It’s been a little over a month since we got hit with a very damaging Cat 1 hurricane. It did a number on the farm. We are still repairing and cleaning up the mess. We are so close to being finished. My rotator cuff is out and it’s making the last of the work next to impossible for me to do. I am relying on the family to help. Since the hurricane our business has stopped. Our lives have stopped. It’s been six weeks of working every day possible. After surviving the hurricane, we had a week of nonstop rain. We became a mud farm for around ten days. When we dried out and got power back we went to work and haven’t stopped. Just before the storm came, we had started on our new deck for our guests. We were halfway through then the storm hit us. We have since finished the deck thankfully. We lost five beautiful trees. One landed on our porch, one on our travel trailer which is our gift shop and bathroom for our guests. The others went down on the property. That is the last of the work we must finish. The clean-up of all the trees and debris.
I spent the whole storm braving up to 80 MPH winds checking on the animals during the storm. Making rounds to each pen making sure everyone was okay. Thankfully the worst thing that happened to them was they were soaking wet. We lost power for five days. Our family of 12 all lived on the property in my oldest son’s house with the generator. We had to borrow another generator to run our well to keep the animals watered and us as well. We learned a lot during that horrible week. Farm life is hard on a good day but when a hurricane blows through your property it’s harder. We are so blessed that everyone survived, and we didn’t have more damage. I have lived almost 59 years in the Houston area and never had this kind of damage from any storm.
Now we have rebuilt and are getting back to business as usual slowly. We have a long way to go to finish the little things. We had damage that wasn’t covered by insurance. We have done 90% of the work ourselves but isn’t that what farmers do. We always work our land and take pride in our work. I am letting some of the little things go until the weather cools off. I need to trim the trees on my driveway, but I am tired of dealing with trees now. I need to put new lights on many of them but that can wait until my rotator cuff heals. There are more important things to do now.
Before the storm hit our sweet Louise, our donkey, developed her eye issue again. It has taken longer to heal this time because of the crazy six weeks we have had to live through. This morning her eye was a mess and I just cried. My son came and helped me doctor her up. I may be going back to the vet this week with her.
We have added new animals to the farm as well. We lost one of our turkeys before the storm and have now gotten Archie two more girlfriends. We hatched a guinea keet and it died a few weeks later just before the storm. We got a peachick, and we lost it after a week before the storm. I went into this storm with a broken heart. Yesterday we went and got the two turkey hens, two Chinese geese and a hen. Just a few days ago we got two three-month-old peacocks. Hopefully they will thrive and be a beautiful addition to the farm. It will be two to three years before they have their beautiful tail feathers. All our new family members are getting along famously. Life on the farm goes on. We face trials and overcome them. When it's finished it will be more beautiful than ever. It has been a rough 31 months since we bought the farm. I don’t expect it to ever be easy. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
If you have been to the farm, we are glad you came to visit and hope you return. If you haven’t, we would love to have you visit and stay with us. If you would like to support us, check out our online store. We have lots of merchandise available. We will continue to add more things for you to enjoy while you visit us like our backyard pool escape from the heat we added this summer. We have added more shade and lights to it since we put in the second pool. Follow us on our Facebook page for all our updates. We look forward to sharing our farm and animals with you for years to come.
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