I haven’t posted in a while and I am so sorry that I have not got you all up-to-date on our lives here on the island.
However, this is a good place to start and then I will back track a bit with some future posts and let you know what’s been up this past busy summer.
Hurricane Fiona, my she was quite the storm to hit our beautiful small island and she hit us all hard. As I start to write this post which is 10 days post storm there are still many with out power and a tonne of clean up going on. We got frost the other night and it went down to -4 that’s chilly when you don’t have power and or a means to keep warm.
So Sept 23/24, 2022 will go in the history books as the worst storm to hit the maritimes. It has really changed how you look at the island. Many massive old trees and trees in between came down either snapped off or pulled out of the ground. We lost 8 spruce trees. They were big…. and a big thanks to the Lord for keeping them off our house.
We had been preparing for many days as we heard the storm was headed our way. Tidying up the gardens as best we could, harvesting the last bunches of veggies that would not withstand winds. Storing away items from my greenhouse incase it fell or blew away. We were exhausted from all the preparing but we also knew it had to be done…. we even had to build a partial porch at our side entrance so that we could use out generator when the power went out. We did not want a repeat of Dorian, that one gave us 10 inches or so of water in our basement…
I went to town on thursday to pick up another large gerry can for gas and any supplies, you could tell people were taking this serious…. the shelves at the stores were empty. Even the gas station was busier then usual. I filled my gerry can and topped my van up. With Dorian we didn’t have power for 4-5 days on the main highway and it was 2 weeks and then some for some more remote areas.
Russ went to work Friday morning and came home early…. them we did our last walk around the property. We prayed for protection and I finished up some inside stuff to get us through a couple days of no power.
I canned a batch of what I call storm sauce, made banana bread, coconut biscuits, and roasted a big chicken for quick eating.
It didn’t take long and the wind started to whip up around 10pm. Power flickered and turned off and on eventually it went off around 2-2:30am. We stayed up all night taking little cat naps, praying, and watching the sump pump… and keeping the generator going….
I never heard our house make such noises, quite eerie. It was just a constant noise of wind it just never stopped. The winds got even stronger around 3am and maybe even worse around 6am…
I am not sure during this storm what was worse…. sitting in the dark listening and feeling the storm or looking out the window during daytime hours and not only hearing, feeling, but seeing it all..
Around 6:30am when you could start seeing what happened throughout the night…..
We saw our barn on the ground, my chicken coop was moved, the run fencing was knocked down and debris from the barn was leaning on the coop and the run… I wasnt too surprised the barn is down and I was relieved the coop was in one piece and not knocked over… as I was upstairs in the bathroom looking out the window I hear Rusty, he says babe you have to come here and see this…… I got a huge knot in my belly…… I went to the front hall window and looked out…. it took my breath away and I started to cry… I never felt so helpless and sad and scared….
All I could see was our farmer neighbors barn….. gone! The only thing left was the remains of the first floor….. there was twisted metal, torn roof rafters, wood bearish everywhere…. on the road, in the yard on his side, in the ditch on out side in our yard, in the field next to us… I couldn’t stop crying and shaking… the wind had changed from north east to north west and now our house was in the path of the debris…..
Nothing in my lifetime could have prepared me for what I saw and whatever experienced. It is quite horrific. We could see on the east side of our house the bug trees were leaning…. up rooted.. we could see the trees down out back laying on my carrot and beet beds. Leaves on the trees ans bushes were shredded…. so much destruction.
It wasn’t safe enough to go out til later in the day around say 5pm or 6pm… we did a short walk around. My greenhouse plastic was ripped to shreds in places and it was moved over about a foot and a half.. all plants were laying down and looked ragged… it was really hard to take it all in… we where so incredibly humbly grateful not one roof shingle or siding shingle came off our 140 year old house. The barn came down and is sitting on our canoe.. 😦 but we are safe and the house is intact.
On Sunday morning Bob and Evelyn showed up…. and Bob got to work with Rusty and we got the compromised trees down, cut up… the big spruce tree on my veggie beds an go that all chopped up… we were so grateful to see them and have that help.
It is now Friday of the Thanksgiving weekend, we have all the tree debris tiddy up except for the big one out back, Rusty is very carefully between working and our place getting our firewood split, working on dismantling the old barn…. but of course customers are calling cause they have damage to thier homes etc.
I look across the road, the big tractor was dropped off yesterday at our neighbors home…. it has the big grabber thingy that dismantles pieces of big barns that come down…. I look out around us I see all rhe structural damage to barns and homes. The hum of generators here is done… the power was restore to some of our neighbors the middle of this week….and we are starting the clean up and repairs hopefully before the cold sets in… we have had lots of sun the last couple days. It’s been dry, farm equipment is out harvesting potatoes and people are trying there very best to be strong and rebuild…. this one is gonna take a while…
If you are if faith and praying please keep my fellow islanders in your prayers. If it was bad enough being locked down for 2 years+ with all that virus crap and being stressed and drained from that, we all now have this new mental drain on us all. Some that do have insurance because of everything can’t even come up with the funds for the deductible to get the insurance part going, then there are small farmers like myself who have animals in our old barns that are not insured and don’t have a way to rebuild and need to find new ways to house animals and equipment on small farms, then there is those who lost houses in the storm surge, everything is gone and insurance does not cover that…. those are mental health issues that weigh hugely on maritimers…and the ones I refer to are just the ones in pei…all maritime province’s were hit…
Please pray for the strength to get through the “afterstorm”. It’s just as bad or worse then the storm itself. We still have many with no power… pray for them too♡
We have lots to be thankful for this weekend and we also have lots to be worried about…. and tonnes on our minds…. through it all God dies calm the storms if life and will be with us…. my prayer is that it draws us closer to God♡
Muddy Boots, Old Houses and The Farm 