s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Yet another storm. 90mph winds and three straight days of pouring pouring rain. What happened to summer ?

The power went out (with a mighty *FTZAK*, I note) around 8PM Sunday. Luckily our water is gravity fed and we have a gas stove, so we had water and we could cook and stuff. We actually got rained in yesterday. When we got up at 6:30, the creek was just over the bridge in the front, and there were trees (multiple !) across the road into the valley. Stephen spent most of the morning helping the neighbors chainsaw up a big macrocarpa. Convenient that many of the neighbors have chainsaws, and a couple even have diggers/backhoes. Anyway, roads were closed all over the lower North Island due to flooding or downed trees; schools were closed & hardly anybody went to work. We finally got power back around 3 yesterday afternoon, and one of the neighbors came up to help us figure out our fuse box (fuse technology is a little different here). Our tally: we lost the TV, the HP Pavilion (the only PC we’ve got with a dial-up modem), the microwave, the washing machine, and the overhead light fixture in the dining room (the source of the *FTZAK*). The DVD player is out, but that seems to just be a blown fuse. The power strip/surge protecter took the hit for Stephen’s PC, fortunately. It was apparently a good hit, too, since when Stephen plugged the surge protector back in it shot sparks and blew the fuse on the power outlet. In other casualties, as I was getting out of my car, the wind yanked to door out of my hand and slammed it into the car parked next to me, dinging up both of us. Also, a couple of the elms in the front paddock came down and blew the shed, a cable spool and several meters of old fencing to flinders. Exciting !

We found a couple new leaks, which we’ll caulk if the rain ever stops. The animals were all in the higher pastures, so they’re fine — although it was hard to watch the poor alpaca shivering in the wind — especially Pointer. Stress brings back the staggers symptoms, so he was all shaking and stiff-legged & obviously miserable. They’re not supposed to need any additional shelter, but boy I really wanted to take them all into a barn and rub them with fluffy towels. Once the weather settled down a bit they got to eating and did much better. Still want to get a shed, though !

Apart from the trees down in the road and a small landslide that left a meter of mud on it up toward the top of the valley, little Takapu Stream got all stroppy with some of the neighbors’ fencing, and took at least one outbuilding away with it. We also had our periodic tire redistribution — several of the farms in the valley have horses & since the flattest land is down by the stream, that’s where the practice horse jumps get set up, more often than not a couple of logs propped across stacks of tires. So each time it rains enough to bring the creek up, we all swap tires. Since we never seem to run out, I can only assume that someone at the top of the valley keeps topping up the supply.

Yesterday, the sun came out for about ten minutes, it stopped raining, and we had a spectacular sunset. Then overnight the rain came back. :^P