A tropical storm with livestock is uneventful

I am grateful Hurricane Irene was a nuisance rather than a more violent storm in Maine. We had spent some time in the days before the projected arrival of the hurricane to prepare our house, yard, kids and livestock for an extended power outage. We had a water collection plan in place in the backyard because the pigs have an automatic water source that is hooked to our house water and when we lose electricity, we lose the well pump too. The chickens and sheep have manual fill water troughs so we needed to make sure we collected plenty of water during the rain event of the storm for them too.

Who said being a Maine farmer was easy? Oh yeah, that would be no one.

I am thankful to CMP that we were only without power for about 10 hours on Sunday so our water collection plan did not have to be fully implemented in its delivery to the various pens. The girls, Fino and I went out to check on the livestock a couple of times during the storm and everyone fared well in our backyard.
The pigs were their usual playful selves. They didn't mind the storm much but like the Almeida humans, they casually hung around and took a nap during the worst of it. Unfortunately the pig's pen is back to it's full Swine Lake capacity. This happens a lot during a heavy rain storm because even though we expand the pen every year, the pigs like to root. They avoid the yellow wires of the electric fence while digging and their wallows (holes) end up creating a small berm around the perimeter of the pen. Pigs really are fabulous lake builders!

We're working on a plan to dry the pen out by digging a drainage trench. We're also exploring plans to completely change the set up of the pen to avoid these drainage issues next year.

The sheep were their usual hang out selves and snacked all afternoon on their hay in their shelter and chewed their cud (an indicator of healthy, calm sheep). L. and I actually hung out in the sheep shelter for a while because it was quite cozy in there.

We opened the door of the chicken coop (we free range them normally anyhow) and the chickens were scratching around the yard for a while. During the highest gusts of wind the chickens stuck closer to their pen. But they seemed unconcerned in general and did their usual foraging for bugs even though the storm pretty much blew the bugs elsewhere.

The kids played cards, read books and generally kicked back and relaxed. Our homemade candle collection was out along with some store-bought candles and flashlights in case our power was out all night. We didn't need to light the candles but we had a couple going because the scent was nice.

L., ever my creative thinker, decided it would be fun to cover each of her fingertips by dipping them in the candle's hot wax. Apparently this is some cuticle treatment but she admitted she just wanted to sport some wax covered fingers for fun because she was bored. She peeled them off and had little finger-tipped bowls to roll around the kitchen table.

It is so much fun to be 13.

I took some video of our backyard during the storm. The gusty winds were impressive but the animals were less impressed with the storm as were the humans at our house. And that was just fine with me.