I am popping in to test things out today and share a few photographs with you.
I had a wee problem with a few trollers on the blog. They made everything sour. So I went quiet for a while hoping they would get bored. Now I am being careful. Poking my wooly head around the corner.
During all this time I have been in my work-triangle of mill to farm to bed. Head down. An apple a day. Lots of water. Getting on with it. Baking on the weekends. Saving. All that ordinary stuff.
If you are on Instagram you are welcome to join me over there. I will post pictures there more often but I miss telling the stories of the farm. Of course in the winter I never see it. I leave at 5 am and get home around 6pm. In the dark both ways.
Let’s hope the trolls did not hear me say I am on Instagram but I have been dying to invite you there I so am willing to risk it. You can work out the name I use- to post over there – that should sort the bastard mink out from the goats. Stay in touch.
The rain came last week. Torrential like rainy season in the tropics. At one point we had 2 inches in 10 minutes and again and again and in the end the rain gauge floated away and I stopped counting. The rivers and creeks and ditches rose, there was nowhere for the water to drain to – we are so flat and low. And the landscape went downhill fast. There was a fault in the ditch bank and the water made good use of it.
The flooded ditch water poured through the hole and into our fields. All the crops in our fields except a few higher islands of new corn are drowned. The road was closed with waves of water washing over it. I could not get my car out and the basement was flooding and holes were appearing in the plaster in the ceiling above old windows so I waited it out. My little car could not get through the water until yesterday – the rain started on Friday.
The gin was gone. I needed to get out.
When this all dries out the farmers will till it up and plant a cover crop. It is a disaster. And not just for us – many farmers lost their crops. But no one was hurt, the cranes and ducks are very well fed. The snapping turtles are out and about and a couple of beavers and unusual flocks of water birds have been sighted. Tadpoles are everywhere!
I have developed a fascination for clouds lately. Now that things are opening up and we are relaxing a little I feel my head turning upwards more.
If I could paint – I would get a krink in my neck painting these clouds. Watercolors I think.
Because I don’t have a lot of time to garden I have created an entire garden out of old pots on the porch. I am growing good food and tons of herbs on my little green belt.
Just as well because John’s big tomato garden got a good drowning after 6 days of solid rain. Do you see the strings up the back – I am growing tomatoes up those, as the tomato vines get higher and I begin to pick, I just drop the line a little every few days curling the vine down onto the top of the pot so the fruit is always within reach. An old glass house trick.
In the end Tia was not pregnant and as Aunty Del died softly in the night a wee while ago, ( which broke my already Sheila-broken heart) I brought Tia a couple of orphan calves for company. They will stay a few years and get fat in the fields.
Though the hay fields are underwater too. Hmm. That Champagne calf is a Charolais. Lovely animal. I won’t get attached.
The floodwaters are slowly draining now. They smell kind of brackish, dark and ominous. I dreamed the other night a crocodile came up out of the floodwaters. But they don’t have crocodiles here – alligators but not in Illinois. But anything could be washing through that big hole in the bank. Once the ditch, that was once a creek, goes down, the men will fix the breach in the bank and we will see what nature decides to bring next.
I hope you are all well. It was lovely dropping in! See you all again soon.
Have a great holiday weekend.
Talk soon.
Miss C
The Kitchen's Garden 
108 responses to “It’s Been So Long”
So good to see you here and you are okay after all this
– I am Ok yes. Mainly due to this tiny triangle of movement my life has become.
So very glad to hear from you. Your absence was just another point of disappointment in what’s been a long sad lonely time. So very hard to believe you’re awash and we, not ALL that far from you are still in semi drought though we have had a bit of relief the last couple of weeks. We shall all keep looking up (at the clouds?) and hopefully all the nasty meanness and vitriol that has seemed to build up will slowly slink back under their rocks.
Yes! Let’s hope you all get a little rain every now and then. Yours is not a region known for drought.
Welcome back! The rain is certainly a wee bit too much but glad you are safe. You’ve been busy none the less. I continue to make progress at my new place and have made a bunch of videos. I will be creating a bakery at this new place, once I’ve built the house. As well though, I’m going to be helping a group to setup a wool mill. I’m good with machinery and most of the equipment is old. The leader of this madness is Wave Weir, a designer. https://wavefibremill.com/
In your free time spend a moment to watch my wrinkled face as I ramble on. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv6hqUcjUhZgeXcgl1Rfuzg/featured
A wool mill! That sounds just wonderful! I will be very interested to hear how that goes – are they weaving too? Wool and bread! This sounds almost biblical!
Oh, Miss C, how lovely to see you out and about in blogland again. Marlene and I have been worried; we speculated that you were simply insanely busy and hoped that’s all it was. What it actually was isn’t as bad as we feared. I am very, very happy to hear how things have been, even if there has been a biblical-style deluge to contend with. Trolls are nasty little troglodytes and I hope they have completely moved on. Hugs from tropical Australia, where it is also raining!
I be am so glad to hear that you are getting some rain. Areas of Australia are always incredibly dry and getting dryer – I wonder as a human race if we have not spread out too far into areas where it is simply not sustainable to live. Certainly Las Vegas is a prime example of this. And people building entire towns in forests that regularly burn. Yes. Lots to think about. Good to hear from you!
So nice to catch up for a sec. Thanks for posting!
Good morning Kerry!
Great that you are back. Have kept up with you on instant gram but do miss the farm stories.
We need to teach those folks over at Instagram to leave comments!
Love you and missed you ! Your photos are great. I feel like we are long time friends.
I do understand that feeling – it has been years!!
I was just telling my daughter about you today and all the amazing things you have going on and how I missed reading about them. We were talking grilling and I told her about the bread you can make on the grill. The stuff about baking is interesting but I love hearing how the animals and fields are getting on. Many of us who put ourselves out there run into the trolls occasionally, it sometimes is just easier to walk away than try to correct everything. Hope you have time to keep this up and I know I am grateful to hear what is happening. Sending you love and peace.
That chapa bread is so easy! My chooks are eating great piles of it today! I bake a lot to test flours but cannot possibly eat more than a taste of each. I will try to keep it up , especially as the mill is so quiet at the moment.
Wonderful to hear from you again and see your photos. So sorry to see you lost Aunty Del. I do hope the trollers will leave you alone now. they deprived us of your enjoyable blog. All the best for your recovery from those terrible floods.
Watching the floodwaters go down will be revealing – and many little creatures drowned – the smell is not going to be pretty – but it is all added fertility I guess!
All the best for you and yours moving forward.
You have been missed. Now and then I pop over, afraid I have again been kicked off the email subscription haha
I’m so sorry to hear about Aunty Del, she was my favourite 😔
As always beautiful pics, Celi! That is sooooooo much water 😱 Hope everyone has dried out ok xo
The basement is getting drier. I now know way more about sump pumps than I ever intended. Of course John is in California – so it has been harrowing!
Of course he is – things like this never happen at convenient times x
So pleased to see you back. I’d assumed you’d just become too busy to keep the blog going, but I’m so sad to hear the real reason.
It is true that with 12 hour work days away from the farm it is hard to find content and time but I will try to be more connected. I do miss you all.
So nice to hear from you again, I really do miss your tales of the farm, I am so sorry about Auntie Dell.
Let’s hope the horrid trolls have forgotten you. There is a lot of vitriol and anger out there! Keep safe and I still follow you on instagram, but as others have said it’s not the same.
Yes. Losing Del marked the end of an era. Whatever killed her calf in utero changed her digestive system she struggled on much too long- the old girl.
There you are! Gosh I’ve missed your stories. Isn’t there someway to block trolls! Hmmmm.
Morning lovely!!
It has been such a long time and I thank you for sharing with us once again. Can’t imagine the damage caused by all of the water and hope your animals managed. We have a friend who uses that string method with his tomato plants and he trims off the leaves on the bottom of the plants so they look like trees. We have had some very high temperatures here in Brockport, NY and needed to water our veggies quite a bit. Finally got some rain and everything is growing like crazy. Do you ever get to rest?
Good morning, Lori, I am a good sleeper! It is my best thing! Yes- trimming the leaves reduces the risk of rot in the coil at the bottom of the tomato plant too. A bit of heat and a bit of water produces great food. Too much of either and not so good! Hope your good weather holds!
Hi Celi! Hi Fellowship of the Farmy! So good to hear from you Celi! And to see our friends on the farmy again! The dogs, and pigs, chooks, and even Mr. Flowers strolling about! And of course the new arrivals. Quite startling to see the flooded fields! Does that mean no organically grown wheat at all this year? Or will you have a chance at a second crop? Sending you and everyone hugs and happiness! XOXO
We have almost 3,000 acres in crops and the wheat looks great – as I toured about it yesterday! No second crop on our land though – probably a good cover crop.