Apifera Farm - where art, story, animals & woman merge. Home to artist Katherine Dunn

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©Katherine Dunn.





Wednesday, December 05, 2007

And the ram got wet




Thank you to everyone who emailed to see how we made it through the wild weather. We fared much better than most, never lost our power and had minor inconvenient damage. My heart goes out to those who had serious flood damage. Some lost everything. Some are not able to business yet. Each hour we had power I just gave a 'thanks' to the upper realms.

The power of water is the message of the week for me - or the power of the elements working together, or against each other. Man makes pithy items like houses, fences, bridges and these are no matches when the elements collide. As much as I love wind, I am terrified every time we have a wind storm. My imagination, which is always in overdrive, imagines all sorts of way I or Martyn can die in the wind - a piece of the 4'x8' metal barn roofing can fly down and slit my throat - people, this happens, who am I to think I am immune.

After the storm settled on Tuesday, the sun came out, it was 60 degrees and just heaven. The sound of the roaring Yamhill River was deafening as were all the small streams on our properties that were now more like rivers. I was going to take a 15 minute gander down the road to spy on damage, when I immediately saw that part of the fence in the goat/ram area was down, pushed over by enormous weight of water. I managed to get there without being electrocuted by the downed wire fence, and immediately felt my boot fill up with cold water.

At the same time, Joe Pye Weed was on to me, and decided to jump in the same area to, well, to basically knock me over. I was greatly amused when the water went up to his mid belly, and he abandoned his farm girl battering idea. I spent the next two hours struggling to get the fence up. But the sound of the water, the smell of spring in December - was nice. Especially mingled with the wet hair of a ram.