"After Ike" Day 8

The Man-of-My-Dreams goes back to work at 4am in the morning...
I am not looking forward to that.
Even though it feels as if time has stopped in our little corner of the world, life must go on...

They have power in town so the boys start back to school on Thursday.
They are still saying 4-6 weeks before we get our lights back.

Most of the homes on our little road have cleaned up their yards...
Trees have been cut out of roofs, leaving blue tarp covered holes everywhere.
The debris piles are taller than most of the houses.

Hundred year old Live Oaks that once held happy children swinging from tire swings with their strong branches, and offered prime real estate for some of the worlds bestest tree houses are now sadly laying on the ground with huge grass covered root-balls reaching towards the sky.
The skyline will never be the same without those beautiful trees.

I have had a week to let it "sink in" but I still find myself in shock whenever I manage to leave our farm and look at the land around us.

We are doing ok here.
The generator is humming and doing it's job of solidifying everything in the freezer once more.
The ice chest is full of ice.
Our bellies are full of Cowboy Stew that I cooked over an open fire.
The kids, smelling of camp-fire smoke and bug spray, are tucked into their beds.

I am sitting here stewing over the price gouging I experienced today...
I went to go buy some 410 shells for the little shotgun that we use for protecting the poultry..
They charged me $25 for a box of 12 shells! these are little 410 shells! that was CRAZY!! But he knew we needed em... so we paid for them.
Oh well.... thats another thing I'll never run low on again when times get tough.

Tomorrow, the kids and I are going to try a recipe for bread that you bake rolled around a stick over the fire, we'll see how it turns out.

More Soon....