Tuesday, September 30, 2008

First egg!!

Our daughter, Julie, with the kitchen sink!
The weedeater, crab trap, water key, etc, that we found on the next street in the ditch.
This is what's left of our driveway!!
We got our first egg on Sunday from the hens we hatched in March!! I was SO excited! And got another yesterday!! I'll get a pic of them asap-I'm working this week and Jeff has a Doc appt with the pain management Doc tomorrow-and we're still cleaning up the treasures we found Saturday during our trip to the beach. It looked SO bad-Total devestation! We were finding some of our things-lighthouses-weedeater-crab traps-plates-storm doors on the next street over and several blocks down and everything is buried in the mud. We are planning on going down again on Saturday-just to gather up stuff and leave it on the slab-my old (antique) kitchen sink is against the pilings of the neighbors house. HAve a great day!!

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Beach House Pictures




Pictures









THe last few days have been busy again!! I worked yesterday at school and will again tomorrow. I triedto download some pictures the other day of the farm damage-but they didn't load-I'll try again now.

Monday, September 22, 2008

We're Back!!!

We finally(!!!!) got our power back on at 10:00 am this morning!! Thanks to all the linemen from all over the country-we had one crew from California working on our lines! We were very lucky here-only a few trees down and nothing was damaged. It did blow the roofs off the hog pens-but that's minor. On the other hand-if anyone has watched the news coverage-the little town of Gilchrist was totally devastated. Our cabin (and all but 8 of 250+) are all gone. We have not been allowed to reenter as of yet-but our neighbor-Cliff-from the house across the street-got in yesterday and said we do have pilings left and I'm waiting to get some pictures from him that I'll post asap. Our power went out around 3:20 am on Saturday Sept. 12th. The eye passed over us around 7:30am, then the back side of Ike-which was much stronger than the front. So we have been without power for 9 days-gas was almost impossible to find the first few days. We ran the generator only at night to keep the freezer and frig cold. We also went a few days with no eggs-then Jeff found the culprit while gathering eggs-a 4 1/2 foot chicken snake-but he was really skinny. Well-it's great to be back-now I just have to get my house cleaned up and try to get everything back to normal-whatever that that is! :)

Friday, September 12, 2008

IKE!!!!!

Well-Hurricane Ike is bearing down on us. Wednesday evening we went down and boarded up the house and picked up stuff downstairs in the shed. Most of the businesses in Cleveland have shut down or at least making plans to do so. There are reports that the surge is at least 4 feet high at the beach house now and will continue to rise. We are expecting a really rough night and most of the day tomorrow. Winds are expected to be sustained at 60-70 mph with gusts up to 90-100 for our area at the farm. We will most likely be without power by the morning and I will not post again until electricity is restored to us. We do have a generator-but I don 't want to hook the computer up to it for fear of surges. As soon as possible-I'll post again with pictures of any damage. Jeff is outside now butchering some of the rabbits that have needed to go for awhile and we think we've picked up and put away anything that might could blow around in the storm winds. The girls and their families will all stay with us tonight-Randy is with his in-laws in Cleveland. So it'll be one big slumber/hurricane party here tonight!!!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Hurricane Ike/Rabbits

All eyes around here are focused on Ike. Latest reports have it making landfall at Rockport during the early hours of Saturday morning. That puts us on the dirty side-'specilly the Beach house. They say that the tide could be a little over 6 foot in Galveston-so that puts it around 3 foot at our place. Since we can see both the Gulf and the Intracoastal Canal from our porch-we do tend to get high water under our house. We are a 2 hour drive from there to here at the farm so we could get some wind and rain.
I finally got to go to work yesterday! I am a substitute teacher at our local school district. I had a class of Kindergarten students. There are so much fun-but you could tell it was only the 11th day of school! They still don't have the whole routine down!
This morning's weather is still and very warm. It tends to start getting like that before a storm. It should reach 96 degrees tomorrow afternoon. We do have a cool front heading this way-it's part of what's steering the Hurricane. I got out and planted a short row of snow peas-the seeds are a little old-so we'll see if they come up (or get washed away!). I also had to put a nest box in with one of my does-she's due tomorrow-but not looking very pregnant. Jeff has gotten way behind on butchering them. We have 4 that have almost gotten to breeding age and 6 from the last kindling that are almost getting too big for fryers. He wants to make sausage from the older ones-we haven't made any in awhile and it's really good!

Monday, September 8, 2008

Garden


Well-seems our heat and humidity are back!! Last week we had some 60 degree mornings and Fall was definitely in the air-but NOT this morning!! By 8:00 am I was dripping-was working on trying to clean some of my garden beds up. We had bought some tomatoes, lettuce and broccoli plants at Lowe's Saturday(has anyone checked the prices out on these-they too have gotten outrageous!) and I needed to get them in the ground. It has gotten a little breezy this afternoon. We are keeping a close eye on Hurricane Ike-Tracking now shows it heading straight for us with the Beach House right in its close path. I don't wish it on anyone-but we really don't want it here either. And of course, our vacation starts this weekend. Last year at this time Hurricane Humberto made landfall not too far from our place-knocking power lines down for miles. We just took the generator down with us and they had the lights back on Sunday night. We'd never seen so many light company trucks! We were very grateful to all the surrounding companies for their help!

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Weekend

We are usually very busy on the weekends-so I probably won't post during them. Normally we go to the beach on the weekends-we have a small cabin in Gilchrist, Tx in Galveston County. But we stayed home this weekend-gas prices have really put a damper on our summer trips! Anyway-Jeff went fishing on Saturday morning with his Dad and one of his brothers-James. They caught 7 catfish.

I spent the morning making eggrolls. I haven't made them in years. My grandmother and I used to sit for hours making them when I was a kid. I ended up with 22 made from pork and shrimp and 24 from deer meat. And I have to say-they are pretty good!

Today has been spent so far putting a new water heater in Julie's house. It has been quite a job-Jeff and Ricky(Alana's significant other) have had to replace some old plumbing that has just been patched down though the years. I had to make a trip into Cleveland to pick up more pvc pipe and fittings-but I think they're finished with it now!

Friday, September 5, 2008

Hi!!

Hello from East Texas! We are new to blogging and very unsure as to how all this works but we're gonna give it a try!! We live on a small farm of 5 acres-all of which is not in use at the time. We have 2 cows-1 which we can milk and her heifer calf and 1 other. We also raise hogs on a small scale, have laying hens-9 pullets ready to lay any day now and raise rabbits. We have 2 small gardens-one with raised beds. We do have a buck goat that we kinda inherited a few weeks ago-and I do believe he needs a girlfriend! Again-Hello to all out there and hope to hear from some of you soon!