I can’t show you what the wind looks like. There are no leaves or long grasses bending in supplication to the wind to help me show you. I cannot take one picture that lets you feel the full force of a roaring westerly wind, a howling she- gale heaving itself across the prairies. It can literally knock you off your feet. Throwing dust in your face, kicking at your shins.And cackling. This wind cackles. 
And sometimes you feel your body becoming a sail and you are the little boat from when you were a kid and you are pushed backwards a little and lifted a little and you laugh like a grunt and the dogs look at you their coats all blown inside out and they wonder as you grab for a post and giggle.
I can tell you about the anxiety of walking to and fro under the big trees with their falling branches, in a 40 and 50 knot wind that howls, harangues, a harridan, rattling her bones in your ears as you hurry through. I can tell you about working in the barn and watching the big doors bow and rattle and shake. The noise like trains on broken tracks running along too fast as the wind plays with every loose board yanking and shoving at them, trying to rip the old barn doors apart piece by piece. Buckets flying down the lane. Sounds swiped. Guttering whining and shrieking out of harmony though precisely in beat with the halyard clang of the chains on the gates. Wind shrieking that if you tidied up this place once in a while there would not be so much stuff flying around. Stupid girl. 
The slam of doors shoved by the wind. Screen doors hurled against the house then sprung back open by Winds meddlesome daughters and slammed shut again and again. Wind smacking her fingers together with glee and clattering along on her broken glass feet. Chairs skidding right off the verandah and I pick them up and put them back because they are in the way and I must get on, only to pick them up again and put them back again. Wind pokes at me screeching insanity, insanity, into my ringing ears.
I can tell you about my hair whipped into a snarling rats nest. And the strange invigoration of pushing into the Westerly all day as I walk the triangle from garden to barn to kitchen begin pushed along by it half the time. I could tell you how all the clothes are hung into the verandah line to dry, if I hung them on the clothesline outside I would be collecting them from the ditch the next day yet on the verandah they are merely a tangled mess. I could even tell you of the frustration of cutting up all the vegetables for Poppy and Sheila the pigs only to see the same vegetables blowing out of their bowls as I carry them through the field – the chooks chasing after me, goosed by the wind, gleefully picking up the flying food, their feathers standing up like surrendering flags.
How to show you the wind. I can’t. But it was wild. I feel bad for the people whose bad winds twisted into tornadoes. At least we did not have that. Tornadoes we do not want. 
That wind blew like that for 24 hours. It rattled my scrambled brains. Then last night at exactly 7pm. It stopped. Just like that. Like a tap turning off or the clap of a respected teachers hands. Stopped. And suddenly everything was quiet again. Wind packed up her tricks and was gone, her daughters with her. And it was quiet again. Quiet.
Lady Aster is being the perfect milk cow so far, she stood in the milking shed like a .. well like a Lady and I milked her without any problem at all. She was scarcely bothered by me taking over her calf. Mooed a little then after the milking went out into the fields to bother the new grass. She needed the walk, it helps her heal. If this continues she will be a lovely milk cow. All I need is volume now.
Her tiny baby – Naomi – is drinking well and slowly gathering her strength. She is in the sunroom with the big South windows and slept her Second Day away between little feeds. Unbothered by the wind. (You know how particular I am about drafts).
Last night got cold again, but today should be a better day. Actually every day is a better day. Just different.
I hope YOU have a lovely day or at least find some loveliness in your day.
Your friend on the farm,
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
55 responses to “What does wind look like?”
Sorry to hear about the wind. I’m like you, I loathe it and it can be so destructive. Naomi is beautiful Miss C.
At your mention of Boo just out of shot, I had to go back and look at the photo of Naomi……and yes! there’s a bit of blue, an elbow maybe. Lovely boy, he’ll be thrilled to have another tiny one to lay with. I’m glad the wind has moved on, and you’re safe, I didn’t know there had been nasty weather, no tv, but it’s good you’re all safe, wind can be so damaging and no way to stop it until it’s blown itself out or on. Cheeky wee goat, at least she followed you and didn’t take off!
I have never experienced such a wind as you eloquently convey but two things immediately heighten my danger sensibilities: mean winds and bushfire smoke. Yet their benign manifestations: gentle winds and woodfire smoke are comforting. I can sleep through and find peace in a thunderstorm but a howling gale, well, it’s an ill wind. Glad you are safe, and I feel for those who were directly hit.
Am filing your priceless description which is making all my hairs erect. Here in the Highlands we also have a three month gale season in spring which I absolutely hate but twisters are virtually non-existent. You do not watch the news, I do. ABC, BBC, Al Jazeera headlines in the morning, an hour of our marvellous multi-cultural SBS at night: no tabloids, no rubbish, real news. When I saw the destruction of Rochelle and Fairdale and a dozen more videos of where the twisters touched down for abnormally long periods rather than the usual 10 or so seconds, I was really, really afraid for the farmy – if some came down so close west of Chicago the squall lines could move SE. Thank you to the Higher Powers. And I do hope you have a shelter should the worst ever come to the worst. Oh Celi, such winds do stop suddenly 🙂 ! Naomi so sweet and gentle in comparison . . .
We have the basement, though in a tornado that is not terribly much use they say. Tornadoes are just Bad. There has never been one through here, we are very low.. hopefully this helps.. c
The basement will be way better than the usual bathroom in which many people seek shelter . . . . methinks it will be a matter of just counting the weeks thru’ the blooming season. Have just looked at Illinois Met: next fortnight OK: but OMG how cold compared to us: down to freezing week after next again: yuk!! We think it has been a cold autumn but we are at least 10 C above you . . . methinks doe-eyed little Naomi will have to have the sunroom as current abode awhile longer 🙂 ! Sleep well Milady!!!
have you read about people surviving by hiding in their baths? amazing… though the old codger says under the steps in the basement is the best
and if you have no basement, under the stairs, where I slept during the WWII bombing in London. But we have no stairs now …..
You described the wind so well–and how quickly it stops and turns to silence. I pictured the dogs’ coats blown inside out. So happy the Lady is becoming a milk cow.
What a fierce and vivid description of the wind, including the sudden stopping. I swear I could hear those teacher’s hands clapping.
I remember when you used to take the lambs to the convalescent home and the retired farmers were so thrilled. I wonder what a treat Naomi would be? Probably a chaotic disaster of one, but what a lovely initial thought, no?
Beautiful, descriptive writing C. I could almost hear and feel that fierce wind….
Ooh I know about winds like that (luckily not tornadoes) we get them in Spain. They can blow for a couple of days round our mountain, driving you crazy, causing arguments and broken things, your nerved are stretched taut and then suddenly it all stops and you have to catch your breath and look around you just to be sure it really all happened.