuggles up to you and voila... he sits comfortably in your arms. You have to hold his wings down and support his feet, and he settles in quite comfortably. That too is a trip :-)

 

Then it was time to bring the cows some more hay again. This is the set up to drag it down to their 'feed bin'. You use the tractor to topple the roll onto the skid and away you go...

And this is a really exciting pic ... ;-)  Just kidding.  There is still so much water soaked deep in the hills & mountains from the rain, that it's still flowing down and across the property. The water runs through the pasture and by the cow's 'home', and though you can't tell by the pic, the water seemed to be soaking the ground underneath where they sleep... So I spent a couple of hours trying to divert the flow by shoveling troughs in the ground so that the water would run past their 'house'.

Here's inside the barn after mucking it out the other day... Nice & clean. Those rubber mats you see are laid down to provide insulation from the concrete floor. The section where Miracle and the goats live, I finished it up while it was still raining outside... 

   
Just another shot... There's the piles I mentioned earlier... I was just waiting for the rain to let up so that I could haul it out. No matter... it sort of breaks up the day a little more.

A few days later the rain did let up and I was able to tractor the 'stuff' through the mud pit and to the compost pile.  

And with new hay down, every body's happy. 

And of course there's Miracle... Sweetie Pie. When she doesn't want to come in at the end of the day... sometimes you have to chase her around the paddock. She just loves the chase, and it's really cute to watch her play... So spirited... 

And when we did have snow... Henry had re-created the Calvin & Hobbs mayhem. I think I emailed most of you a series of cartoons depicting some amazingly hilarious & original snowman scenes. This kid's got talent.  Any way, that's it for now... Take care,   Alexis  

Where's Wally?

Well, the days do pass by quickly sometimes don't they... The weather here has been really nice the past few days. We're seeing daytime temps around 43-51, so it feels almost 'balmy'  ;-)  But really, they have been nice and since the rain's let up a bit, we all feel we can finally get some work done.  I personally have been busy playing outside when I can... you know... boys with toys. I spent Monday mucking out the rest of the barn. I do it two days because shoveling can kick your ass... no Miracle intended (inside farm joke ;-)  And anyway, with all the rain we've had, the path to the compost pile has really been getting muddy. Every trip down, the tractor seemed to sink more & more... and I really didn't want to get it stuck in the mud pit. Granted Denise & I were able to get it out of the other situation... but down here, the mud is at least 1.5 feet deep and my Jeep would be of no use. So I had put off hauling the 'compost' outside and just left it in the barn until the weather got better. I'll post that up later. In the meantime, today was such a beautiful, sunny day, I decided to stretch my legs  and so I went up to see how the pond was looking. Last time I saw it was a day after the big rain.    

I again walked around all the rock, mud and silt... looking for treasure. The river feeding the pond was almost back to its normal flow... and overall, it seemed more peaceful. In fact, as I crested the small embankment, I came up on about 15 wild geese. They stopped by for a break I guess, but that didn't last long... as soon as I came a clump'n along, they all took off. Caught me by surprise too... Love to have gotten a picture of them. But oh well... I got something better!  A sign of the elusive, Wally the beaver. I found a few of these footprints on the north side of the pond, and got confirmation from Wayne, that they are indeed beaver tracks.  That was the score of the day for me.   

Then there's this... a Bicentennial Pepsi can. Who knows the when & where of this trophy, but it might be safe to say that it had been buried up there since around 1976... give or take a year. Notice the old pull tab on top... It's not gold or silver, but still a nostalgic trophy none the less ;-)

Then I walked into the woods again, following the river back up towards the landslide. I wanted to see how it might have changed since I was there last. This time the journey up the hillside was much more calm and serene... The sun was out and I was able to take my time and really look around. Last time it was raining, and more intense. The top pic is from today and you can really see the difference... 

And here again... what looked  like a natural river is no more. You would hardly have known it was there to begin with. But look at all the rock... Remember, it all came down from just beyond that fallen, horizontal tree, way in the back ground. And now that the water had clearly subsided, I was able to walk up into where the hillside caved in. The size of the collapse was almost double what I had originally thought... The first time I was walked around it, I was leery of getting too close, in case it caved in some more... it could've been very unforgiving. But this time I was able to fully explore it... and it's still intense.  

And for those curious about the mouse situation. The decision to bring in the 'mouse traps' wasn't easy... but there was no way around it. They were just getting too bold and out of control. So the first night I set the traps was New Years Eve I think... not that the timing was meant to be significant... just convenient. I was graciously invited to the main house for dinner... Tom cooked some great pork chops with a homemade 'chutney'... Denise threw on diamonds, and Henry, Wayne & I brought our appetites. But I digress... I gave the mice a 40-60 chance... I had set up 3 'terminator' traps and 2 'user friendly' ones. Not sure about the math on that one, but oh well. When I got back home after our midnight, the ball has dropped, champagne... I found one mouse had 'checked out', while I was gone. And not even a half hour later, I heard a "snap"... and another one had 'checked out'... and 20 minutes after that... "snap"... another vacancy.  I'm not proud... but I gotta tell ya... I slept like a baby that night.

And since then I've only had one other 'guest'... and he was a good adversary... For 2 days he was able to eat the bait off the traps with the skill rivaled only by those who work for the bomb squad. But on day 3 he got cocky... I'll spare the details, but I wish he would have gone after the potato chip bait... I guess 'BBQ' wasn't his flavor...  

Mt Baker hwy. flooding

Hi... just a quick post today to show you some more of the power of nature. Granted... for those of you who've experienced fires and mud slides in So. Cal... you may not need extra reminding... but for those who haven't... here's a few pic's from a slide/flood that shut down Mt Baker hwy. the other day. Traffic was shut down to one lane while they were clearing the debris, so I had to take some of these on the fly. All the pic's I took showing where the flood came from, crossing Mt. Baker, didn't come out well... so all I got is where it went afterwards.... 

The width of the path of debris that crossed the highway was over 250 feet wide. Huge stumps and logs were piled up along the edge of the road. Most seemed to be stripped bare of their bark... as if sand blasted... But I don't have those pic's.

A 'small' river of water 6 inches high was still running across the road this day while the city was bringing in new top soil to try and fill in the gaps on one side, and continuing to asses the next steps on the other.

  
There is a short residential road named "Truck Rd.' that by passes the the site on Mt. Baker and that's where these following  pic's are taken from. You can start to get an idea of just how far & wide this one was. Just beyond and to the left of the buildings in the back ground is where Mt. Baker hwy. is and where I took the first shots above. 

    
This shot is part of the panorama and is actually the view, a little to the right of the above pic. The water just spread out once it hit the flats...

Then moving right from the above pic's... here's where it crossed over 'Truck Rd.'

And continuing to pan right, you can see it flowing off into the distance... It's actually 3x's as wide as this pic shows, but you get the big picture... so to speak. Witnessing something on such a grand scale can leave one sort of  in awe... It takes a while for the brain to absorb what it's looking at. The immense power of nature is always all around us, but sometimes we don't notice until some thing this, obviously profound happens... This might just as well be Mother Nature sneezing for all we know... drawing our attention back to the very bosom that cradles life on this spinning rock...

 

Flooding the Pond...

Well it's been an interesting 2 months so far to say the least.  I think today makes it my 2 month anniversary here and it almost feels like a lifetime. I've been learning so much about myself and obviously living out in the country introduces you to its own, unique 'adventures'. And in the end, it's all good.  Our 4 day rain has slowed for a bit and it was time to venture outside and look around. We had our share of flooding and I wanted to look around the property to see what, if anything needed attention. While I was out driving the other day, forging rivers in the road, Denise and Wayne had gone out to the pond to see how it was faring. During previous heavy rains it would over flow its banks a little, but not damage anything really because it would just flow into the lower wetlands.  And when I got out there, I got to see the aftermath of it all. I can only imagine what it looked like when they saw it with all the water running down. It is amazing... the power of nature.

  

After being cooped up in the barn, the fella's make time for a mud bath... What draws them to the muddiest water on the farm I don't know, but they were having a ball. Later in the day, all eight of them were splashing around in the mud pit by the compost pile where the 'dirtiest' water is, but they could care less... So could I, I guess... I'm not sleeping with them ;-)

Spa life on the farm. Maybe there's something to it...  

Now to show you the aftermath of the flooding we just had, I don't have a lot of pic's of the pond the way it used to look.  So you'll have to trust me when I say that all the rock debris that's in the upcoming pic's was not there before. So here's one I took a while ago... 

And here's the beginning of the series I took yesterday... Now from here, the 'deluge' came down from the right hand side and just spilled into the pond. It's about 100 feet wide and just came down from the woods. Viewing the pic below... the damage extends to the left another 50 feet and at this time, and there's a second stream now that has been created.

This was that gentle, little stream where we were getting our water from for the past few weeks... You can see the water pails in the very background. Most of the rock on the right & left wasn't there. Actually the pond was probably at least 3-5 deep here before... now I'm standing on it taking this picture... And if you look back into the tree line, you can see the exspance of the damage... You can see that rock covers the landscape in the entire back of this picture.  It's unreal.

This picture actually gives you a pretty good before & after sequence... This small, lone tree in the middle and the water behind it gives a good reference point... 

 
You can see that everything in front of the tree has been washed away, the stream has changed and the waterline behind it has been replaced with rubble. Notice here how you can now walk out to the island without the need for the bridge...

I was like a kid walking around, looking for 'artifacts'... I figured something interesting must have been washed up or uncovered. I did find an old, pull tab, commemorative, Bi-Centennial Pepsi can. So it's feasible that it was laid to rest some where around here in 1976... Kinda cool. I also kept finding small pieces of wire every where. Really thin strand wire... like the kind me and my friends used to play with and make stuff out of when I was in Germany... and now it was all over the place. 

Then I started to walk back up into the woods to investigate some more... It was a jungle before, but now it was like a 'water' fire came through and cleared it all out. In fact, the 'path' of the damage extended well over 60 feet wide. Everything was just stripped to bare stone. And as I continued to follow the 'stream' back up the hill, I kept on seeing the same little pieces of wire everywhere... and I was determined to find out where and/or why it was scattered over hundreds of feet. 

That big horizontal tree was standing a couple of days ago.... At the time I was hiking through this natural 'transformation',  I couldn't fathom the how's associated with what I was witnessing... How much water did it take to move all these rocks, or even just wash away every bit of topsoil... I mean these picture's don't capture the magnitude of what happened... But a few hundred feet up the hillside and I found the source of it all...  

A 'small' landslide was the cause for all the debris that had washed itself all the way down the hill... Now it was made sense. And again, it's hard to see in the pic's how big this thing was but as a point of reference... the big tree here is the same one from the previous pic... So that kind of gives you an idea on how wide the cave in is/was.  

And this picture is taken from the top, looking down into where it began. Again the perspective is sort of lost, but to give you another idea... that big fallen tree is on the left there, and you can make out where the original surface was if you follow the ridges around the pic. This now explains that loud 'cracking' explosion I had heard earlier from my place. Life is never dull in the country...

From Drought To Flood...

How quickly situations can change. Days ago we were without personal water for over 3 weeks. That adventurous dilemma was finally resolved with a new well pump. And now for the past 3 days it has been raining non-stop, and we've had serious local flooding around the county. We have gone from one extreme to another... 

The Well Drilling & Service guy came out Monday to trouble shoot the problem,  and after a while determined that the pump in the well had burned itself out. The conclusion was that the pipes leading from the well to the pump house had probably froze over and/but the pump kept on trying to pump, and was meeting an obvious resistance...  Apparently the pump would have stopped trying to pump if it met resistance from the pump house to the residence, but not if it was meeting with said resistance from the other end. I don't know... But we do have our blessed water back and showers, laundry and dishes are back on line ;-) 

And now we're having another unprecedented event... ton's of rain. Day 3 of non-stop rain, on top of all our melting snow,  is flooding the entire area. Granted the Pacific Northwest is known for rain, but everyone around here is saying that this amount is unusual for this time of year. Any way,  I ventured out yesterday to go to the local IGA for some snacky things and began to discover just what was happening in our immediate area. And so the story begins....

Woke to find our meadow had flooded over night. Now this is official 'wetlands' and though you can't tell... a small stream traverses the far tree line, from left to right and then follows the fence line towards the gate pictured here... and goes under the road via a culvert, to the woods on the right. As you can see... it's a little backed up.

 
So into the Jeep I went and headed into town... I now realize that my pic's are out of order but Oh Well ;-)  This one was actually taken on my way back from the general store in Acme. I was going the other way on our road but it was blocked by a small 'slide' ... I'll come to that one later. There is a tree nursery on the left here and a 'river' of mud & water had just washed through the property... The soil around here is actually quite light and permeable... but this deluge was just too much... too fast.

  
And here's the source of the trouble... 'A river runs through it...'  Many people along our road, and in the county, have woken to find themselves in this predicament... 

This is another property on our road...  And another torrent of water finding it's way to the path of least resistance... This is actually some body's front yard. 

This is a continuation from the pic above... Don't think they're getting the paper any time soon... 

I was on my way to the town of Deming when I passed this big guy walking in the pouring rain wearing a hardhat and carrying a small tool bag. I initially thought he was with the city, and that he was just walking the road, checking on the power lines or something.  But after a 1/4 mile I didn't see a truck parked anywhere so I turned around and went back to see if he needed a ride. Yes he did... He told me that he had to leave his truck behind at a friends because of the 'slide'... I didn't get it at the time because he didn't say, landslide... he just said 'slide'. Then he was talking about the other roads that were out, but since I'm new here, I didn't recognize where he was talking about and I was just lost in the conversation. Any way, I did the neighborly thing and took Darryl M. home... real nice guy... He would have had a very long walk. And this is why Darryl couldn't drive home... and why I had to turn around and go the other way.....  A 'slide'. 

So going the only other way out... now on my way towards the tiny town of Acme... more flood waters finding their way to sea level... It's was just coming down and out of the woods all along the way. Nothing dangerous mind you...  just pretty impressive.

 
At all the major dips in the road, water just flooded and sat there. This stretch was maybe 200 feet long, but only about 5-6 inches deep on the far left side. 'Trippy'... but not treacherous. 

Just passing the river, where the water line was inches from cresting the banks... and over the bridge leading to Acme... Voila La,  the biggest flood I'd personally come across. It starts at my bumper and ends at that truck in the far distance. The water was moving slowly and I reasoned that it hadn't washed out the road underneath... so I ventured on. It was probably about 1.5 feet deep or so... Trucks and Jeeps would have no trouble... but cars on the other hand were out of the question. I entered the general store and they were bustling... Some people just sitting around, and some getting last minute food stuffs & catching the latest info on road closures, washouts, etc. The store keeps in touch via a radio scanner and from the locals. Turns out many of the people there were stranded... Hwy. 9 no. which is another way to get to Deming & out of town, was closed... and 9 so. would soon be due to more, imminent washouts. It was all very surreal really... just like in the movies ;-)  Anyway, I gathered my food stuffs when an older woman approached me and asked me which direction I was heading. Seems she had been stranded there since 5 am :-?   Again, not familiar with the surrounding area and not understanding just where she lived... I told her I'd give her a lift to 'where ever'... Turns out, she lives far away, but she just needed to get to the next big town with a bus depot. From there, family could pick her up... so off we went, Pam & I.  Hwy 9 so. was besought with flooding... every 3 miles or so, water and debris littered the roadway... but again, nothing any where near serious for my beloved Jeep. Road workers along the way were putting up detour & road closed signs... And since I didn't have any bearings on time or distance... the journey felt like it would never end. In the back of my mind, I reminded myself that it was the 'Christian' thing to do, but I couldn't help but think that maybe I wouldn't be able to make it back home myself... After all, they were talking about the road I was on would soon be impassable, and we did witness some serious erosion going on.  40 mins later, I was able to safely drop Pam off, one step closer to home. She smiled and blessed me... and disappeared into the depot.

But in the end it was just another test... Not thinking that because I was doing a 'noble deed' that 'God' wouldn't leave me stranded.  But a lesson about staying positive in the 'moment' ... and not clouding what had yet to pass, with fear & worry. I was worrying about the future and wasting energy on a scenario that hadn't happened... Instead of nourishing the present with Faith... faith in that with what ever happens... everything will always work out just fine. it's all in how you choose to look at it!   "I am always with thee" and "Fear is of the earth"...   :-)  

 

22 days without water... What's important?

Hey all,  again... sorry for the delay.  The timing of the holidays, the 'end of the year'... and the institutionalized 'New Year' leaves many to sit back and take an account of their lives. I don't think many are immune to this perennial period of introspection...  I know I wasn't.  I too, have been in my head these past couple of weeks, and many of the challenges I'm dealing with in the immediate present... can't be put into pictures, and since this is a public post... can't be put into words either. Plus... how many times can I impose on you to look at the same old sequence of events... putting the snow chains on, getting water, getting firewood, bedding down the barn, taking the chains off, going to the store, etc, etc... hence the delay in my posting.  And so again, my apologies to those who enjoy looking at the pictures, for not being more available... I will do better this year ;-)

So, as it's written in the title of this post, we are on the 22nd day without water... It's like living in the 'old west'. You gotta fetch the water, boil the water, decide when you're going to wash your hair, when to shave, when to do the dishes... It is an experience to say the least. I wouldn't mind it so much if I were homesteading my own piece of land... Because then I would've known what I was getting into and it would've been my decision as to where I was going to make my concessions or sacrifices... And I also would be in a situation where I could direct my energies toward a set goal... where all my efforts were constructive, and going to be of value. Where you survived on you own, and by your own merits, and the only recognition of appreciation is the one you give yourself.  And yes... you've just caught the beginnings of a 'vent'  ;-)  So I'll nip it here...  because I need to start telling a new story, and stop feeding the negative s__t   ;-)

The weather has been really good lately with the temps are around 35-45... little flurries here & there to remind you it's winter... and the sun pops out once in a while to remind you it's still there. Hopefully the change from that unprecedented cold spell of weeks ago will help thaw out the pipes and we can get our water back. But until then... the trips to the pond continue. 

 
Since the Fam was out for the day... one of the little chores I had yesterday was bringing hay down to the cows... It involves pulling the 'bail' down on a 'sled' and then flipping the roll into the feed bin. Here you can see the roll sitting on the snow covered sled with the wrapping cut away. Now you just slowly drive forward while lifting the skiff to flip it in. It's actually kinda fun to do...

And after 2 flips, you finish by just pushing the roll all the way in. Abe, Andy & Anna were already waiting... or I should say, jockeying for position as I unfurled the roll a bit so that they could get at it better... But believe me, they don't need the help... they just dig in.

And I figured while I was at it, I might as well freshen up their bedding too. No sense in them sleeping in s__t when they don't have to. So I brought down a couple of the 'old' hay bails to 'fluff up' the old stuff. Once they got a 'whiff' of what I was doing, Abe & Andy came right over to check it out... and of course they started to eat it too. Andy was actually so excited that he sort of jumped and kicked his hind legs up into the air... It was pretty wild to see something that big & strong,  frolic... 

After getting some firewood, I found Irish camped out on the porch. His water bowl was empty of course, so I filled that... and since the Fam was going to be away all day, I took him for a walk to stretch his legs. We took our usual route to the pond... and then cut up the hill towards the state run, water 'thingy'.  And although it is no substitute for walking with my Bailey... it is in its own way, reminiscent. And because all dogs, always do what they do best... show unending gratitude and unconditional love... it's time well spent. 

Here's a shot of the water 'thingy'.  But trust me, the 'ambiance', or the mystery of this structure, is far more interesting to contemplate then it is actually to visit... But I think it still makes for a cool picture. 

  

The Alpha dog... nose in the air and his eye on something... who knows what he senses... but I'm sure it's out there. 

And again... at the end of my post, and at a loss for words... But if I keep writing, it has to come to me. The past couple of months have been a sort of whirlwind of learning experiences... with a little bit of everything in the mix. As I mentioned in the last post, I'm rereading Castaneda's book, 'Journey To Ixtlan' ... And a recurring theme is on losing ones 'self importance'... something I very much want to do, but finding quite challenging. It seems that Carlos, under the tutelage of don Juan, was a lot like me... prideful, self righteous, petty, whining, never taking responsibility for his actions, living the life of a timid man...  Don Juan tells the young Carlos that life is short... that in fact... Death is stalking us and could take us at any moment... And that the life of a Warrior, a hunter of knowledge... knows this and acts accordingly. That his every action is done with purpose, truth, power... because it might be his last act on earth... 

My personal, preliminary interpretation of  'losing ones self importance'  is that... it is one of the keys to being free... to not have the pettiness of the world cling to you, and obscure what's important. Or more to the point maybe ... choose to act,  act decisively...  with conviction and purpose so that you leave nothing to question. Make your stand and accept the responsibilities of your actions. And if one could live life not caring what others think... all that extra energy, not wasted on other peoples 'opinions' ... I can only imagine what kind of a life I would have. But this is my lesson... 

The world is filled with millions upon millions of ordinary people doing extra-ordinary acts, everyday...