A Family Evening

We were so blessed to have all of our family with us on a sunny and warm evening recently. My oldest Grandson and I went for a walk before everyone else came. We went right down into the creek onto a new sandbar that has formed this winter on our stretch of Indian Creek. We have a rather large island with big trees on it, where the creek splits, but now a new island is forming beside the first one. This is good for us because Indian Creek was eating away at our pasture, now it is going the other direction.

I took a few pictures of the creek and the islands. My Grandson did what most boys do he skipped rocks and got his feet wet.

Later our youngest Grandson got to chase a few chickens and meet Angus.

Fall Nearly Done

I guess I had better hurry, if I want to blog at least once this month.

The leaves fell from the trees too quickly this year with all of the rain that we had. But I am still enjoying the cooler days. My oldest Granddaughter and I spent nearly a whole day exploring our island and the Indian Creek creek bed.

We had tons of fun opening muscle shells, looking for pearls, watching the fish and a big old crawdad. We gathered odd rocks and looked at tracks in the sand, Indian Creek is a very sandy creek.

While we were on a gravel bar down in the bed of the creek, I pointed out to her how beautiful a creek is when you are on the same level with it. Looking upstream and downstream, as opposed to looking down on it from the bank is a much better view. I wish I had taken my camera but when I asked her, she didn't want to be bothered with posing and asked me not to take it.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are sneaking up on me as usual. Arranging dates to meet everyone's Holiday schedules is the hardest part. Finding money to buy gifts is another challenge this year. I normally have all of my shopping done way before now but couldn't get that accomplished this time.

Sludge

Our barn is just full of it, last night it was rain water, today it is sludge. It has been years since we have seen this much rain. Indian Creek has rerouted itself into our lower pasture and is still rising. The roaring sound of the creek, that is temporarily a river, is filling this valley.

Poor Calico and kids are on the only high spot in the stall. She isn't even wading the waters to go to her hay feeder. I was awake all night, it started with a glance at the weather radar when I knew something bad was going to hit us, there was no escape.

By the time that I got the computer shut down because I was starting to hear the thunder, it was here. There was no sleep after that. The lightening, thunder, hail and wind were really scary. I was just sure that we were going to get hit by a tornado any second. My DH just kept snoring, I talked to him anyway, he even answered.

I was expecting to find things blown all over the yard this morning and trees down but nothing seems out of place but our spring creek and Indian Creek. However, it does look like a jungle out there, the grass and weeds all grew several inches over night. The horses will have plenty to eat, they will all start getting obese again.

Poor Angus was outside in all of that mess, I don't know where he was but he didn't come into the barn before I had to close up everything. I had just closed the big sliding door to the barn, locked it and gone back to bed when I heard the cat hollering to be let in. So I went back out to let him in and he had already found another way. He looked like something that the cat had drug home. There was a lot of hail so I wasn't surprised to see him looking quite confused.

Coyote Visit

Early yesterday morning my DH went outside and saw a deer jump over the fence from the wooded side of our property into our pasture. Then he saw a coyote come over the brink of the hill in our pasture, the deer turned around and ran back towards the woods, the coyote pursued her.

I had just been commenting on where the fox had gone. We were seeing the fox just about every day, then all of the sudden he just disappeared. We haven't seen him for several days. I have heard that foxes won't stay were coyotes spend time. I don't know if that is true or not but it seems to always be the case here. This is the first coyote that we have seen in a long time. We haven't even been hearing them at night.

I am happy that I don't have to deal with the fox anymore but I might have a worse problem now. We have never lost any livestock to a coyote but they do make me nervous.

We have been seeing a very large buck in our lower pasture. He doesn't just have a large rack but is just massive all over. He must be older than what we usually see because he has a very large neck and shoulders. He looks like the big bucks that you see on the covers of hunter's magazines. We think that he is probably staying on our island. Indian Creek crosses our property and it splits in one place to form a fairly large island. We have had the bigger and more experienced bucks live on that island before, but not for the last couple of years.

I know that my brother-in-law and my cousin both read my blog, so they will probably want to come down for a visit during deer season after they read this. I also told a couple of deer hunters at Church about him, so his days may be numbered, as long as I get a few good steaks out of the deal, I won't cry over him. They just came out with a new study that meat-eaters don't have the brain shrinkage that vegetarians have. I believe that I could have told you that, but that certainly explains a lot.

Spooky

We were in town yesterday and my Husband stopped to talk to an older gentleman who had bought a horse off of us many years ago. He said that he had come coon hunting on the back side of our property awhile back and that he would never come down here again.

Indian Creek runs on the back side of our property but we also own a strip of land across the creek that has the remains of Bridge Church on it. There is also a very old Cemetery there and an old stagecoach road that is the actual border of our property.

When we bought the land we were told that this was the only place that stagecoaches could cross Indian Creek. There is a county road and a bridge near that crossing spot now but the county road doesn't follow the same route that the old stagecoach road took.

We have a place where you can pull off of the road into the Church lot that is very secluded. This is where the man was coon hunting. He said that they heard a horse come running down the road that dark night. Since we have horses this was possible, but he said that there was no horse. They looked everywhere and though they could hear the clippity clop of the horses hooves running on the road, there was nothing there. I guess it scared them bad enough that they won't come back.

Building an Ark

It is still raining, our barn is flooded, it has never been this bad before. If Morning foals now the poor thing will drown. Our foaling stall has about 3 inches of water in it. My DH spent this evening with a shovel trying to divert streams of water but it didn't help, there isn't anywhere for the water to go.

I just came in from checking on the goats in the horse trailer and I can hear Indian Creek raging, I am anxious for the dawn to see how bad the flooding is. I guess this will bring the water tables back up to a more normal level.

I dread trying to take care of my animals tomorrow, I won't be able to walk in this much mud.

Flooding

After last year's drought, I thought that we would never see our lower pasture flooded again. So it was with great joy that I walked along the flood waters of Indian Creek again this morning. This past summer you could walk across Indian Creek without getting your feet wet and that is the first time that I can ever remember that happening.

The great thing about Indian Creek is that she goes back into her banks very quickly. I took these pictures this morning and by early afternoon the water was all back where it should be.