It has been a busy few days, naturally.  When the rains hit, the first thing we noticed was that the back porch roof was leaking like crazy.  All the stuff on our porch was wet, and it was very discouraging.

I asked Tom to get a photo of me in my winter gear.  When it was really cold I had another layer of waterproof ski pants on and a Balaclava hat.  I got a really nice insulated cup for Christmas, and it has been wonderful during this cold stretch.  I have been wearing my snowmobile boots as my Sorrels are at our mountain cabin.

Here is a better view of our collapsed tarp shelter without as much snow on it.  This is where we keep our farm equipment so it is buried underneath still.  Thankfully Tom had ignored my advice to put the quad and tractor under there to keep the moisture off.  But we still have quite a bit of machinery buried.

Tom got the giant pine branch off of the trailer roof.  I helped haul the branches off.  Some went to the animals, and some are piled up behind them.  We tried to catch it on fire, but it was too wet.

I cleaned up Christmas as well.  The tree went to the animals.

Here is a view of the collapsed netting.  You can see the damage better without the snow but still too much to bother to remove it.  One of the walls of the “grampa shed” came loose so I nailed it back together.

I dumped the ice out of the water containers. This is the goose pool, and it was quite heavy dumping it.  The day before I couldn’t due to the weight.

And this is the ice from the sheep’s water container.

Here’s another view of the sheep eating the Christmas tree.  They do not seem to like the pine as much.

After more melting you can really see the damage to the metal of the tarp shelter.  Tom is pulling off the damaged tarp.

And you can really see the damage to the hothouse now.  It is so sad.

And today it is flooding.  On the way home from work this morning, our road had a torrent of water from the development above us flowing across our road in two places.  It was bad enough, they had two county vehicles out warning the drivers of the flooded road.  They never shut the road down that I am aware of . Tom said we lost power last night too.  And here is the view of our front fields this morning.  It feels like we are back to where we started.  The flood waters are about 10 feet from the front of our barn yet again.

But this time there is a wild duck swimming in our field.  I do not remember that from before.  We call the flooded field across the street from us “Lake Brad”.  I am thinking we should call this “Lake Tom”.  What do you think?

Her is a video of the duck swimming around.  Lake Brad always has lots of birds in it.  Maybe we will as well.

 

The frostbite on Big Orange’s comb and waddle are more apparent now.  I feel bad for him.

Another look at the tarp shelter with the tarp removed.  The weight of the snow must have been tremendous to bend the metal this badly.

So when Tom pulled the huge branch off the trailer roof, he was pleased that there did not seem to be significant damage to the roof section he had just put up.  But there are new leaks in what we call the cider studio.  First it was one leak, but today there are three really bad ones.  We cleared all the equipment out of the room, and Tom went out this afternoon and purchased a new tarp.  He just now got it placed over the old one.  The hope is to limp by with this section of old roofing until the weather improved, and he can build a new one.

Here is grampa’s rain gauge with the amount we received over the last 2 days.  Unfortunately it was so cold I had taken the glass portion of the gauge in during the snow events so do not know how much precipitation that represented here.

And, to top it all off, we have been living out of coolers on the back porch for over 1 week due to our refrigerator dying in the middle of this storm.  But today we got our new refrigerator delivered, and it is so exciting.  It is all clean and pretty.

I decorated it all up similar to the old one.  I blame my aunt Darlene for this.  I remember when I was a kid visiting my cousins that she had alphabet magnets and, I believe, drawings that they had done on their fridge.  Of course, they did not have nearly as much stuff as I do.  But I really enjoy the little mementos of our life in the kitchen.

Plus I have the alphabet ready in case a grandkid wants to spell something.

We got the food in the refrigerator and freezer sides.  It all looks so organized.  This will not last.  Having a functional fridge is huge.

Hopefully our luck will start to change.