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Last week I started the story about all the flooding that happened in the beginning of March, we talked a little about preparedness and what can happen, and what did happen to us. And I left you hanging! Not knowing how high the water got, and what happened to our garden!

First off, I know I got a little light-hearted towards the end of the last episode, and I don’t want that to take away from a lot of the pain and misery that so many people are experiencing in our area. There is a lot of damage, and lots of people lost their homes and belongings. But I do want to point out my perspective and maybe help some of you understand my paradigm. You see I have a hope and a different view on the things I own, and even my loved ones. I know that the things of this world are not going to be with me long. I’ll be here for a short time, and all this stuff is just stuff that is going to be soil one day. Heck, even my body will be just dirt one day. And there’s freedom in that understanding. There’s freedom in knowing that the people I love who believe on Christ and what he did for everyone who will accept him, that I’ll see them again and get to spend forever with them. I don’t fear death, and I don’t fear it for my loved ones. That’s not to say I wish it on anyone, but for me it has really changed my perspective and even my emotional reaction towards death and destruction. So if I make light of things sometimes, please remember that I don’t value the things of this world like some do. And if there is ever an option between laughing and crying, I think it’s always better to laugh than to cry, to celebrate life rather than mourn death.

Anyways, I wanted to get that out there. Sorry if that is off-putting to some of you, if you don’t like it, oh well. That’s who I am, that’s what I’m going to be like in the future, and it’s a core component of me and what I believe in.

So back to last week’s show, if you were left on the edge of your seat, you’re probably wanting to know what happened to my garden, and what happened with the flooding for us.

Well, I guess we can pick up where we left off, I think I was headed to the dam to see how far the water would have to rise before breaching the dam wall and being worried about water reaching our home.

Well I arrived at the dam, I expected to see the standpipe spillway completely filled and looking like a whirlpool in the water sucking all the massive amounts of water down to shoot out into mill creek. I actually dreamed that had happened. But when I got there standing in the whipping rain and battering wind. I looked down on a perfectly happily functioning standpipe with a couple feet of water pouring over it from all sides, functioning perfectly. It was about 15-20 feet in elevation below where I was standing. There was no way the dam was in any danger of breaching. My house would be under water to the roofline before that happened. I can’t even fathom how many gallons of water it would take to flood that badly. (see what I did there? Fathom, water.)  So yeah, the rains were letting up, the dam was going to be just fine, our house was in no real danger thankfully.

During the storm and all the rain, I kept lots of hay available for the cows so they had plenty of food to convert into heat to stay warm, they were miserable in the rain, the pig was fine, she stayed under shelter for the most part. The Ducks loved all the rain and extra water everywhere. They would tromp up and down the hill from the garden and barnyard area to the lake all day long, and you can bet they got tons of insects and worms with the flooded areas on the property. There was even a stream flowing down the property from the other house towards the lake and the ducks would actually float the little rapids from uphill to downhill, it was kinda funny looking to see ducks floating single file down what is almost always dry land. As you can imagine, the storm didn’t phase them one bit. The chickens stayed cooped up almost all the time because they don’t like the rain at all. The goats would come out to get hay once a day and they looked like wet cats. They hate the rain, it’s kinda funny to see them looking so forlorn and sad to be wet. But they were fine tucked away in the goat barn most of the time, warm and dry as much as they wanted to be.

I don’t know if it was all the loud noises or what it was but out of our 4 litters of bunnies that we had, only Big Momma the Silver Fox doe saved hers, the rest of the does let their bunnies all get too cold and they all died. We lost about 24 baby bunnies during that storm. So that really stinks to have those kinds of losses, we were really counting on those for meat and dog food. But that’s just part of life on a homestead. We move on and try to do things better the next time. I hope to have their cages better situated and ready for the next storm event before it happens again. I think the driving rain was able to blow in from the side and the bunnies got a little wet. Lesson learned, make sure they have plenty of roof coverage and maybe a 3 sided structure to shelter the whole cage setup inside. So that’s going to be on the agenda for sure. Oh, and Spice the livestock guardian dog is terrified of thunderstorms so of course she was hiding in the barn the whole time, she was underneath the goat milking stand in her hay nest where she gets fed. So despite the scary noises she was safe, dry, and warm through it all.

After the waters started receding the next day, I was able to survey a little more of the damage and check on the garden. And ya know what? I don’t think we lost a single tomato plant. The plants seem to need a little nitrogen but that’s to be expected after 20 inches of rain I’d say. So now that I’m home from a week long tour through Oklahoma and Texas helping about 12 couples and individuals with plans for their properties, I’ll be headed out to the garden to do a little foliar feeding, and do some manure side dressing, add a little mulch, tidy things up a little, and get back into the grind.

And just as a side note, I wanted to say a special thank you to all my clients in Texas and Oklahoma. You were all great! I love being a part of helping you guys move towards greater freedom and liberty in your lives, helping you realize the ways you can build some more resiliency into your landscapes. Showing you innovative ideas for food production, reducing your heating and cooling expenses, stacking high dollar food growing options into healthy, productive living spaces like greenhouses attached to your home with aquaponics and things like vanilla orchids. This one location was really cool in that the clients wanted to do aquaponics, and they wanted a greenhouse, and they had originally wanted to build a sun room off their back door, and they also have a problem with that wall getting really hot during the summer, and the door getting so hot that nobody wants to touch it. So my solution was to integrate a greenhouse with good ventilation, automated watering, aquaponics, and very expensive food and spices that they could grow right around their seating area. During the summer the space would stay cooler due to shade cloth and evaporative cooling, and during the winter, it would say warmer due to solar gain, thermal mass, and an integrated rocket mass heater.

I had another set of clients with multiple families wanting to develop a piece of property all contiguous, I was able to help them with house site selection, orientation, and layout of landscape features, where to install roads, and garden areas. I really like it when I can get a good read on a client and use specific words to describe what I see in my head, that fit what they want to see in real life. When you can say something like “English cottage garden” and their face lights up and they ask you if someone told me to say that and I can truthfully say no. That makes my day when I can get that spot on to the wants and needs of the client. Very rewarding work! I love it!

So since we’re talking a little bit about design work that I do, let’s get a little into turning those rainy days or big rain storm events into something beneficial.

It’s great when there’s a lot of water flowing on a property, or you have an unusually large amount of rainfall, it gives you opportunities to observe and pinpoint specific features and unique opportunities on your property. For instance, this time since we had so much rain so quickly, I was able to see all the water flow areas on the property and learn where water moves like I’ve never been able to before. Water movement is exaggerated and accentuated when this kind of event occurs. There are four locations on the road flanking one side of the property where water crosses the road. I got to see the two I already knew about and then pick up another two. So what that tells me is that those other two locations are areas where water soaks in more readily and that it focuses there more. So specifically I can apply that knowledge now to my advantage in the placement of certain tree or shrub species. I know that those locations along the border of the property are going to be much more prone to grow the least hardy tree species and all the rest of the border is where I need to plant the most hardy species. That means I can get away with planting harder to grow trees that need a little more water in those spots.

Another instance is around our buildings, in a large rain event we can observe the water flow patterns much easier. I was able to observe much easier how the land slopes and where the water comes from that collects and concentrates closer to the house because I could go outside and watch bubbles or debris floating towards and past the house. So what I want you to take away from this is that when the next big rain event comes along, take the time to go outside and watch what the water does on your property. See what it does in your garden area, or around planted trees and shrubs. Learn the lay of your land better through observation in those rare instances when water is showing you the contour free of charge.

In other news, the tire swing tree is holding steady, might fall with the next wind storm, might stay firm, I’ll keep you updated on that, I’m praying it sends out some new roots and re-anchors so the kids can keep their swing for years to come.

But that’s my news and the rest of the story. We all made it safe, we still have family staying in camper trailers while cleanup happens, and repairs are made, but thankfully no loss of life or limb. Our homestead escaped relatively unscathed, most of our animals made it. And a hen just hatched 3 chicks while I was gone. Life goes on. Now I’m going to take a day or two to rest from my traveling, play hide and go seek with my boys, tell them some stories, go fishing, tend my garden, and spend a little quality time with my wonderful, patient, hard working wife.

You can reach me at nick@homegrownliberty.com, and you can sign up for my mailing list on the webpage if you want to be notified the next time I am planning a consulting tour. I hope to later this spring make it through Northern Mississippi and Alabama over to Tennessee and up and around through Kentucky, Illinois, then back south through Missouri, Arkansas and home. So if you’re in those states and are interested in having me stop in for some consulting please shoot me an email and I’ll get you on my list to contact when I plan out my route.

Until next week

I hope you have a wonderful day, God Bless. And as always “Go Do Good Things”