Morning broke.

Somewhere morning broke but it sure wasn’t here, it was dark, gloomy and still raining hard.

In keeping with 21st Century mass media traditions I gave the storm a name, I called it “Tropical Storm Bitch”. Michelle was the only one who chuckled.

Thankfully the wind wasn’t a major problem and I could put the awning back up, the seven of us could survive in the camper and under the awning. I made the coffee on my wood stove in my tent. We shared my rain slicker as we rain between covered areas, it was raining that hard.

The livestock were miserable and I needed to come up with a quick plan for them, it appeared that one of my tarps was about to make the ultimate sacrifice. I gathered two of those stupid emergency rain poncho’s out of the truck for Amos and Holder to use. We fetched one of my two extra large tarps, hatchets, stakes and line from the storage room.

We huddled under the awning to make a plan; actually we drank coffee and tried to procrastinate but we got busted by Michelle. The first step was a run to the sapling pile, we chose eight about twelve feet long and we them back to the awning. We sharpened both ends of five of them, one end to help it anchor in the ground and the other to hopefully fit the eyelet on the tarp. The other three we tied together at the center so we could twist them out to provide a center support.

The plan was to use the heavy corral fencing to hold down one end of the tarp and use the poles with guy lines to keep the other end and sides upright. It should work, for a while anyway.

We unfolded the tarp and rolled it into a giant cigar, the tarp was 50’x50’ so it was quite a large cigar. We ran that cigar out to the southeast corner of the corral, unrolled it partially and while Holder and I worked on our eventual hernias lifting the corral sections Amos stuffed and spread the edges of the tarp underneath.

We then raced back to the awning and complained loudly; the joys of bonding as men. There was fresh coffee in our cups which was appreciated quietly.

We moved the poles out next and laid them out as best we could figure. We laid out the guy lines and stakes as we hoped they go. We flipped the tarp over the corral fence and rolled it out as best we could in the mud. We worked each pole as a team; setting up the pole, sinking the tent stakes, and finally tightening the guy lines a enough to keep it upright.

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The five outer poles went up without too many face-planting mistakes and we followed by quickly tightening all of the guy lines. Suddenly we were out of the rain.

The center of the tarp however was quickly gathering water so we set up the tri-fold center pole pushing the center up almost a foot higher than the edges. We’d have to keep a constant eye on it but we could at least feed the poor horses now.

I led Lunch into the shelter and the rest followed after. Amos and Holder drug their water bucket over and with that we headed back to our own cover. Another high priority item had just been added to my list.

I was soaked even under my rain slicker and the guys were no better off. We had hot drinks and hot porridge waiting for us when we got back, that had been a hell of a way to start the day. I started out to take the livestock some hay but Michelle was already heading out on the cart with a bunch of hay bags ready to hang. I just needed to eat and warm up.

**** ****

It turned into a serious school day. Our students spent the day working on reading and writing, we had a tiny white board on the wall that came with the camper; I suppose it was intended for shopping lists and so forth. Sonya put that to good use in simply working on the alphabet. I took possession of our single box of white board markers and hid them away, another finite commodity.

I did warn them that power was a consideration on days like these and to not get carried away if they wanted hot water and such. It was going to be an entire separate class to even begin to explain solar power to them, that would definitely need to happen before winter.

I took the time to do more research, I didn’t have a particular subject in mind I just surfed the archive until a topic met up with something my mind was fussing over. Today I got stuck on St. Louis and the Panic of 1819. This wasn’t a new topic for me having worked in the financial industry through three crashes I had looked at the history of crashes before. But today I decided to delve into what ever ripple effects I could find related to that event, I needed to know what to expect financially over the next few years.

The rain lessened and then picked back up, lessened again and changed it’s mind again; the rooster crowed his indignance at the travesty of it all. Nobody was happy. I told them there was more than enough power for a movie or two if they wished. I did caution Sonya to becareful with the movie era so we didn’t completely overwhelm them. I mentioned that Braveheart or Last of the Mohicans would work for the guys.

Dinner and supper were cooked in the camper; frozen pizza for dinner and an oven baked casserole for supper. I retreated to my tent to read and research; Michelle and Matilda could handle the helm for today. I took a bottle, some beer and Brin with me.

I learned a lot, I was fed, and I eventually found myself being fussed over and put to bed. Maybe I drank too much or maybe I let my focus get too tight and the world just passed me by while I absorbed information. Whatever happened I do remember being put to bed.