Yes, this is a post about rain

It finally rained! I live in Northwest Oregon, where it's supposed to rain for nine months out of the year. In return, we get the most spectacular summers. We had a cold and dry winter, aside from a monster rainstorm that I wrote about a few months ago. We have had a very warm and dry spring, which is beautiful and makes it much easier to work outside. However, our house is spring-fed, and if we don't get enough rain, we will run out of water. So the return of the black clouds was very warmly welcomed.

Goats are not fond of rain. The brush herd will go out and browse when it's wet because they have no choice. My milkers will line up at the door of the barn and glare out at the weather, waiting for it to change. They have a magic manger that refills twice a day, so they don't have to work for their dinner. When I went to check on the brush goats, they were in the trailer making similarly grim faces.

They have been a little spoiled by the dry weather we've been having. They got used to browsing when they feel like it and napping seven times a day. I think they forgot about the soggy conditions they usually have to contend with.

We have run out of water twice in the almost eleven years we've lived here. The first time was after a spring just like this. We thought we had hit the mother lode of awesome weather, and then October rolled around and the water was gone. It takes a lot of rain to make a spring start flowing again. There's a guy in a neighboring town who has a big water tanker truck, and he will bring it out and fill up your tank. That helps in the short term, but there's still a lot of praying to the skies. Also, the water he brings is city water, which means it is treated with chemicals, and after so long on the best water anywhere, it's hard to drink the chlorine cocktail.

The first time we ran out of water, we didn't have goats yet, so our water needs were much lower. I use a lot of water just in the milking process, especially on days when I have to pasteurize. We have a 1500 gallon tank behind the barn that captures rainwater off the barn roof and gravity feeds into the barn, so the goats always have water. In a pinch and with several hundred feet of hose, we can use it for the poultry too.

There's a faint rainbow in that last picture that I could see on my phone, but doesn't seem to have translated to a larger screen. It's supposed to rain off and on for the rest of the week. I sure hope that the weather people are right for a change! I have to move a goat fence on one property today and a trailer on another, and I will happily do both in the rain!

To summarize, here are the upsides of rain:

1. I never got around to washing the outside of my car, and now I don't have to! The dust and bird poop are gone from my windshield.
2. The spring will get a little help, and maybe we will make it until the fall rainy season without a water crisis.
3. The ducks are ever so happy!
4. The dust on the gravel roads is watered down, so I don't have to breathe clouds of it while driving to check on the goats.

The downsides of rain:

1. I forgot to roll up the windows in my car, so my seat was very wet yesterday.
2. The gray weather makes me want to take a nap all the time.

Water is the one thing we can't improvise or do without. I feel a little weird doing an entire post about the weather, but farmers are nerdy like that. Be well, everyone, and let it rain!