Rain drops keep falling...

I had planned to use today's post to show you the girls' new hen house, but when my mom sent me these pictures on Saturday, I just had to show them today.

My parents live in the mountains east of Albuquerque, in central New Mexico. The climate can be described as "high desert" with an emphasis on desert! Like many dry areas around the world, they have a monsoon season in late July and August.

And when it rains, well...

My parents have several horses and mules (and are still housing my juvenile delinquent, Mickey), and they have a large barn. It sits at the lower part of the property, but it is surrounded by a dirt berm to hold back rain water. Unless, of course, there is so much rain water that it flows over the berm.

In that case, the water goes straight into the barn.



And that is precisely what happened last Friday afternoon.



The unfortunate thing is that the barn is built on a large cement footer that is higher than the dirt floor of the barn, so once the water got in, it turned the place into one big pool, flooding the stalls and the tack room.



Due to the lack of rain throughout the year (and the inability to irrigate), there is very little grass in the pastures for the horses to eat. So, we have to feed them alfalfa hay, which is stored at the back of the barn to, um, keep it out of the rain.

Now, flooded stalls and tack rooms are bad. But not nearly as bad as the several thousand dollars in hay that my dad just bought and neatly stacked at the back of the barn, which is now submerged in water and being ruined before our very eyes.



I love this picture of my dad. I can hear his thoughts as he surveys the situation. He's probably saying. "Huh. How 'bout that."

What else is there to say?



My parents spent the weekend scooping water out with the large bucket on the tractor, trying to siphon the water out with hoses, and using buckets to scoop the water out of the stalls.

The hope is that once they get enough water out of the barn, they can back the flat bed trailer in there and then get all the big neighbor kids to come move the hay onto the trailer. The bottom layer will be a complete loss. It will mold and can't be fed to the horses (fortunately my dad has several cows that will be happy to eat the moldy hay). Right now our fingers are crossed that because the hay is so dense and heavy that the hay on top can be moved before the water seeps up through the bottom layer.

At least that's what we hope. We also hope it doesn't rain anymore...