Storm and Storage

First view

Expected path(s)

Hurricane Lee started pointing at us the week of Sept 11th. By the 14th we were certain that it was gonna come close enough that the chickens needed to be locked up and the random stuff in the yard needed to be tidied. I also made up a big dish of cottage pie/shepherds pie made with ground pork that we took to calling "piggy pie".

Chickens and their coop safe in the shed

A big casserole dish of "Piggy Pie"

The storm went by on the 16th and went right up the Bay of Fundy. This meant our island, and especially our side of our island, didn't get the full force of the storm... but we did get a bunch of it.

Sept.16 at noon
61km/h with 114 km/h gusts

Sept.16 at 4pm
60km/h with 107km/h gusts

The next morning

After the storm we took stock and really the only damage was the final 3 panels of the old greenhouse flying into the bushes(we've been meaning to take it down and re-purpose the struts but haven't yet because the re-purposing plan isn't clear yet), and a handful of roof shingles that came off. We're gonna have a roofer go up and patch things before winter but it probably won't even hit our $1k deductible so it could be a lot worse.

After the storm we went to the shore to see what got washed up on the beach. It turns out, THE BEACH got washed up! The whole left of that photo is someones dirt driveway(or at least it was) and the boulder wall was shifted and the pebble beach washed up over the boulder wall to cover a good portion of the road! Yeah, glad we didn't go near the water during the storm. That would have been insane!

The chickens are moulting(as is normal in the fall) and thankfully it's been a mild/easy moult where they only loose a few feathers at a time as the new ones grow in. I do get to see the lost feathers around the yard and in the coop but the biggest sign on the chickens themselves is poor Romeo's tail. He's lost all of his big fancy feathers and just has a normal hen looking tail.

A pic from April

A pic from September

This past week I've been trying to get a bunch of canning done. We got a bunch of carrots, apples, and some beets. I've processed all the apples and a few other things like baked beans and veggie broth and bone broth. I'll be getting to the beets and carrots soon but they were less urgent. (Hard to make Hugslut an English breakfast with no baked beans) ;-) I'm also making some apple scrap vinegar with the apple peels and cores, That should be ready in a couple months.

All sorted and rinsed off before being stored in the basement. The yellow bucket of apples were surprisingly "grocery store quality" and only the grey tub needed to be processed right away.

Corncob broth and baked beans cooling on the counter.

My apple peeling and coring setup. That bucket took all day
but I had plenty of videos watch while I worked..

We are safe and sound and still waiting for the interviewers to notice how awesome Hugslut is. So now that you're pretty much caught up, I'll leave you with this DuoLingo quote that hurt my feelings. :-)