Archive for June, 2008
June 16, 2008 – Strawberry Season
It’s finally strawberry season, albeit a week or so late.
This is the daily haul – we’re almost getting tired of eating them – I think the rain has been berry, berry, good to the strawberries. We’re getting this much every day.
one year ago…”All Dressed Up (Kind of)”
June 15, 2008 – Emma At ISU Basketball Camp
Emma got a break from basement pumping for three days (it finally stopped late last night) and went to Ames for Iowa State Women’s basketball camp.
Here’s Emma with some teammates from her school and head coach Bill Fennelly – one of the most beloved and successful coaches in the country – Bill’s got a .707 winning percentage, his team drew more fans last year than the University of Iowa MEN’s team and has made the post-season 11 of his 13 years at ISU. A new athletic director came in a few years ago and fired the men’s basketball coach, fired the football coach, and gave Coach a lifetime contract!
Here’s Emma with one of her position coaches for the week – Toccara Ross, one of the post players for ISU. Her other coach was Nicky Weiben. Does Emma look happy!
Emma is tall, but next to 6′ 4″ Jocelyn Anderson, she has some growing to do! Emma had a great time and looks forward to a exhibiting a whole new bag of tricks next season.
one year ago…”It’s hot, must be haymaking time”
June 14, 2008 – Nearby Tornado Cell
We had a nice day – no rain, but heavy rain and hail just missed us when a supercell passed to our north a few miles.
This is a look at the backside of the storm just after a tornado warning was issued. The whitish part nearing the ground to the left of the farmstead in the distance is what everyone was worried about. We were so grateful we were spared more rain or wind damage.
As the barn and chicken coop are sopping wet with manure and water and the first hay cutting has not yet been made, I improvised and found some bedding along the road! It was easy to pick up and I hauled five truckloads home from within a mile of our house for the barn and coop.
The chickens are enjoying their new bedding, complete with seeds to peck at for fun and nutrition!
one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #76″
June 13, 2008 – Statewide Flooding
It’s rather hard to take all the flooding in. I was especially struck with the photos from Cedar Rapids and a crest 10 feet higher than ever recorded before.
A couple of views of the flooding in the commercial district of Cedar Rapids.
Here’s a view from another river, another town. This shows one of the main entrances to Iowa City, Hwy 1, or Dubuque Street. The crest here isn’t expected for a few more days and to be about 5 feet higher than in this photo.
Another river, another town – here’s downtown Des Moines. You can see the riverside amphitheater stage sticking up out of the water.
Here’s the same place during a Los Lobos concert we went to last summer. We’re still pumping water in shifts out of the basement, but in good shape compared to many across the state.
one year ago…”Native Grass “Needlegrass”
June 12, 2008 – Thingamajig Thursday #121
Here’s this week’s “Thingamajig” entry.
Also check out the last thingamajig answer. Put your guess in a comment below.
As always, put your guess in a comment below.
Hold mouse over this sentence to pop-up answer.
one year ago…”Workin’ on the Farm”
June 11, 2008 – Another Day, Another 2.5 Inches of Rain
Today they promised more rain and violent storms, and they were correct. The storms moved across the state from west to east – I’m sure most of you by now have heard of the tornado that went through the boy scout camp in Western Iowa and I tracked the storm across the state as I manned the pumps. They brought 70 mph winds just a county east of here, but it finally fizzled out at about 12:30 am when it arrived and didn’t bring wind or hail, just 2.5 inches of rain. The pumping continues. I was able to sleep from about 1-7, with GJ here to take a shift at the pump and give some of us a break.
I got a bit paranoid about the well-advertised storms taking out electricity again, only this time having sump pumps without juice, so I bought a 1000 watt inverter and marine battery for backup power for the At any rate, it will be good to have for various power options now and in the future.
I see last year at this time we were picking cherries – this year they are still small hard green balls.
June 10, 2008 – Bad Feeling About Next Few Days
With many rivers already at or exceeding the Floods of ’93 and more massive storms predicted for tomorrow, I fear that the worst may yet come to pass. A couple of the state’s giant flood control reservoirs are already full and flowing over the emergency spillways – Saylorville Dam above Des Moines and Coralville above Iowa City. That means that any more water that comes down those river flows uncontrolled down and essentially over the dams via the emergency spillways.
Reports have come in from many farming acquaintances which make our trouble look tame. In eastern Iowa, one lost windows in their house and a historic barn. Another family in northern Iowa, the only way they can leave their farm is via their kayaks.
We continue to be on 24×7 pump patrol in the basement and had a rain-free day.
one year ago…”Fathers and Daughters”
June 9, 2008 – They Said a Quiet Day – WRONG!
After a steady day of basement pumping, we were looking forward to a rain-free day. By evening the flow had visibly slowed and we thought we had turned the corner. At sunset, some storms popped up to our south, leaving us with some incredible sky.
These are Mammatus clouds named after, well, look at their billowing roundness and you can probably figure it out.
A bit later, after the formation passed by a little further. It was a relief to have these unforecasted storms miss us. But that ended at about 11:00 in the evening when a big cell camped over us and dropped another 2.5 inches of rain on us. For variety, it also dropped hail, but not large enough to damage the plants. It stopped about 1:30 am. So another 2-3 hour sleep night for me. We are perilously close to bad things happening in the basement – so I’m staying home from work to deal with whatever may happen in regards to pump failure, blown fuses, or power failures. More strong and severe storms are forecast for Wednesday night – it would be nice to get one dry day under our belts.
Since 9:30 Sunday morning we’ve all (except Martin) been on 4 hour shifts manning the pumps. The basement doesn’t have a sump pit, so we have to manually turn the pumps off and on, according to how much water comes in. If we leave them running, they will burn out the motors, so, I ran network cable down so we can at least watch netflix movies online on the laptop or update blog entries.
Our friend, the sump discharge hose!
one year ago…”(Close) to Home on the Range”
June 8, 2007 – I’m Crying Uncle Now – More Storms
OK, Uncle. I said it. Anyone listening who can do something about it? This morning was the third time huddled in the basement for storms this week (and would have been four for me as I wished I was in the basement when stopped along the road during another fierce storm on Tuesday).
Some years we never have to take shelter in the basement, but three times this week alone! I beginning to wonder about the logic that if we attacked Iraq because they might have had weapons of mass destruction, might we also pretend that global climate change might be real and do something about it? The last year has been killer here – first the huge ice storm a year ago March, then the winter that never ended and brought storm upon storm, and now this spring that looks like in many places will top the summer of 93 floods and has brought record amounts of tornadoes.
Today’s damage photos consist of a partial collapse in the wind at Leon’s feed mill in Melbourne – 3 miles away. The debris broke a gas line and forced evacuation of the surrounding neighborhood for a while.
Also, about two miles away, this is all that is left of a construction trailer. It used to rest on the blocks in the foreground. Earlier in the week it blew over in a storm and they put it back up – but this morning it was ripped to pieces.
But I’m saving the worst for last – our basement. It started leaking about 9:30 this morning and I stayed home from church to deal with it. It was uneventful as flooded basements go until another round of storms knocked out power for about a half-hour. This is only the 2nd time in 11 years we’ve had any water in the basement. About 12 hours later, we’ll still pumping and it could be a long night – another downpour moved through in the afternoon – we’ve got two floor drains and they are both accumulating water, so we’ve got two pumps going. We seldom have water as the house is on the crest of a hill.
As if that isn’t enough – something is out of whack on the turbine. Our installer was out in a matter of hours after getting the call that it was acting funky. It was too windy to drop the turbine when he was out here to look at it (45 mph gusts), so he’ll bring another one with him this week and either fix the one that is not working correctly or put up a new one. Not sure what’s wrong – perhaps it’s out of balance as it strongly vibrates -perhaps some debris hit the blades in one of the storms – we’ll know more later this week.
one year ago…”Strawberry Season”
June 7, 2008 – A Rare Storm-Free Day
Today was a rare storm-free day. It was windy so it was a great day to fly kites.
Martin and Emma lay on the ground as their kites soar above. For me, it was a big outside work day – continuing to haul storm debris and getting some of the thistles mowed down in the back pasture before they bud out. Linda wondered why I was so driven and I replied it was the first day in a long time that I had a day to work.
one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #75″
June 6, 2008 – More Girl Skills
A little bit ago, Emma learned to change oil, now her job is to change a tire. It isn’t exactly an intuitive thing, so we had her change one at home under Dad supervision.
We had her find where all the parts were hidden (and helped me verify that they were all there on the “new” car). Here Emma raises the car up with the jack.
Loosening the tire nuts is always the most difficult part and these needed a little extension to break them loose.
Finally, the tire comes off – we put the spare on just to make sure it held air and we put everything back. We’ve driven a bit since Emma did this and no wheels fell off, which is much better than the guys at the local Wal-Mart auto shop. A local mechanic said he’s heard of five vehicles fresh out of the Wal-Mart garage that didn’t have the tires on right and they fell off while people were driving away, sometimes at highway speeds. Fortunately no one was injured.
June 5, 2008 – Enough Already – Battered by High Winds
Last night about 1:30 am I awoke to the power blinking off and on and finally off for good. I went downstairs to find a battery radio to find out what was going as it was an evening of many tornadoes and we’re all a bit edgy after Parkersburg. The lightning was very intense and I had a bad feeling that a huge line of storms was heading our way after taking out a power line to our west – but before I could wake up everyone else, the storm hit and we scrambled into the basement – when I got into Emma’s room to fetch her, the open window on the south side of the house blew rain all the way across the room to the opposite side of the room! Any window that was open even 1/4 inch on the south side let in a torrent of water and it was so intense it even leaked through the floor and dripped out of the ceiling in the living room.
We huddled and found out a tornado was in the neighborhood less than a few miles away. I didn’t sleep very well the rest of the night and when we surveyed damage this morning, here’s what we found.
Our biggest casualty was this 60 foot spruce tree just north of Claire’s bedroom and near Martin’s playground. When we saw the big hole in the sky out Claire’s window at night, we new something was up. We shined our flashlights out and saw the tree had fallen. Claire was a bit shaken, thinking the tree could have fallen on her while sleeping!
Our one and only summer apple tree that bears fruit in July is also a victim of the storm. The chair was by the garage, about 50 feet away when we went to bed.
Maizie’s doghouse also got blown away a bit.
This is most interesting to me – we had placed black landscape fabric between our tomatoes and covered them with heavy hog panels – the wind picked the panels up off the ground and wrapped one around some tomato stakes. I literally sunk in 4-5 inches in the mud in the garden.
Even the hay wagon was kind enough to blow up from its usual resting place by the barn to up near the fallen apple tree to aid in cleanup! We were lucky the shed doors didn’t blow off, but they did blow out on the bottom.
The ground is littered with fruit that was ripped off the trees. These are cherries.
This white pine looks a lot different than it did yesterday – it looks like all of last year’s needles were stripped off the tree and mainly this year’s clumpy new growth were undamaged.
We weren’t the only ones – here’ s the view at a neighbor’s directly 1 mile east of us – they lost this pine and others as well.
Our neighbors immediately to our north had the most hassle as one branch is resting on the house, another limb took out a power line and they lost some shingles and siding as well.
Here’s a picture of nothing! You can see the cement forms which were part of a cattle feeder that usually has a building over the top of it – the cement remains and the building is gone. This is on the blacktop about a mile away near the big curve on E63.
Some of it is up to 3/4 of a mile away – the wreckage is strewn throughout the field – the farmstead that it came from is in the distance.
This barn was in sorry state before, but now it’s worse!
The pile of lumber to the left was in the garage, part of which is on the right! This is at the first house immediately to our north.
A part of an outbuilding roof ended up on the roof of another shed on this place, just about a half mile away. Right now we are feeling grateful and heard from our neighbor at the Sheriff’s Office that they think it was a tornado that didn’t quite touch the ground.
You may be wondering about the wind turbine – it’s up and running this morning!
one year ago…”Farm View Series #2 SE Corner”
June 4, 2008 – Thrilling Ride to Work!
Yesterday was a thrilling ride to work. About halfway to Des Moines a huge cloudburst opened up and EVERYONE pulled of the highway. The car shook up and down like a bronco, the rain and hail pelted the car from one side, and there was no chance of seeking shelter in a ditch, because it was full of water. That storm brought up to three inches of rain in a half-hour. It was torrential and I was glad to be on my way again.
one year ago…”Farm View Series #1 NE Corner”
June 3, 2008 – Fruit on the Way
It looks like it will be a great fruit year!
The strawberries are on the verge of ripening.
The cherries are very plentiful – thank you bees!
one year ago…”Chickens Movin’ Out”
