Woke up Sunday morning to find the cats all in the big office, staring at the ceiling.

Not a good thing. Soon discovered that there were a pair of critters up there, running about like crazy, and not sure what to do or how to get out!!! Well… I wasn’t sure what to do, to be honest, and that’s not like me. So I called the local village sheriff. Not as an emergency, but more as a help, I have NO clue what to do… sort of call! Well, after a good snicker, they were very nice but said, nope. No animal control department here… imagine that. But they connected me to a fella that they refer to for nuisance animals. Being that it was a holiday weekend and a Sunday, he would gladly come out for $250 for the call and then a host of other fees for animal removal and fixing however they got in for the tune of, on average $500 or more. Oh my gosh. That’s my riding mower AND the gas range!!!

So I did what any normal person would do, I called one of my country friends, Mr. Bill and asked him what to do. Oh, he says, it’s probably a momma coon and a couple babies, or perhaps a pair of squirrels. He says, just start making a lot of noise, and lift up the tiles a bunch and make it NO FUN for them. They’ll leave. If it’s a momma coon, she’ll move those youngin’s pretty quick. So we did. All day long, just randomly lifted the tiles and shouted and played some loud music and within a few hours, they were gone. Haven’t heard from them since. Whew.

But then around 2 or so in the afternoon, Jessy tells me she’s out of ink for the printer and needs some color copies for orders that we hoped to get caught up on this weekend. Oh durn. And Maggie says she’s out of piggie food and I know we need butter. Odd list, but well, so I decide I better go to the big town, since the chance of printer ink and color copies out here on a Sunday are pretty much nil… and off I go.

I’m just about done in town, when I get a text from my buddy Curtis and he says there is a tornado in our area!!! And a super bad storm coming through. Just about that time Jessy texts me and they are in a horrid storm and just lost power. Maggie went out to close up the chickens and she’s stuck out there with super high winds and all. Oh, it’s dreadful to know your kids are going through something rough and you’re 30 miles away! But I know my girls, they are level headed and smart, so I get them set up, and calm, with Jessy at the window where anything bad might loom on the horizon and orders to get Maggie back to the big house as I rush back from town.

All the way home there were downed trees, power crews and even a flipped over semi on the main road! Took me almost 2 hours to get back! Normally a 45 minute trip! Thankfully the storm was fast moving and we only had a few branches fall, and of course WATER everywhere. Problem was, that without power, the sump pump was not running anymore and the basement was filling with water! The girls were trying to get the little grill lit, but there was too much wind to get it to stay lit. So we had cold supper and just sat around talking, because without power, there wasn’t much else to do. I brought some batteries from town, and we had our little radio to listen to in case more storms came with this bad cell, but it was a calm night. Just listened to all the generators of our neighbors running… it SURE is dark in the country without anything lighting up the night! We have a street light near our mailbox and that was out too… made for a super dark night.

About 2 am Maggie woke me, the power was back on! Yeah! And it took our pump about an hour to empty out over 12 inches of water in the basement! Yeah! Of course, a battery back up sump pump is now on the wish list! Along with all the other things that we’re needing to gear up for comfortable country life. But all things in time, we’ll just made do until then. Hopefully, this wacky weather is coming to an end! I believe we’re supposed to have a pretty calm week of sunny weather… oh I hope so! We need to dry out for SURE!

Driving home I got to thinking that we really need to make some lists of things that we need out here for such a wacky day… we got stuck without much water stored, a problem because without power, our well doesn’t work! We didn’t have the proper batteries for our radio. We had no way to cook. Now we did have a couple extra flashlights, since we had JUST bought them on Saturday! What timing. Lowes had a nice set of flashlights on sale for $9. A big lantern one and two decent hand ones plus the batteries! So that was nice, each of us had a flashlight for navigating the stairs and such on potty runs. And a little reading in bed before trying to go to sleep. But the other things, well, that was just silly of us not to be a little more prepared. I didn’t even have any milk jugs in the freezer as big ice cubes! We had taken them out when we moved, and forgot to replace them! And I had just gone and gotten almost $100 worth of meat the week before! That would have been terrible to loose all that for lack of a couple jugs of ice! We talked about this for awhile and made up a list and intend to work on it this week, so that we can weather such a thing a little more comfortably next time!

Well, it’s 6:30 am, and I’m up and awake after having gone to bed so early last night! Not much to do in the dark like that, and I didn’t want to waste all my battery life on my flashlight just reading. Today is supposed to be calm and quiet, and HOT…. that would be lovely. I could so stand a couple super hot days… my body is still chilled over the last cold cold month! Hopefully, we will be able to concentrate on orders and get a little grilling done for dinner and just finish out this crazy weekend on a high note!

Just a little update from the farm!!!