Chapter 145...Checking The Land After High Winds And Heavy Rain

Wow...we have had some really crazy weather this year.  Saturday Mike and I went to a wedding for a beautiful couple and they were very lucky.  Although the sun wasn't shining for them it didn't rain.

Yesterday the rain came in and all through the night it was very heavy and very windy.  Mike and I woke up this morning and decided to check for any damage.  We were mostly concerned about the walls we started on the store(that will be in another chapter).

The first thing we saw this morning was a "new" path of water coming down our side hill.  We could see this from our patio:

And now for the ride down our driveway.  When this area gets this much rain at one time there are many washouts and flooding.  This is why it is very bad when people cut the timber off their land.  There is nothing to stop the fast rushing water when it pours down the mountains and this can cause immense damage and road washouts.


Looking down the left side of our driveway.  Most of the water made it into the ditch.

Looking down the right side where Mike and I rocked the ditches.  Since the driveway doesn't have any damage I would say our curbs and rocked ditches did a great job.

Our top culvert is doing well:

Looking back up:

The water from the big side field coming into the rock area.

 Flowing down and going towards the pond:

Almost all of the "higher" water goes into the pond and then out and under the driveway and out the creek:

We did have some water go over the top of the pond wall.  I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have happened if the cows hadn't stomped the side dirt around the pond making it fall into the pond.  And on a good note...the wall is still holding:)

Flowing out the back side of the pond:

Then it runs under the driveway into a culvert and out to the creek that leaves our property:

Mike checking the gravel part of our drive:

The creek that leaves our property:

And that was the ride down our driveway:)



Our big culvert that we had the county put in:

It's doing it's job:

And out the other side:

From there Mike and I took a ride over to the store property.  Whew!!!  the walls are still standing and there is no flooding..yay.  Then we took a ride around the neighborhood.  A few trees are down and there is a lot of flooding in the low fields.

We drove by our grader's house and he lost about 40 feet of his carport due to high winds.  He is not happy about that.

Then off to the Farm Supply to check on them.  They told us they lost power for a short time last night, Mike and I wouldn't know about that:), but they had no damage.  The local kids also had off from school today.  Some of the area has washed out roads, bad flooding and trees down.

All and all the people are fine.  Mike and I are extremely relieved that all of our hard work at the house has paid off....oh and we got lucky on the store walls since they are not all up and the ones that were up were only braced.  I love not having to fix things:)...again!!!


Just another day dealing with Mother Nature.


We do have some apple trees starting to bloom:)

That's all for today.  If the rain stops for any length of time we will be outside building.

Have a great week and I will write again soon:)

Chapter 116...Staining The Patio

Off Grid...Chapter 116 Mike and I are slowly running out of projects. The stories now will be just a little shorter now. So let's get to it. 7-9 The cow family brought a new bull in for our girls. He is a new small bull and Mike and I are keeping our distance since we don't know his personality yet. Of course on our way down to do some work, what do we see? Yup..the new bull is in our rocks in the ditch line rubbing his head on our nice rocks Mike and I picked up more rocks from around the property. Here is another area next to one of the ditches. We loaded up the tractor bucket and cleaned up another area. We took those rocks down to the pond and picked up a bale of hay for the side of the house. We also stopped off at the dirt pile and got some more dirt to bring up top. Oh the fun things we do On the way back up we saw the new bull pushing Mike's big burn pile around I really hope this new guy settles down soon. The rest of the day I did the mowing and Mike did stuff in his building. 7-10 Time to get the patio ready for staining Mike starts off by scrubbing the concrete off the front of the house. Then we move the patio benches off the patio. We stack them on top of some logs by our wings. Mike uses a new concrete filler to fill in the cracks on the patio. It looks pretty good. Hopefully the stain will cover the line. Then Mike uses his grinder to grind down the rough edges on the patio table. Since the table is too heavy for us to move we are going to tape off the bottom and stain around it. We don't normally do something like this but we don't plan on ever moving that table Next we clean the patio and get it ready for staining. I use the scrub brush on it while Mike hoses it down. 7-11 Today we helped Mike's daughter with some of her trim work. It is hot hot hot today. The outside temp got to 102 The house is very warm but not unbearable. It is the humidity that is very high. 7-12 OK...it's time for the fun stuff. First we are going to repaint the front of the house. We want everything to look fresh and clean when we are done. I do the cut in while Mike does the rolling. It takes us about an hour to paint the front. Mike finishing up. Now it's time for the stain. I really hope the color is OK. We picked up a solid stain of a color that is a lighter green. We are hoping it will compliment the house and make it cheerful. Uh oh...it's not looking good Mike is rolling the stain on and it looks like mint ice cream Ugh!!! This will not work. It is downright ugly. Oh well...you all know how bad mike and I are with colors Mike rolls out the rest of the can to use as a base coat. We have a sample color of paint that was off the same card as our house color. We thought about using that for the buildings. We try that sample color out....and it is too blue. Yuck!! another color we don't like. It's back to town to get more sample colors. This time we try the tan colors. We don't like those either. Oh well...so much for trying a new color. It's back to town and we stick with a weathered concrete color. We also switch to a floor paint since the solid stain didn't cover very well. 7-13 Mike starts out by painting along the crack that he filled in. I use the brush to paint the expansion joints, around the table, around the posts, and near the house. Mike rolls the rest. Now we have to let it dry and then we can do the second coat. 7-14 Same story different day We get the second coat on. Mike rolling again. Well we didn't get a color but it is clean looking The crack filler helped but they didn't get completely covered by the paint. I really thought the paint would cover the fill in. Oh well..it's still better than it was For the next few days it was just the usual chore...cleaning and yard work. On Saturday the neighbor's bull from behind us got in again Mike called our cow people to let them know. They were not happy about it since our neighbor was supposed to put his bull in another field. So our cow family, Howard, Eric, and Ivalee showed up along with our back neighbor to get the bull out and then fix the fence line. It took awhile but they finally got the bull into the barn and locked him in before loading him up. He is so strong that he bent the steel gate They finally got the bull loaded up and Eric found a buyer for him. That bull is on his way to Virginia For the next few hours we all went up and worked on the fence line. At least we won't have any more trouble from that bull. He actually got into a fight with our new bull and our little guy did get hurt but he is OK. I know it was a short story but Mike and I have really been knocking things off this year. Next we have to get the driveway ready to get the final section of paving done. I hope you all enjoyed the story. Have a great week and I'll see you again next Monday. Lisa P.S. Nike says she can't wait for it to cool down so she can get back to supervising us