Farm Life

[Spiritwind]

And here is the broody hen with two of the three chicks that made it. I made the command decision yesterday to take the board off the front, clean all the debris out, and discard the remaining buried eggs. There were only a few, but after watching them cannibalize the one chick and seeing another dead chick that didn’t make it I wasn’t going to wait and let them cannibalize it too. Not that it’s probably not good for them to get the protein (they were going at it with relish!) but didn’t think it was a good trait for the broody hen to adopt. The littlest one is only 4 days old, but hangs close to the other two, and by taking the board off they can get to the food and water in their yard. Makes it easier for me so I don’t have to go over there about 4 times a day to make sure they are getting water to drink. So adorable to have them all run up to me when they see the little cup of water in my hand though. So vulnerable yet so tough at the same time. Amazing!

[Spiritwind]

How to even get started on this one? I guess I’ll just get right to it. Even though I have a lot to write about, the big looming event that happened out our way began a week ago today, on August 18th, in the late afternoon to early evening. My husband called my attention towards the Mt. Spokane area, and at first I thought it was huge fast moving clouds, but then quickly realized they weren’t clouds, but instead was a massive fire heading our way.



It’s almost a blur, now, but it’s the type of thing we had talked about since moving out here, but not really done much planning for. With 12 goats, a total of 6 cats, 4 big dogs, and 12 chickens on the property, and a bunch of vehicles that don’t work well, it was a big jolt in ways I can’t even describe.

I finally feel ready to continue this, after taking several detours, and it’s now been over two weeks. I started this farm life thread, now almost 7 years ago, never knowing how much our outer reality would change, and how that might impact how we do “farm life”. The fire that happened out here started a mere three miles away, as the crow flies, and had the winds not shifted towards the south, we would have had very little time to get out of here. It was quite the wake up call. Its amazing how a situation like this gets the adrenaline pumping though. I had an arm that I was trying to keep a sling on due to a shoulder injury, and it was like this ain’t happening. Both of us sprang into action. I loaded the car up with clothes, important papers and documents, and our health care items, while my husband realized he might be able to get the smaller RV ready to pull out of here on time. Oh, yeah, and I made sure to grab the milk machine and cheese making supplies! We managed to hoist the 5th wheel attachment onto the pickup, with still room up against the cab for a couple bales of hay, and I quickly reloaded everything I already put in the car into the RV. Fortunately it’s already stocked with everything to prepare and eat meals, along with bedding and other things. Quite a few people offered to come help with the animals. The sheriff came through telling us it might be the only warning we get, and that we were under evacuation level 2, which is basically be ready.

Even with the downloaded fire watch app, we noticed that it was not being updated very often, and we didn’t get much sleep through the night. I tried to get a good picture of how it looked as it got dark and you could see the angry flames not far in the distance, but my phone takes crappy photos. The winds drove the fire south, but basically the danger and potential need to leave in a hurry continued until Monday night, when we finally got some heavy rain that went on through most of the next day. We did resort to driving close to where the fire started several times over the next few days to actually see for ourselves what was happening. Interestingly, a huge fire broke out earlier that same day (August 18) in the Medical Lake area south west of Spokane, where the whole town was evacuated. That’s where my two grandsons live. Fortunately their apartment complex was left unscathed.

More than 120 homes burnt down in the Oregon Rd., Elk Fire, and the Gray fire in the Medical Lake area claimed around 240 homes, so a lot of people displaced. A good friend of ours that lives on Oregon road lost his off grid cabin, and all his solar stuff (he had a lot!), but one of his chickens survived, along with his friend’s RV that remained untouched. His 100 gallon propane tank also blew up. Had the fire reached us, our RV surely would have been toast, as we have two 100 gallon propane tanks right up against it almost. Corey, the guy who stayed on our property through the winter, had a small amount of fire damage, but his property is up against public land that is managed by Stimson Lumber Company. They were very motivated to protect their assets, so in a way that was good for him. I’ll share the short video he did covering his observations and experience at the end of this post.

The one good thing I did see was the community response. Pretty impressive. There were many volunteers who stood by waiting with their trucks and trailers to go rescue people’s livestock. There were several places where the animals were taken to wait out the fire danger, including the Spokane County Fairgrounds, and those who had RV’s were allowed to park at one of our local churches, the high school, and probably several other places. I had people checking on us numerous times throughout those 4 days, to make sure we were okay. It’s heartwarming to see people reaching out to one another when these kind of things happen. Also very tragic to see the devastation and loss. One brand new manufactured home that had just been set up that my husband drove by on his way to the remodeling job he’s been doing is completely gone. Some are going to be spending a very rough winter. I hate to say it, but at least we’re not in Maui. That was a fire of a totally different sort there, although I do hear there were some anomalous things about the Medical Lake Fire. I haven’t had much time to investigate.

The main takeaway on all this is we need to be more ready, and this little drill showed us exactly what we need to do. One thing is I plan to take some 16 foot metal cattle panels and cut them in half to make emergency pens for the goats and dogs. I also have a 25 foot length of other fencing I threw in the spare RV, along with clips and wire. The plan is to have 8 - 4’ high x 8’ long pieces attached to the back of the RV, which can then make two 8 x 8 pens for the goats, and then string the other fencing between them for the dogs. We’ll also need to make sure we have about 8 - 10 fence posts to pound in to make it sturdy enough. But this way, we can go almost anywhere. With how things are shaping up, this seems like a real good idea. We’re also going to get down to just 9 goats on the property by this winter, too. I’m cutting loose with Isis, the beautiful yearling I had plans for, along with the buck as soon as I’m done using him in October. Gotta do it. Things aren’t likely to get easier as we move through this stretch of instability, where we just don’t know for sure how anything is going to go. It’s definitely time to remain alert and as ready for anything as we can be.

Funny to reflect on what we deemed important in those frantic moments on the day the fire started. And I have lots more farm related news to catch up on here, too, but will wait until I have more time to write. Best get busy, as it’s time to go milk. So many prayers going out, for so so many. We are at war, basically, with our own damn government. They keep trying to hype up fear about a war with another country, but it’s already happening. Not even that covertly anymore. What’s our world going to look like in 5-10 years? We know how “they” want it to look, but you know how the song goes....you can’t always get what you want. Maybe my bad, but right about now I kind of want them to all rot in hell....