Homesteading: Living at the mercy of Nature

We came back from a lovely beach weekend to find that our house had been hit by lightning! Lightning struck the ground at the well, traveled down the pipe to the well, cracking the well casing. Apparently the lightning then raced through the wires to our breaker box and into the house. We lost the computer, a phone, smoke detector, the golf cart battery charger and a few other things....not to mention the well! We have no water. We are true homesteaders now. Thank goodness we didn't lose the freezer!

Mother Nature is powerful. But we are strong.

Homesteading: Respecting Mother Nature

There is a hurricane headed our way. Her name is Bertha. She's an early-season hurricane so she probably won't reach us because there is still some cool air to keep her at bay. But I remember Betsy. It was 1965 or 1966. I don't know which. I was in high school at the time. Betsy devastated New Orleans. So "early season" doesn't mean much.


The thing about Bertha is that she is a Cape Verde storm. That means she formed at Cape Verde in Africa. Cape Verde storms track our way. That is always scary. Ivan was a Cape Verde storm. So was Katrina.

When Ivan hit our Gulf Coast in September 2004, we received 130+ mile-per-hour winds here on the farm. We are 45 miles from the Gulf of Mexico! But it made landfall close enough to us to cause us some damage. Plus it was the widest hurricane I have ever seen! We lost a shed and several oak trees. One of which fell on our truck! We were without power for 9 days after Ivan!! It was an adventure. However, it was not an adventure I want to revisit.


Ivan took out huge sections of I-10 in Pensacola, the part that crosses Escambia Bay. They just recently opened the finished section of that part of the Interstate. We went over it last week. There are still some cranes there and I think they have some "cosmetic" work to finish but after 4 years it is finally completed.

L@@k at the damage Ivan did to the Interstate over the Escambia Bay!














I don't know whose house this is, but this is the kind of damage Ivan did to our area: