Wordless Wednesday
Category Archives: Weather
Tuesday Torn: An Inch of Debris
All is well on the island we can drive to but the beautiful beach is in need of some flotsam removal (including more than a few flip flops — no flares, though).
Tropical Storm Isaac was a light blowjob with a good washdown after. I don’t think there was a mandatory evacuation order in the Keys but I don’t know of more than one or two residents who left.
Early Saturday afternoon, the local newspaper there asked Facebook friends to tell their “storm prep and anxiety stories.” Stacie Kidwell wrote, “Filled the car with gas, but it was empty anyway.” That was the right attitude. About half the people cleaned their houses, did laundry, and hung out on Facebook. And Harpoon Harry’s in Key West did a brisk Sunday breakfast business.
Officials: “Now it’s too late to leave the Keys.” That was Sunday morning.
Alrighty then.
Tens of thousands of South Floridians (more than 32,000 in Miami-Dade County, 23,000 in Broward, and 25,000 in Palm Beach) remained without power yesterday afternoon as sporadic wind gusts and rain continue from Isaac. All Florida Power & Light customers. FPL has been working overtime to “harden” the infrastructure against hurricane damage so I don’t understand how a tropical storm does that to them.
We didn’t lose power even for a minute. We’re on the Florida Keys Electric Co-op, not FPL.
Folks will gather at the beach this morning at 9 a.m. to clean the place up. If you’re around, bring a shovel or a wheelbarrow or a rake or just a strong back and a weak mind. I’m in North Puffin so you can tell everybody that you are me.
Weather Words: But it’s a DRY heat
For the gekko in all of us!
Tuesday Thorn
A thorny problem. Locusts have thorns, see.
Snow in June
I went wading this morning.
I walk outdoors most mornings when the weather permits. This morning I could have used my barn boots instead of my sneaks. Yesterday, Jack Parent started trucking the first-cut hay down the road and neighbor Charley Smith’s Cottonwood trees began snowing. It wasn’t quite knee deep at the bottom of the hill but it is piled higher and deeper.
“The trees do that for Father’s Day each year,” Mr. Smith said.
It doesn’t appear that we can spin cottonwood seeds into yarn let alone loom a fabric and the lumber is lousy; it splits poorly, rots quickly, and offers about 12 BTUs per cord of firewood. On the other hand caterpillars love the wood as food.
Mr. Smith’s bigger issue is the chopped grass that sluices off the farm trucks. The Parent farm is divided. His new farm is about three miles north of his home farm and about half a mile north of me. I get to watch a regular parade of 8-wheel tractors and liquid manure trucks and open dump trucks.
We pick up half a bale of hay for each truck that passes but we have about 500 feet of road frontage. I don’t think Mr. Smith gets quite that much although there is a bump right in front of his land.
“There ought to be a law,” he said. “Farmers have too much power. We should have a regulation to keep the roads free of debris.”
I’m not much for rules. I googled farm bureau regulations and found about 2,230,000 results in 0.21 seconds. Regulation > Policy & Politics > Ohio Farm Bureau Federation. “Farmers fear effects of proposed child labor regulations” at the Iowa Farm Bureau. Arkansas EPA regs. Suarez on Labor Regulations. Texas Farm Bureau Commodities and Regulatory authority. Guide to Lighting Regulations for Farm Implements, Guide to Open Burning, and Women’s Food Check Out Day at the Tennessee Farm Bureau. The Stanislaus County Farm Bureau also administers the ILRP on behalf of the East San Joaquin Water Quality Coalition.
And so on.
Heck, there were about 4,290,000 hits, nearly twice as many, for Vermont farm regulations alone.
Maybe it’s time for someone without a Ph.D. to wade through this mess. There is no way on this green Earth that any farmer could comply with every reg already on the books, let alone the 1,523 new ones under consideration right now.
Meanwhile, Mr. Parent probably should think to cover his dump beds; after all, feed is even more expensive when the road gods get that sacrifice bale every day.
This farm report brought to you by the letter G.