I Didn't Realize How Lucky We Were

If you love watching the sky and the clouds, then the past few days has been a real treat for you. This shifting of the sky has also brought some incredibly bad storms and in the almost 6 years we've lived on the farm, I've never seen anything like it before.

We all sat outside on the front porch watching the storms go by Sunday afternoon. There were two fairly major storms that went through within a few hours of each other. The first one was in the late afternoon - the sky turned green and the wind picked up. And the thunder, I couldn't get over the thunder; it just kept rolling and rolling. We probably should have taken cover in the basement. We were lucky we didn't need to. Reports came in that a large tent collapsed on people at a party and some were injured.

We went out and checked the crops for damage after this first storm passed. Two years ago there was a horrible wind storm that went through and knocked over some of our corn crops.

Two years ago: The left photo is a corn field after the storm; Right photo is a week after that.

Lucky for us, we really only found a bit of canola had gone down and a few tops of corn stalks broke off. Oat fields fared much worse and almost entire fields were down flat. We don't grow oats.

We lost hydro during the first storm and it came back on a few hours later. We were lucky it did - some people, even neighbours (on another grid), had gone without hydro for around 20+ hours. The second big storm came through just before 10:00 that night. Strobe lightning and a locomotive sounding wind came with this storm. There was a confirmed touchdown of a tornado in the area. We did go inside when we heard the eerie sounding wind. It's scary when you can hear but can't see something like that.

And then the clean-up the next day: I had a few branches and not a single limb to pick up. We were lucky, some people were not. I saw images taken the morning after of one home almost completely destroyed by what was apparently a tornado. Tornado damage like that is rare where we live, but seems to be occurring more every year. It also rained 2" and the ground was able to soak it in nicely.

Heavy rains usually wash out crop material from the field (corn cobs, corn stalks - things that don't decompose quickly and float with the rain water). It ends up on the lawn and I rake it up so it doesn't go though the mower. Well, as I was working away and next thing I knew, there was Jacob, knee deep in the biggest mud puddle on the farm. At the time, I felt unlucky because I knew I would have to clean him up, but I bet he thought he was one lucky guy to get away with it.

So when I was putting my garden tools away and cleaning up toys outside, I stumbled across some rusty metal sticking out of the lane. The storm had washed some gravel away and exposed a part of the object. Of course I had to see what it was! I grabbed my shovel and dug it up and look what I found!:

I'm going to try to see if I can get it cleaned up a bit and hang it over a door. Isn't that what people do with horseshoes for good luck?

And lucky me, the sky continues to make a brilliant show, even last night:

I will always remember how lucky and blessed we are to live in a safe home and won't ever take for granted the power of nature.