Stormy Weather

The fortunate alchemy of air, water and mountains that bless Western Washington with an almost ideal climate for farming becomes something of a curse on those rare occasions when the weather does turn bad.  Here on the farm, in the valley of the Stillaguamish River, the wind hardly ever blows harder than 10 or 15 miles an hour, and usually, not at all. So when we do get a wind storm (with the obligatory downpour) we also get a lot of downed trees.

Last night a strong weather system rolled across Puget Sound with gusty winds, lightning and heavy rain. We were without power for most of the day here on the farm, but that doesn't really put much of a damper on the day's work of cleaning up. Surprisingly, not too many trees came down, and none directly on any of the roads or power lines. In the photo we see Terry looking over a tree that just missed the road, and will probably be stacked firewood within a week.  As luck would have it, last night was the start of our winter schedule for the horses, and so they were all warm and dry in the barn.