September 2017

By September the farmer's market season had come to an end, my garden had stopped producing, we had nothing left to can, and by the end of the month even my ducks decided to take some time off from laying their eggs. Things would begin to slow down for us on our small family farm...or so we thought!

Hurricane Irma decided to pay us a visit on September 11th. We had no idea how much damage she would cause, but fortunately for us the worse we had to deal with was a few fallen trees and a 4 day power outage that we treated like an indoor camping experience.

With ample warning, we had plenty of time to prepare a few days worth of food that would get us through the storm and the days to come without the use of our oven, stove, or microwave. 

As soon as the storm rolled in the power went out and we had dinner that night by candle light.

Fortunately a family member generously allowed us borrow a generator that we used to power our freezers and refrigerator.

My biggest concern was for our animals, especially our sitting mama duck who decided to make a nest in the middle of the yard just a few weeks before the storm arrived. She never budged, and she hunkered down and sat on her eggs through the entire storm, and amazingly the next morning she and her eggs were fine!

Irma left us with plenty of work to do, such as cleaning up fallen limps, trees, debris, and fence repairs.

With the power out, we took our school work outside, in fact, we did everything outside! Including cooking and eating our dinners on the back porch.

We survived Irma, and we turned what could have been a bad experience into a fun one!

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Towards the end of the month a friend of the family called and asked if we would be interested in taking in a new born calf that was rejected by the mother. We were warned that this cow might not survive, but we took the risk and tried our best to nurse this baby back to health. Unfortunately the calf passed away after only 48 hours. This was another hard blow and tough life lesson, especially after the recent death of our horse. You can read more about our experience with the calf here.

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The sweet mama duck, who weathered the storm, hatched her baby ducklings!

4 sweet yellow ducklings.

And surprise, surprise, we had another mama secretly sitting on a hidden nest who hatched her ducklings on the same day! We had no idea!

By the end of the month Mitch started a new job working for Vantage Southeast, where he gets to spend more time outdoors and work along side other farmers. We're very excited about this job change!

September was filled with many ups, downs, adventures, and surprises. This month had way more in store for our little farm and family than we had planned, and as always, we can't wait to see what's next!