The predicted storms started with a BOOOOOMMMMM! around midnight, followed by hard rain for maybe 20 minutes, and then off and on rain (some quite hard) through the night and into the morning. It’s dark. It’s much cooler (50sF, cold to us, esp. with rain). I went out between downpours this morning and hayed the horses, *both* of whom were in the barn. First they got hay on the floor, and now they’re munching from hay nets. These are supposed to be “slow feeder” haynets, but with Rags there’s no such thing as “slow” feeding because he doesn’t get distracted. Tigger will quit eating to watch a cows or goats move alone the fence, or a calf bawling in the distance, or a truck on someone else’s place bouncing along while they check fence, if distant dogs start barking. Rags…eats. Bluebonnet seeds have sprouted beyond the cotyledon stage…the “fingered” first leaves just showing…but not as many as I’d hoped in what had been a lovely bluebonnet corner of the east grass. This rain is SO GOOD for the scorched trees. I do think we lost one of the smaller oaks in the “Apostles” group…but we’ll find out in spring.
Thunder continues to rumble around us as this front shoves coastward. This might even bring the creek up if it rains like this all day and tonight. One of R’s ongoing projects is a rock check-dam/fence protector at the “swamp” area, where several flash floods have dug out the natural drainage enough for calves to get their heads under the fence. Hence the calves that get onto our place.
This image is from Monday, Nov 1. When dry, the “swamp” is just a gently “scooped” area, but in the old days, it held water much of the year. The creek (a dry channel most of the time now, but steeper-sided and narrower) is to the right maybe 40-50 yards. When the swamp is holding water long enough, it has amphibians, crayfish, and sometimes small fish, and attracts all the mammals and birds. We actually do have swampy plants in it (although this checkdam is now sitting on what was a lovely colony of those big sedges I took pictures of earlier (sad, but not too sad.) Eastern persimmon grows on its west bank (to the right), other sedges upstream in narrower “catchments” and temporary streams.
So happy for your rain! We are getting rain too but it’s November and our wettest month so it’s sunshine that’s actually rare here.
It’s soaked in pretty well, though the “overflow” area west of the creek was soggy this afternoon when I went out to check on things. I’d worn the shorter barn boots that I often walk in and between the creek and the gully system found standing water approaching spill-in, when combined with the sucking clay mud of that area. It’s near the “sucking mudhole” that I once lost tall boots in and barely got out of. I tried another path and ended up with several pounds of mud stuck to my boots, had to turn around while I could still keep going, and then spent 20-30 minutes trying to scrape off enough to walk home when I got back to the creek (wet on one side of the gravel ford and dry on the other) to the “rest chairs” there. A flood pulse had gone over the ford some hours before, and water had come off the higher field north of our land, so I’m pretty sure the gully system was well-watered. R- said Westbrook, the small tributary to the creek that enters about 2/3 down the west side, and turns south, joining the main creek just south of us, was flowing as far as the rock crossing between the main west and the SW meadow, but didn’t make it to the south fence. The creek now gets more water off the widened highway north of us, but it’s dirty water and comes in a pulse.
HI – if the calves are not branded can you brand them as mavericks? Laughter. Rain is good. We are looking for some of the white stuff any day now.
Stay safe and sane
No…that went out with the open range. We call the neighbors and he calls his father and his father brings a buddy to chase the calf down. It was tempting with Hester Heifer because she was a good size for the freezer. She had enough meat on her, and still tender…but I’m not that kind of land manager. Yet. You never know what changes may come. Rain ended before dawn at 2.4 inches.