Everything Everywhere All at Once–or Prepping a Tiny Farm for a Hurricane

We have a hurricane or tropical storm headed toward Maine tonight. If you are in Maine, you know this. If you are not in Maine, please know this is not super common for us. We are such a treed state, when storms come when the leaves are still on the trees, power lines are going to go down. Since we live in a rural area, we have a generator, but it doesn’t run our whole house. We lose hot water and can’t bake anything. We can use the microwave, but we have to turn off everything else in the house. Still, I’m thankful for the generator. One time, we went eight days without power. I don’t know what we would have done without a generator.

I was talking to someone today who acted like everyone was overreacting about the hurricane coming to Maine. I thought to myself, she’s definitely not a farmer. I am not overly worried, I suppose, but it takes a lot of work to get even a tiny farm ready for such a storm during harvest season. We are worn out from prepping for this hurricane because our garden is in full harvest, and we can lose a lot of food to high winds.

We hope it’s not bad, but you cannot take any chances when your year of food for your family is on the line. Groceries are so expensive. Right now, tons of things are at harvest, so Ron and I have spent the last three days harvesting what would normally take us about two weeks. We have been picking or processing some big batch of something every single night since we learned the hurricane was likely going to bring trouble. Last night, I was up until 1:00 AM finishing the pizza sauce.

Garlic, onions, pears, corn, tomatoes all have had to be picked and processed. I’m still going on the pears because they were small but extra plentiful. We got about five times the amount of pears as we did last year, and I treasure them. Still, it’s a lot of work peeling those pears. I wonder if there is a more efficient way. Next year, I’ll be looking into this if we get another pear harvest. Today, I spent about four hours peeling pears. I’m pretty slow with a knife, I think. If anyone reading this has advice on processing pears, I would love to know what you do.

On top of this, Ron has had to get the generator ready, get gasoline for it, and sharpen the chains on his chainsaw because we live amongst so many trees. A big storm is not just a concern for our house and coops, but we have fencing around most of our property. Storms take out our fencing on the regular.

Tonight, we were scrambling to bring everything inside and button up tight for the winds. It feels like I am all over the place trying to remember everything. I found a shovel leaning against the coop, and I had to bring in any plants I could. I brought in all the chicken waterers. I think we are ready, at least we are as ready as we can be.

I won’t let the baby chicks out tomorrow, and I’ll see what the big chickens and ducks want to do and keep a very close eye on them. If necessary, I can lock them down too. I think we have everything that might blow away brought inside, and we harvested every bit of food we could from the garden. But the corn is just now ripe. Most of it is still on the stalk and needs just a few more days. I am going to be very sad if the beautiful corn I grew in my three sisters garden gets wiped out.

Crossing my fingers. And to those in Maine who read this, I hope your electricity stays on, your trees stay upright, and your garden survives.