After Irma

Hurricane Irma tore its way through the Caribbean and Florida last week, eventually making its presence known here. Our area braced for the worst but was mercifully spared as it moved more eastward once it reached land and weakened considerably by the time it arrived at our place.

I will share with you a few of the pictures we have from around the farm but our damage was minuscule compared to others. We never even lost our power. Many around us did and some are still without power. We are thankful for all your prayers and concern for our safety this past week.

There were many pine trees down along our dirt road. I thought there wasn't much debris in my yard until I realized it was all covered by green pine needles and just looked like grass from inside. It smells like Christmas outside from all the pine.

We were so afraid the old oak would split from the force of the wind but only lost one large limb and lots of leaves.

The sign along the road was really leaning. Now someone's stolen it.

The back of the field took a harder hit. There is a path of large trees broken or uprooted and fencing is mangled.

But near the house all is well. The animals were all tucked safely in the barn. The fruit trees bent with the wind and have mostly recovered. The beehives amazingly didn't topple. We had weighted them down and tied them together with ratchet straps. Even most of our pecans stayed on the trees. Many other people had pecan crops that are now a complete loss.

Today we'll finally finish raking up all the debris. We're cutting up the fallen trees for firewood. And we keep saying, THANK YOU LORD.