The rain came down and the floods came up. But do you know what didn’t go up? The animals.

Give ’em an ark and they’ll take a swim, I tell ya.

It started as a normal enough day. Morning chores. Work. Afternoon monsoons. The usual for an August day in Tennessee.

As I enjoyed the fact that the power had gone out, which meant I inadvertently got off work early (I know I shouldn’t enjoy it, but y’know…kids enjoy snow days and I enjoy power outages). I had just notified my company of the power outage when I remembered those stupid little bantams.

Okay, I like the bantams. They’re adorable. But they’re also stubborn. They won’t go into the coop on their own. Every night it’s the same old tune: hunt down the bantams after they’ve roosted and move the ornery fluff-butts to the coop for the night. I had a sinking suspicion that dumb and dumber…ahem… Gypsy and Freckles were in their usual not-inside-the-coop-exposed-to-the-elements hideaway. So out the door I go, in the middle of a thunderstorm, to rescue the bantams.

Pigs, as it turns out, are not bothered by storms at all. This would be great if it weren’t for the fact that they swarm my feet whenever they see me until I give them food. Once in the fence to rescue the bantams, I can hardly walk for the pigs rooting my feet and legs begging for milk. And then when I get the bantams into the coop, the pigs discover the chicken feed.

Oh brother.

Pigs don’t herd. They don’t obey. They aren’t easily intimidated. They care about one thing more than anything else, and that thing is food. Long story short, amid much squealing, I finally wrested the pigs out of the coop (I may or may not have grabbed their back legs and half drug, half walked them out)…and then I noticed that the barn door had been blown shut by the wind.

That’s not good, I think. The barn door in question was the means by which the goats could seek shelter from their pasture. It being shut meant there was a good chance I had several wet and unhappy goats on my hands. Off to the barn I went.

Sure enough, most of the goats are not in the barn. Joy and her twins had snuck in before the strong winds blew the door shut, but the rest of the does were not so lucky. I walked out of the barn to see all of the goats, save Brownie, huddled under the very leaky, mostly unused shed trying to avoid every little drop of rain and looking as miserable as anything can look. Goats hate rain.

My Brown Cow, bless her heart, was an opportunist. She was standing out in the downpour munching on a choice bunch of leaves the wind had knocked down from the trees. She wasted no time in getting back to the barn, though — even leaves are no match for a nice warm, dry barn in a storm.

The rest were not so quick to vacate their meek shelter. They couldn’t see the open barn door and they were not moving, no thank you. I am not kidding when I say that I had to carry Tira the Mini-Mancha through the rain to the barn, where I sat her down in front of the open door. At the door there was a puddle. I had to push her into the door, forcing her to jump over the evil, horrible, goat-eating puddle into the safety of the barn.

Once seeing that Tira made it in without melting, the rest of the herd thankfully ran inside quickly and I propped the door open so that the wind couldn’t trap them again.

By the time I got back to the house I was soaked head to toe and covered in mud. If it weren’t for the darn mud, I could’ve counted it as a shower! 😉

That’s life on a homestead. Always interesting, often frustrating, never dull. Wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Cheers