Rain, Rain... GO AWAY!

Well, I seem to be having quite the week. Paul and the boys are still off in dreamy Minnesota and I am getting a reality check here at home. I had good intentions of revamping the house with all the extra time I had this week. I was going to paint, and do some deep cleaning, fix the garden, etc, etc...

The day before Paul and the guys left, he bought a new well pump to have on hand because we noticed our water was being tempermental the few days before he left. By "tempermental" I mean it would act like it was running out of water and slow down to a dribble once in a while, then after an hour or so of no use, would resume pressure as usual. So, he left a new pump in the garage for me and the pump guy's number... Well, the night he left, the water pretty much ran out for the night. It came back on only to function at one-fourth to one-third the pressure for remainder of the week. Not enough to shower in, but enough to drool into the bathtub for a few inches of washing water.

Then, Tuesday was an overcast, dreary day, and as my mom left that afternoon, we noticed a storm rolling in. I put the goats away, and took the girls and Nathan in to take a nap. Rainy days are great for two things... sitting on the covered porch listening to the thunder and watching it rain, or napping. I chose a nap. After a couple sleepy hours, I went to check my email and the computer completely froze up! It has been locked up ever since (I'm posting this at my parent's house)... As I was walking through the house, I glanced out the front windows, and thought "is that snow? is it hailing?" The entire field next door was covered with white stuff. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was the sun reflecting on a field full of water. I walked out onto the back porch and the water was covering our sewer system and air (or whatever) was bubbling out of it. I stood there astounded until I remembered that we have 50 of our 11 week old soon-to-be-laying hens in a movable chicken pen in our back yard...

I grabbed my rubber shoes and out I trudged into thigh high water to rescue my poor drowning chickens. After picking out the ones that looked like they were still alive, I threw them on top of the coop and ran to get a box to carry them over the water. After several trips, I had to figure out what I was going to do with these half-dead chickens. I set up a temporary shelter in the garage and turned on some heat lamps while my mom and sister came to help me. Then on to the other animals. Our other chicken coop had about a foot and a half of water in it and our goat pen had about 6 inches of water and it was still raining! Ugh. After catching the floating chickens in the second coop and bringing them into my animal hospital, my sister and mom arrived to perform hypothermia treatments on them. (Dipping them in warm water and drying them with towels and a hair dryer)

The top picture is the goat pen, and the bottom picture is the "river" that was flowing over our fence (that the water pushed down). That plastic climbing toy is not on an island,it landed on a pile of corncobs and stalks that flowed from the neighboring fields.

Two of these chickens in the picture above actually survived thanks to my smart sister, and the bottom pictures are the damaged fences from the rushing water. My mom, sister and a great friend came over the next day and we spent the entire day cleaning up, rebuilding and fixing fences, and putting the 30 dead chickens out for the garbage man that was due for his pick-up that day. (Sorry, garbage man) By the end of the day, we were completely exhausted, but the place was looking almost back to normal!! Hooray!

Oh, yeah, as if I didn't have enough water, I called the pump guy to fix our well water on Tuesday (before the rain). He finally made it out on Thursday (since he had plenty of sump pumps to fix with the rain) and after examining the new pump that we had in the garage, he told me that it's not the right size, and guess what... no one apparently carries the kind we need in stock. It'll take 8-10 days to come in after ordering, so I'm taking my first shower in 3 days at my parent's house... And the saga continues... (But don't expect a post anytime soon. My computer is still completely locked up :P