The new and improved

The new and improved I'm referring to here is our Christmas tree.  You remember the "Christmas tree" that we had last year?  It really wasn't a tree.  And we still don't have a tree this year.  But I got a little more creative this year.  What do y'all think?

I stacked up all the presents this year to make it
look kind of like a Christmas tree.  I think it looks
pretty good.  I'm so proud of myself!

Christmas was nice and quiet for us and it's perfect!  Not too many presents but just enough.  Christmas is such a wonderful time of the year.

What's new?

Sorry I haven't posted any updates for a while.  The reason being...there hasn't really been much to update.  I can't believe it has already been almost 7 months since our lives got turned upside down by the flood.  We are currently still staying at a temporary home.  We however, are in the process of getting another piece of property to rebuild our home and farm on.  After what we have gone through in May we just can't go back to our old property to live again.  It was just too traumatizing.  And talking with my husband the other day, I came to find out the flood really affected him more than I thought it did.  I guess I can kind of understand how much stress and pressure he was under that day when he had to worry about saving the animals and at the same time, saving his family.  I tried to help him as much as I could that day, but there was only so much this petite little at-the-time pregnant Asian woman can do.  I keep telling people, if someone could guarantee me that this place won't flood again in the next 20 years I would totally move back there in a heart beat.  I think of all the good memories we had created on this special piece of property every time we go back there to visit or do things.  I'm sorry it seems like I've all of a sudden turned this blog into a place where I share my personal feelings.  I promise once we get our farm going again I will be sharing our farming adventures instead.

So last week, our bull Dexter had escaped from the pasture 3 times!!!  So annoying!  Hubby was going out to the property a couple times trying to fix the fence lines and putting in extra strains of barbed wires, but Dexter still managed to get out. We were scratching our heads trying to figure out how he was getting out or where?  So one time when hubby was out there working on the property, Dexter escaped right in front of him, so hubby witnessed how Dexter was escaping.  So Dexter used his horns to lift the barbed wires up then he put his head and front legs through and then slip the rest of his body through. He's a pretty smart bull after all.

After seeing how Dexter escaped out of the pasture
we went to Lowe's and bought some of these fence stays.
They go horizontally down the fence line and keep
the barbed wire in place so Dexter couldn't push
the barbed wires up and put his head or body through.
They were only $6 for 12 of them.
It was a cheap fix but it sure fixed the problem...for now.
Dexter hasn't escaped once since we put those
fence stays there.

All cattle staying in the pasture.  Look how big
Jelly is getting!

This is our house now, it still is sitting there and looking the same
as it was 7 months ago after it got flooded.

This is what I miss about our property.  It's
so beautiful!

This is such a beautiful property.  We do miss it a lot!

Reminiscing

Fall is finally here!  The weather has been quite nice this whole week.  We are finally getting a break from the heat for a little bit.

The weather this weekend is perfect for having friends over to our property for picnic, riding four wheeler and having a bon fire.  But unfortunately we can't do that because our place is still not put back together and we are still living in our temporary housing.

I really do miss our property.  For some reason today I'm especially missing our property.  I miss just being out in the country and missing all the great memories we have created while we were living there.  I miss seeing all the wildlife and trees and the river.  I miss the peace and tranquillity I feel living out there.  I actually miss feeding the pigs and watching them grow.  I miss my bacon, sausages, and pork chops. I wish the flood didn't happen so we could still be living there.  But things happened for a reason and we are still trying to figure that out.  Someday we will figure that out and will see the big picture.

A nice day at the river

Today actually has been a rather relaxing day for us.  We were able to spend some time as a family and relax, and not do much work at all.  

We moved to our property back in September of last year. So ever since then we have been looking forward to this summer so we could go down and swim and play in our "private river".  Today it was the first time since the flooding that we went back to our property to do something "fun" instead of cleaning up the place after the flooding.

We were able to find a relatively clean spot to swim in and we all had a lot of fun.  It was just nice to relax and spend time with the kids.  

Surprisingly, though it has been two months since the flooding the river still hasn't cleared up.  It's just not as clean as it was before.  And the river has changed so much there's a lot more sand bars now than before.  Nonetheless we had fun playing in it we just made sure we all washed our clothes and towels and took a shower as soon as we got home.

What a fun day at the river!

A bitter sweet day

Farewell, Spot!  We had to say good-bye to Spot our pig yesterday.  

The people buying Spot came to pick him up yesterday.

As mentioned in my earlier post, we have been going back to our place everyday to take care of him.  With everything we have going on right now it's been more of a pain to take care of him than anything.  Our plate is kind of full at the moment we really don't need more on it.  So we decided it is best at the moment to sell him and once everything settle down we will have to buy another pig or two.  It was kind of a bitter sweet deal.  We have had Spot since he was a piglet.  We have had him for 9 months now.  He actually has been a very good pig.  We have spent a lot of time taking care of him and raising him and hoping to use him to breed and everything.  But we had to get rid of him before we get to see the fruits of our labor.  So it was kind of sad.  But we know it is the best thing to do for our family right now.  And hopefully he is going to a good home.

Spot has grown so much over the course of just 9 months.  

Saying our good-byes one last time.

Peanut butter and Jelly

Here's a couple of new pictures of Peanut Butter and Jelly.

                                                               Breakfast time

After taking a closer look Jelly is definitely a boy.  He's 

pretty well endowed if you know what I mean.

Jelly hanging out with his mama.

  

Jelly having breakfast.

We relocated Spot, the pig to a neighbor's place a few weeks ago.  Just recently we brought him back to our place and we have been going back to our place once a day to feed him

.

 We buried the dead animals in the front pasture kind of next to the pig pen...the scent of the dead animals are still pretty overwhelming...I think it's because of the smell of the dead animals the vultures have been hanging around.  They probably think Spot is dying and are waiting to eat him.  I'm sure the vultures are very disappointed every time they see Spot standing up and walking around.  They are probably thinking, "dang it!  Why is he not dead yet?!"

This made my day!!!

So I mentioned in my previous post that our bull went M.I.A.  Well guess what?  Two days ago we found him and brought him home!  Last week we called the county animal control and told them our situation and told them about our missing bull.  They took hubby's phone number and said they would give him a call when someone calls in to report sighting of the bull.  Hubby got a call from the county animal control the other day and said someone found our bull.  Dexter wandered off to a neighbor's pasture/horse ranch about 3-4 miles from our place.  We borrowed a cattle trailer from a neighbor then with help from a friend went and got Dexter.  (I actually didn't go with hubby this time but stayed home). This time hubby got some alpha alpha to lure him into the trailer and without any problems Dexter went into the trailer.  Yes alpha alpha is Dexter's favorite treat.  He loves it! And hubby said when he took Dexter back to our pasture Dexter was soooo happy to be back with his friends, Peanut Butter, and Blackpearl.  As soon as they opened up the trailer he bolted out and ran right to his friends and mooing and making noises.  If you know Dexter he's a man of few words.  He hardly ever makes any noises so he must have been soooo happy and excited to be back home and to see his friends there!  But this is actually not the thing that made my day.

This morning we went to our place to check on the cows and to feed Spot the pig.  And lo and behold!  A baby calf!!!  Peanut Butter just had her baby and it looks like she just had it either last night or this morning!  We actually thought she lost her baby due to all the trauma and stress she has gone through recently and we didn't really expect her to give us a calf.  So when we saw the calf this morning we were soooo happy!  I can't describe the joy I felt when I saw the calf but it was a great feeling!  We haven't had the chance to get a closer look at the calf yet to see if it's a boy or girl but we are just happy we got another calf.

Peanut Butter just gave birth to a calf this morning.  Meet Jelly the newest member of our farm!  And you also see Dexter in this picture hanging out with his friends and the newborn calf.

A happening Father's Day

Things have been somewhat calm lately since the whole flooding deal.  Just when we thought we are catching somewhat of a break our neighbor called hubby up when he was still at church this afternoon and said our cattle escaped.  So hubby went home and changed quickly and went over to our place.  When he got there our good neighbor was able to secure the two cows onto his property.  So all hubby (and a couple of friends from church) had to do when he got there was to get the two cows into the trailer so we could take them back to our place.  It's never an easy task getting cattle into a trailer.  After trying for a little bit (fortunately it didn't take forever this time) they were actually able to get them into the trailer and brought them back to our place.  But Dexter the bull was nowhere to be seen.  So as I'm typing up this blog post right now they are still out there looking for Dexter.  I will probably post something online and see if people in our neighborhood has seen him.  We will probably print out some flyers and post them in our neighborhood and see if we can find him that way as well.  I know most people post "lost dogs" or "lost cats" flyers.  Only out in the country would people post "lost bull" flyers.  Hahaha

I feel bad for the guys because they can't relax today on Father's Day they have to work and take care of these cattle.  But at least when they get home there will be a nice steak dinner waiting for them!  And for all the fathers out there I hope you are enjoying your special day!

This is a picture of Dexter.  If you have seen him let me know!

Close-up

Here's the latest

Sorry everyone I haven't posted any updates lately.  We have been busy doing clean ups.  We have received a lot of help from friends and our church, which we are very grateful for.  The whole house is pretty much damaged we took all the interior and exterior walls out so now our house is just a frame pretty much.  Everything inside the house including all of our furniture and belongings are getting thrown out of the house.  Right now we are just trying to figure out what our next step would be and what God wants us to do next.

The house is just pretty much down to the frame now.

Everything got thrown out of the house.

The house is all gutted out.

This used to be our master bedroom.

You won't recognize this but this used to be the kids' room.

My car getting towed away and more than likely will be totaled.

More clean up effort

To show you how much water we've gotten I stole this picture from my friend on Facebook. 

We have spent the past week trying to salvage as much stuff as we could from our place.  The other day they were trying to salvage any equipment or tools we could from the barn.  Most tools were gone.  Once again we are very grateful for friends who came out to help us and didn't mind getting dirty. Some might disagree and think our place smells like dead fish right now but I think our place right now smells like crawfish...but just a little worse.

We will try to see if we can save our tractor.

With a little help we tried to load the tractor up onto the trailer.

All loaded up onto the trailer and taken to a friend's house to drain all the oil and fuel out of it in attempt to salvage it.

After we got done cleaning up the barn they also attempted to get the cows on a cattle trailer so we can relocate them because there was supposed to be more rain coming in our area and we were afraid of another flood threat.

But after multiple (I mean like they've been trying for 2 days) unsuccessful attempts and trucks getting stuck in the mud we finally decided to just leave the cows there.  So far I think prayers have been answered the forecasted rain for this week isn't as bad as everyone originally thought so we don't think our place would flood again and it should be safe to leave the cows there.  

They tried to put the cows in the trailer... It was unsuccessful.

Please no more rain

Here's a "before and after" picture:

This is an aerial view of our place taken just last week when we flew over our property.

And this was taken yesterday the road is finally dry!

Though the road is dry right now they are forecasting more rain this week.  I pray that the rain either won't come at all or if it does that it won't be as bad as last week.  I really would not want to see someone else go through what we have just been through.  It's very devastating.

Quick update

I might as well just do a quick update here since I can't sleep.  The past few nights it seems like hubby and I have been taking turns not sleeping well at night.  I don't know why or for what reason but we just have been waking up in the middle of the night then can't go back to sleep.  The other night hubby only got 2 hours of sleep because he couldn't sleep.  So I guess tonight is my turn.  So here's the latest.

Yesterday morning hubby was able to borrow a boat and able to get to our house to assess damage.  Water inside the house has completely receded.  The house definitely got flooded out but not as high as we originally thought.  

This is about how high the water got on the outside of the house.

All appliances and furniture are not salvageable.  But we were able to salvage a few things, which we didn't expect.  So we are very grateful.

This is about all we were able to salvage from our house.

Refrigerator tipped over.  Appliances didn't make it, as expected.

Deep freezer gone.  All the pork chops, sausages, bacon etc, and ALL the meat inside went bad.  I'm so sad!

Washer and dryer no Bueno.

As far as the animals go, 3 out of the 7 cows actually survived!!! We didn't think any of them would but 3 of them did!  And one of the 2 pigs actually survived... but unfortunately all the other animals didn't make it.  I wasn't there to witness it but hubby found all the dead bodies of the animals in the yard.  I can't imagine how horrible it must have been for these animals to struggle to stay afloat and stay alive and eventually they got so exhausted that their bodies just gave up and they slowly drowned to death.  

Dexter, Peanut Butter, and Black Pearl are the only cows survived.

 

Spot miraculously survived.

This is where hubby found all the dead animal bodies.  If you look carefully you can see Jack (the donkey)'s body in the right hand side of this picture next to one of the logs.  Other animals' bodies were behind all those logs.  Very very sad scene.  We think the current pulled all of them over to that corner and they couldn't make it out of it and drowned and died there.  Hubby actually found Jenny the donkey by the pig pen in the backyard.  We think she probably jumped over the fence in the front yard but got caught on the fence back there by the pig pen and couldn't make it out and drowned there.

It appears that Meatballs most likely was caught on the play set and drowned and died there.  So so sad! :(. Her body was found left to the yellow slide, if you look carefully.

We are grateful people were so willing to spent half of their day today helping us salvage stuff from our flooded house. 

The water inside the barn went up to as high as the white tarp on that tractor.

Inside the house was a mess.

Such a mess!  It'll take awhile to clean up.  Where do I even start?!

Our master bedroom.  The toy kitchen in front of the door was in the living room but somehow floated into our bedroom.

Master bedroom.

Kids bedroom.

Another look at the kids bedroom.

Kitchen area.  Refrigerator #2 tipped over.

My whole car was buried completely in the water.  Dang it!  I really liked that car too.

Hubby's truck.  Almost the whole truck was under water.  I liked that truck too!

Grateful for these guys who came to help us salvage whatever we could from our house.  I know it was no easy task but they never complained.