Storm Ellen.

Wow, it’s been a week since I last wrote anything. Well, I’d better rectify that. When I wrote the last post it had been a spell of beautiful weather. Well, now it’s reverted back. It’s pouring down today and we had a storm on Wednesday night, Storm Ellen this time. It was pretty horrendous, things don’t usually keep me awake, but this did. It was so loud upstairs with the wind and rain. Plus, I left the windows on the greenhouse open and we realised at 3am, so Chris went out to shut them before the greenhouse blew up, so I wasn’t really in the good books for a while. There were some huge branches that blew down, the tarpaulin over the chicken run got pierced by one and got blown off and tangled in some barbed wire, so Chris has taken that off. I was praying/talking to God so much during the night, praying that the roof stayed on and that branches/trees didn’t come down on the house. That people who live even higher than us were ok, that the greenhouse was still ok in the morning. Plus other things. It’s so good to know that God’s there no matter what and even if things don’t go our way or bad things are happening, he’s with us.

A good thing from that is the chickens actually went into their house last night instead of trying to roost on top of it. We’ve definitely got one rooster because he was crowing this morning when Chris went to let them out, I’m waiting to see on the others, we definitely cannot have more than one. So any others will become Sunday dinner at some point probably. I’m waiting at the moment because apparently Buff Orpingtons can be difficult to accurately sex and they’re not even 18 weeks old yet. I’ve bought some chicken leg bands so I can put one onto the rooster we want to keep, or maybe on the ones we don’t, not sure yet.

Another thing with the storm is we had a couple of power cuts, when we were awake in the middle of the night (around 3am) we realised the power was off and we had to use my phone for the torch and it didn’t come back on again until about dinner time (12 ish) and then it went off again later on (around 7:30pm I think) for an hour or so. I think some people in different areas had even longer times without power. That’s when I see the sense in having the solid fuel ranges rather than the oil one we have. (we do have a fire though and some electricity in the caravan, from a battery, to boil a kettle etc).

It was sort of cool, the evening power cut especially. Putting the kids to bed and talking to them and reading by the torchlight. Having candles out for the meal. Because the electric is off, the router doesn’t work and we don’t get much 3g reception inside the house, so you can’t go on your phone or use the tv, so not so many distractions. You can see how relationships might be better without loads of distractions all the time. That’s if we decided for it to be like that. Also, electricity is sooo good, when it comes back on, I’m very grateful for it. I’ve seen a video on facebook of somewhere near us where a tree fell on the electricity line and it set on fire, I’ve never seen that before! He was basically warning people not to try and sort it themselves (with saws), because it looked ok one moment and then was on fire.

All this is sort of appropriate, I’ve been working my way through all the little house on the prairie books over the last week or two, so the power cuts added to my imagination of how their lives were. haha. I haven’t read them since I was a child I think, I’ve really enjoyed reading them again, they’re really interesting, and eye opening! They worked so hard…much harder than me!

I’m still contemplating hatching more quails again and trying again with them. Maybe in a few weeks, I’ll have to sort housing out for them etc, I’m going to have a think and then I’ll probably write more about it.

Anyway, hello! and good bye!

Cathy.