All afternoon and evening there has been this ominous, eerie, and persistent howling coming from outside. I haven’t heard the coyotes for quite some time, and that isn’t the type of howling about which I’m talking.
A weather front passed through our area today and brought with it an onslaught of strong winds. They knocked over our basketball hoop, blew the tarps off the hay bales, and made a general mess of the yard. Right before the kids bedtime I heard a terrible crashing sound coming from the barn area. It was loud, and to be honest I was expecting the worst. On exiting our door I saw the culprit. The rabbit hutches all came with trays that slide underneath to catch the droppings. Two of the hutches have plastic trays, and one has a galvanized tray. The galvanized tray had blown out and was clanging across the yard. It obviously sounded worse than it was. Fortunately nothing else seemed out of place and the winds are supposed to die down tonight.
There are two ways these winds remind me that I have failed to prepare. One is power. Our power didn’t go out, but my in-laws did just a few miles from us. While I have an adequate generator and could run extension cords, that is a pain, especially if the outage occurs during inclement weather. And what power outage doesn’t? I need to have a transfer switch installed. The second way is a lack of storm shelter. Our house being a mobile home is over a slab of cement, so we don’t have a basement to retreat to during inclement weather. I want to build a storm shelter as soon as possible, but it has yet to be done.
Other than that I have just been getting some small inside projects done. I think I might have mentioned before how I want to build a bench for the utility room to have a place for the kids to store their gloves/hats and boots. My mom happened to be at Ikea the other day and saw a bench that she thought I might like and after texting me some pictures I had her pick one up for me. After getting it put together I decided I wanted another one. We are going to put one at the front door, and one in the utility room. In the utility room, I will use some baskets I found at Dollar Tree to store winter paraphernalia on the upper shelf and lay boots on the bottom shelf. By the front door both shelves will be used for shoe storage. I also bought some hooks on Amazon that I plan to make a hanging board which I will put over the bench.
Over a month ago we bought shades for our back room but I just hadn’t found time to install them. With it being deer season I have put a small feed pile behind our house. This evening I realized that with our kids playing in the back room deer could see the motion and the likelihood of them coming anywhere near the house would be less than the already small percentage they stand at already. Thus my impetus to install the blinds. We will see if their addition has any affect on deer visits.
Until next time, if we haven’t been blown away to Oz.
homesteaddad 