I got addicted to John Sandford books 2 or 3 years ago. I’ve read all 28 books in the Prey series (i.e. Lucas Davenport), and am currently reading book 9 in the spinoff Virgil Flowers series.
I’m on my 4th Sandford book in the last 10 days. They are THAT addicting … I’m telling you.
Anyway, I just read the following quote from first paragraph of Chapter 4 in Escape Clause, and laughed my ass off:
Virgil made a hurried trip from Frankie’s farm back to Mankato, where he lived. He left Honus at the farm, and as he left, the dog stood in the driveway and barked once. The bark was a familiar one and translated as ‘asshole!’
Welp … we survived Tropical Storm (Hurricane) Michael.
Rained pretty heavy most of the morning and into the afternoon. I was watching the center of the storm (the ‘eye’) heading right at us on the weather app on my phone. The NWS posted severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings for my county.
At just before 4PM, the ‘back side’ of the eye hit us with heavy rains and VERY strong and gusty winds. A tree of about 14+ inches in diameter, just off our front porch, snapped in half about 10 feet off the ground and fell onto our barn. Thankfully, it looks like it fell at a sufficiently oblique angle to glance off the barn without doing too much damage.
We (and about 23,000 other households) lost commercial power. I have a whole-home propane generator that automatically started with power dropped. We’ve been running on backup power for almost 30 hours now. The power utility company estimates having power back up sometime over the weekend.
The backup generator powers all of our critical infrastructure (well pumps, septic systems, hot water heater, refrigerators and freezers, etc.) and about 30% of the wall plugs. Interestingly enough, no lights. So, we have kerosene hurricane lamps, battery powered lanterns, and tactical flashlights to get around at night.
When the winds were at their highest, for about 5 minutes there, I thought *maybe* a tornado was in the vicinity. Pretty scary there for a few min. Poor Hunter short-circuited for a bit … making crazy eyes and looking like she was going to crawl into my back pocket or something.
When the sun came up this morning (next day), we had blue skies, very cool weather, a few trees down, quite a bit of water runoff, but everyone (animals) was okay.
From my perspective, the Michael storm was more intimidating than the Florence storm a few weeks ago. Less water dropped, but the Michael winds were pretty fierce.
On a bit of a whim this morning, I queried YouTube for ‘military marching drum’ and found this video (above) near the top of the hit list.
What an AMAZING display of musical skill and choreography.
There must be some sort of esoteric science behind the military drummer. Besides simple cadence, a drum line like this provides an ethereal fuel that I could march behind for 100’s of miles … non stop. Just add water. 😉
Total of 4 new baby ducklings hatched by end of day.
I spent most of the day out hand tossing hay over the 1.8 acre ‘park’ pasture to protect the newly seeded winter cover crop (red clover, crimson clover, Austrian winter peas) from Hurricane Michael, which is due to arrive tomorrow or Friday.
It isn’t hard work (per se), but tedious. That said, by the end of the day I was completely bushed, ready to jump into the massage chair and/or jacuzzi. Did neither … fell asleep on the couch with the pup laying on my chest. Yeah, that kind of day.
As I described in the opening segment … I was on my first cup of coffee, doing my morning situational awareness review (SAR) (news, weather, etc.) when it dawned on me that I was hearing something … a bird of some sort … that struck me as … different. I thought, hmmm, sounds like a baby chicken. DOAH! I forgot about the duck eggs in the incubator in the window sill behind me!
Sure enough … first baby duckling had hatched! As you may recall, I found a clutch of duck eggs in a next next to my duck pond, and couldn’t find the mother duck. Thinking perhaps a coyote got her, I moved all 20 of the eggs into an incubator. I’ve incubated over a 100 chicken eggs, but never any duck eggs (until NOW!). I did some research, and estimated their hatch date to be the 10th of October. Obviously, I was only 2 days off. We ended up with three newborn ducklings by the end of the day, and there is still about 7 eggs in the incubator, with one showing signs of hatching now.
Also found that one of my mamma rabbits dropped a litter of 10 to 12 new rabbit kits into a nest box over night.
Then, I found a free-ranging rabbit of mine with a whole nest of maggot larvae in an open wound in her neck. GROSS!
Spent some quality time with the pupperino (Deuce). He and Hooey helped me unfurl a big ol’ hay roll in the freshly seeded ‘park’ next door, which we’ll need to distribute over 1.8 acres today (Tuesday).
Long day … but a good day. Country living at it’s best.
The pup (Deuce) is doing well, and Hooey hasn’t torn his face off yet. 😉
I spent most of the day yesterday doing final prep work and then seeding the 1.8 acre ‘park’ with about 150 pounds of lime, 100 pounds of clover seed, and 50 pounds of Austrian winter peas. Winter cover crop that will add nitrogen to the soil, AND feed the local deer. Win/Win.
After I got the seed spread, my tractor wouldn’t start. I find the positive battery lug completely corroded through. Hmmmmm. I wasn’t about to leave all that seed just sitting on the surface to feed all the #$%^ crows, so I hitched up the drag harrow behind my truck, aired down the tires, and got to it. Worked out pretty well. If my truck wasn’t dirty before (it was!), it certainly needs a bath now. Thankfully, rain clouds are forming!
Haven’t been able to find the energy to create a FCL DITL video in about a week. Hmmm, I wonder why? Can you say … DEUCE!
I’ve probably shot about 200 videos of him in the last week, but by the end of the day — each and every day — I’m just too tired to even fire up the ol’ Premiere Pro app to process the video footage.
He gets me up every two hours (on average) every night to go outside and make peepeepoopoo (as we call it).
I just can’t say enough about how funny, cute and smart this little guy is. All puppies are cute (in their own way), but this guy is indeed special. Doctor Destructo sometimes, but special nonetheless.
As you can see in this video, we got the ‘park’ pretty much ready to seed with a winter cover crop of red clover, crimson clover and Austrian winter peas (for the deer).
We put a LOT of work into this ‘park’ project over the last few months, plowing, tilling, grading and cleaning. Today, we lime and seed it. Yay!
