ready for the rain

Tuesday rolled around - NO RAIN! Darn. That meant we had time for more work.

We cut down more flower stuff in the garden. Rolled up the electric fence. Trimmed and moved some pots on the patio. And, of course, pulled weeds.

New forecast called for rain beginning Friday followed by days and days of rain probabilities. YES!

Rain on that scale means that our gravel road might have some problems. So Thursday was a roadwork day. Consider this the weight room at the gym. It is hard work. The ditches along the road always end up filled with sticks and rocks that are kicked in there by heavy rain water flow the previous winter or passing cars during the dry summer. We were trying to clear the ditches. No photos of the work - we were too busy with hoes and shovels and rakes. Here's the result.

Getting Ready for the Rain We are running out of dry warm days September 2016
By the time September rolls around, we are so ready for it to start raining. The flow rate on the well drops so low, we are afraid it may stop altogether. This year we hit 0.295 gallons per minute. That turns into 425 gallons of water a day. We easily dump 200 gallons on the garden. Then there are dishes to wash, food to prepare, baths, and sometimes we even wash clothes. By the end of summer, fire danger has escalated to EXTREME. Everything is hot and dry. The garden peters out. The majority of the vegetables have stopped producing or else producing tiny fruit. The yellowjackets have taken over the strawberry beds and the plum trees. It is worth your life to get a plum to eat. The leaves on many of the flowers are turning brown and curling up. So this is the time of year when we jump into high gear to start shutting the garden down as much as possible before the rain starts. This year we added one more task to our list of chores - remove slash (old dead tree limbs) from the forest. Every year when trees are cut for firewood, we generate piles of limbs. Some years we burn them; other years we turn a blind eye to them. Medical issues over the last couple years meant we have ignored them and the piles have gotten so numerous we felt it was time to do something. We were going to chip them, creating wood chips for the garden. Back in August, we started chipping right by the barn. We had a huge pile of limbs there. Every time a storm had come through and blown limbs out of the trees, we stashed them there. Nancy is the chipper operator and Dianne the bringer of additional limbs, sawing low dead limbs from around the house and barn. We did this for a couple days, then moved into the woods. We wish we had counted how many days, how many trailer loads, but we didn't realize what the magnitude of this task was going to be. Let's just say we covered in chips every path and driveway in the entire garden, 4" deep!
The first location		There are piles everywhere
all sizes		grown over
Nancy feeding a small tree trunk into the chipper		Trailer load about 3/4 full
For the complete experience check out our video: https://youtu.be/0nuoyCQn9yE Some of the limbs are too long and heavy for Nancy to handle. Dianne cuts them with a limb saw. A chainsaw would be much easier, but the fire danger is so high that chainsaw use in the woods is prohibited. This just adds a higher intensity to the workout.
A skinny tree trunk, not a limb. That is why it is so long.		The end result
Those chips are 3 to 4 inches deep. That is a LOT of chips.
The weather forecast called for rain on Tuesday. That meant we worked overtime on Monday to finish up. Once it starts raining, we might have trouble getting the tractor and chipper up some of the steep wet inclines. There was too much to chip everything out there, but we chipped as much as we could, then hauled the equipment up to the barn. It was just about dark when we got to the house. We were ready for rain. That night we celebrated! After cleaning up, we sat on the patio in the dark and enjoyed a wonderful supper: eggplant-shrimp casserole, fresh tomato-cucumber salad and a delightful wine. The candles were not just for ambiance, it was pitch dark out there.

Tuesday rolled around - NO RAIN! Darn. That meant we had time for more work. We cut down more flower stuff in the garden. Rolled up the electric fence. Trimmed and moved some pots on the patio. And, of course, pulled weeds. New forecast called for rain beginning Friday followed by days and days of rain probabilities. YES! Rain on that scale means that our gravel road might have some problems. So Thursday was a roadwork day. Consider this the weight room at the gym. It is hard work. The ditches along the road always end up filled with sticks and rocks that are kicked in there by heavy rain water flow the previous winter or passing cars during the dry summer. We were trying to clear the ditches. No photos of the work - we were too busy with hoes and shovels and rakes. Here's the result.

Friday dawns: clear and sunny. Darn! Where is that rain? New plan, Friday would be a day off! A day for adventuring and exploring. A day for fun and no work. We've got pictures of our Friday adventure click here. Friday night we got 0.3 inches of rain. Here is the forecast starting with Saturday. Today (Saturday October 1) is our first fire in the fireplace for this fall. Life is good - a little exhausting, but good.