Looking Like Fall

It’s really looking like fall around here.  The corn is turning.  It certainly provides contrast from the green of the buffer strip.

Maybeline

The bean harvest is under way.

looking down my road

I’m not sure how much color we’ll have this fall with the drought conditions.

Dead tree hill

A lot of the trees have already lost leaves; it’s way too early for them to have lost their leaves.  And so many have just been lost.  I’m trying to figure out how to plant about twenty-five trees and keep them safe from goats.

This tree turned because it was toppled in the derecho (Antigone and Casey)

But it’s still fall, and it’s one of my favorite seasons!

pie pumpkins and butternut squash

Our weather has actually turned back to feeling like fall too!

The Next Morning

After a sleepless night because of stress and worry and no air conditioning, I got up to milk.  After I finished with the girls, I decided I really needed coffee.  It took me a minute to get Sky to come back in because he doesn’t like the back door.  I had a hard time convincing him that I couldn’t let him in the front door.

Sky

Finally, I got him to come in and I tried making coffee.  It wasn’t even too horrible–a bit weak.

Anyhow, as I was finishing my cup of coffee, I got a call.  It was my son and nephew telling me I needed to get in to my mom’s house.  She needed to go to the doctor.  I asked if I was taking the Ranger and waiting for the ambulance or if I needed my car to drive her.  I was driving.  So, it was a good thing I figured out how to get the garage door open without electricity the day before.  It was a bit of a more nerve-wracking driving through the debris at the end of the driveway in my new car, but I made it! I even remembered to go around the block to park so I could get closer to her front door.

When I got to her house, she was still not dressed, and she said she was waiting for the doctor’s office to open so she could call him.   I told her to get dressed; she could call from the car.  Of course, with the storm, everything was down, and it went to the answering service that they should call 9-1-1 if it was an emergency.  I told her to just hang up because we were already headed there.

Mom from 2014 when I was practicing portraits

When we got to the ER, I told them she’d been having chest pains all night.  They took her back immediately. Of course, I couldn’t go with her because of Covid-19, but it wasn’t a real long time before they came out and told me that they were going to admit her.  I could go home.  When I got back to my house, I saw that my son and nephew had gotten the generator hooked up to my freezers and refrigerators.  Thankfully, there were several generators they kept shuffling between all the family and some of the other people in town.

It was getting fairly warm in the house, even with the windows open, and Sky was not happy that the cold air wasn’t coming out from any of the usual places.

I couldn’t just sit there though and worry about  my mom, so I went back into town to help with the cleanup of her maple tree.

using the backhoe to move it

my second nephew bringing back the wagon after emptying debris

two men and their chainsaws

my nephew using his backhoe to move the stump

sawing it while the backhoe holds it up

my son, dad, and nephew; my mom’s neighbor sawing; my niece-in-law hauling wood

I did ask them to take the dead branch out of the other maple tree.  It’s been hanging for years, and I knew she would appreciate it being removed.  Because there was nothing else I could do.

my son in the bucket

Late in the afternoon, I got a call from a nurse telling me they were in the procedure room and going to do the procedure, and she’d let me know how the procedure went once they were done with the procedure.  Did I have any questions?  “Yes, what procedure?”  She didn’t realize I hadn’t heard from anyone since I had been told they were keeping her.  They were doing an angioplasty because her blood work had indicated she had probably had a heart attack two or three days earlier.  After the procedure they did call me back and let me know that she had one main artery in the front of the heart completely blocked.  They also found a blood clot in one ventricle, which was also an indicator that she had had a heart attack.  It’s a very good thing that she went to the ER that morning.  She’s out of the hospital and doing well, staying with my sister out of all the storm mess.

Can’t Take Another Day Like That

Saturday started out like most of the last couple of weeks in self-isolation.  I have been off the farm only to deliver milk and get Popcorn back from my mom since March 19th. Pretty routine working for the off-farm job and farm work.  Of course, it was another rainy morning.

a wet, cranky Odie

Then I saw the girls out in the field again.  I had to put them in, and then I decided to pour all the goats on that side for lice since the rain had quit. I had checked them the evening before, and it had to be done. The weather was horribly sticky out there in pasture.  I mean oppressive humidity, and I really worried we’d end up with more storms in the afternoon.

Hera, Moira, Bubbles, and Penelope

When I got back inside I was ready to do more work for work. Believe it or not, part of my work in the morning included trying to make a brain out of noodles.  Really. Don’t ask. Anyhow, in the early afternoon, my phone popped up a tornado watch for my area.  It wasn’t too long after that my phone alert sounded for a tornado warning.

noodle brain failure

I called my mom to make sure she knew, and as we were talking, the warning finally came on the television, and it was headed right for my farm and the town just north of my farm.  Looking at the warning, she decided to come out to my place because she doesn’t have a basement.  In the meantime, I grabbed my Bob cat and shoved him in a pet taxi and took him to the basement.

“She shoved me in a pet taxi. Sure, I was irritated, but I’m always irritated. Whatever.” -Bob

Then I tried catching Rocky to take down, but Sky was going crazy by this time and chased Rocky upstairs.  I finally caught Rocky and took him to the basement and threw him in the Kill Room (don’t ask–it’s a Criminal Minds reference).

“The dog chased me; the human chased me. Then she took me to the basement and threw me in a little dark room with the big roaring monster (furnace) and called it the kill room. Of course, I was traumatized.” -Rocky

Then I got the harness on Sky just as my mom arrived, and we headed for the basement.  I could not get that dog to go down there.  He fought me until he slipped out of the harness.  Then he stood at the top of the steps and whined as my mom and I tried coaxing him down.  I never did get him to come downstairs.

“The weather was crazy; the human was crazy. She wanted me to go down the long, narrow passage to a place I’d never been. I was terrified. And then she abandoned me in the upstairs! How could she?” -Sky

Then the electricity went out.  It was nice to see my mom though.  We did our best to maintain our social distancing.

photo was cropped; she was really farther away

After the warning expired, we came back upstairs, and it was all fine.  We went outside, and it looked like there was nothing but a bit of rain.  Since she was here, I took my mom out to meet Astra’s triplets, and then Mom went back to her self-isolation.

Astra feeding Jester (in front) and Avril (in back)

She did call me just a short time later to say that my nephew saw a tornado just to the northeast of my farm on the edge of town.  It hit the Catholic cemetery and really damaged the trees and some headstones.  Since I had to charge my phone in the car because my electricity was still out, I decided to drive to the cemetery and check it out.

While at the cemetery, I did run in to some people who shared that my neighbor to the south had taken a picture of a tornado right on the edge of his property.  You can see the video my neighbor took HERE (but be warned there is profanity) and another video of it HERE.  It was an exhausting day. I am so grateful that we made it through without damage after seeing so much devastation in other parts of the country.  My heart goes out to them.