Water Water Everywhere

Thankful for high ground this morning.  The hillside is almost bare with rain all day yesterday and more wet weather to come.  Beaver Creek will be rushing and roaring across the road.  We will likely have flooding locally and in some of the sending districts to my school including Sherburne, Bainbridge and Sidney.  I lived on the Delaware River for four years - the nightmare years I call it but it gave me the impetus to move up here - and watched the water come up 30 feet over flood stage three times in a year and a half.  Neighbor's homes were ruined and cars floated away.  I was cut off from my sheep and had to drive miles and miles to get across the river to New Jersey and my teaching job.  Before the walkway was closed we would stand on the Riegelsville Bridge - a practice copy of the Brooklyn Bridge built by Alexander Roebling before the big job - and watch refrigerators, propane tanks, and all manner of flotsam and jetsam float down the river to the ocean.  I had two pop-up tents ruined by floods including the one at the Garden State Sheep Breeder's annual show when the whole fairgrounds was wiped out.   I love living on a hillside.  I'm squishy enough for the poo to melt and soak in the ground but nobody is knee deep in mud. The barnyard is on shale with a couple of inches of some incredibly tough grass.  No matter how wet, or how dry, or how many sheep stand on it, I always have a few blades of grass. That shale undercarriage comes with a price.  Digging fence post holes requires powerful machinery I don't own.   The inside of the barn has a hefty hay pack, which would suit a Hobbit or Dwarf better than the 5'3" me, but is perfect for the sheep.  I have to call Rob Wilcox to dig it out and spread the poop on the fields.  Was hoping to get it done last fall but here we are.  Shearing was put off due to extreme cold and now they are in desperate need to be sheared.  It will have to wait until after Md. Sheep and Wool.  I am sewing like crazy in between school, animal chores and marital responsibilities such as cooking and cleaning.  If it was up to me cooking and cleaning would be suspended until the the middle of May.  Wouldn't that be interesting?