Winds in the holler

There are a lot of things that don’t ever occur to us when we haven’t experienced them. Having spent most of my life in one geographic region, it never occurred to me that every day weather patterns could feel so different only an hour away from where we were before.

We have hardly had any rain here since we moved. That was an incredible blessing especially considering all the unexpected mishaps that we encountered. However, Saturday night leading into Sunday morning, we experienced our first bout of high winds and thunderstorms. Around 3 a.m. I woke up to the howling gusts surrounding our home. Me, being the crazy person I am and wanting to be fully in the moment of every new experience, I got up, donned my cozy robe and walked outside. It was INCREDIBLE! It hadn’t started raining yet, so there I was with the vast sky overhead, stars shining in spite of the coming storm, lightning flashing in the distance and the surprisingly warm winds yowling their way through the surrounding hollers and all around our home. Absolutely worth getting out of bed for that. Sometimes the most special moments in life are there just waiting for us to go out and get them. For me, this was one.

During the rest of the night, the winds continued to blast through and the rain poured. I heard the thunder claps and saw the lightning that followed. At morning’s light, I did have some anxiety over what the state of our farm and livestock would be, but by the grace of the Lord, everyone and everything was absolutely fine. Smokey looked up from his grazing as if there had been no overnight storm. It amazes me how he chooses to stand in the driving rain.

I half expected our chickens and ducks to be three states over, but the coop and all the girls were right where I had left them the evening before with not a feather out of place. The cows had tucked themselves into the barn and were eagerly waiting for their breakfast.

There were some things that gave me pause and caused me to re-evaluate my choice of placement for some items. Our swing, for instance. I had placed in what I thought was a wonderful location to watch the sun set over the back hills. Turns out it was also perfectly placed to blow right into the wooden pasture fence. It stopped at the planks and no harm was done, but I don’t think I want to chance that next time it won’t go right on through. Fences require regular maintenance as it is. No need to add more.

So, even though I felt the distinct urge to peek out our window and check for witches on broomsticks, our house never made lift off and we were never in Kansas to begin with, so it isn’t too shocking to find we aren’t there now.

Happy Tuesday, folks!