Disclaimer: This was written before Hurricane Ian made his way through. Another blog post will be added shortly.
There is a storm a brewing here in NC. First off we are saying prayers for those in the direct path of this hurricane. We are currently forecasted to just receive a ton of rain and some wind. It sounds like it’ll just be a good rain storm for our area at the current moment. But what do we do in preparation for this storm?
Now before I start saying what we do, let me remind you the status of how “big” our homestead is. We have 1 acre of pure homesteading and 1 acre of just pure woods. On the homesteading side we have goats, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, and peacocks that are outside. We obviously also have equipment and items that we use on the regular along with toys. So let’s dive into what we have done to prepare.
The absolute biggest thing we started with is to clear the stream that is in our yard. We get the run off from all of our neighbors and it goes into a stream and back into the woods. This round we have started to have leaves falling so we had to clear that from the stream but we also have some build up from the last storm we had. It ended up that we had to actually re-dig the stream for about 10 feet or more. Not a hard task at all but needed to be done in an attempt to have smooth sailing for this storm.
Next we have filled up all the feed bins to ensure that we do not need to carry paper bags in the rain and ruin feed. We have some bins that can hold about 2 bags worth of feed and that will last us a decent chunk of time. Now we will still need to go out and actually feed everyone in the storm but if two of us bust butt we can do that in no time at all.
We have also ensured that every group has places where they can get to to get out of the rain. For the goats we have built shelters in general that they can stand or lay under. The turkeys, chickens, and peacocks can run into their coops and the rabbits are covered by a roof and tarps. Also we have baby chicks and ducks that are in a shelter so they can stay warm.
This may be a southern thing but in PA we had this for different seasons. We took the time to make sure we had gas for the generator. This is something we didn’t invest in until we moved south and realized it may be a need for such occurrences. While we haven’t needed it yet, we prefer to always make sure we have it ready incase.
Lastly, our biggest task was to clean up. We had the kids pick up every toy and put them away or under the deck. I moved our lawn furniture to right against our house. We put weights down on our Halloween inflatable decor, moved many light weight items indoors, warped the hay and essentially secured all items that would be easily at risk for the wind. While our items may not actually blow away, I always just picture my lawn chairs flying into a neighbors side of their house and I really don’t want to be that neighbor.
As of Thursday night we managed to get ourselves into a place where we feel comfortable with every one being able to ride out the storm. Now we wait to see how this storm will arrive and then we will update after.