Its been a while since I posted last.....it's been CRAZY TIMES around this ranch for the last two months! More animals, less time, working fulltime plus running a ranch....equals a very tired momma.
My daughter helps so much with chores that I am not sure how I will handle and juggle everything when she moves out at the end of the summer.
Things have eased off a bit to find an hour to squeeze in and sit down to write. So lets see.....we had a 9 acre fire here and we almost, but by the grace of God, lost everything. Had the Lord not changed the direction of the wind, us and a neighbour would be living very different lives right now. Hubby and I received 1st and 2nd degree burns on our hands, face, neck and arms trying to put it out. My right hand is still not completely healed. The fire flared up 4 times after the intial fire, those 4 times, I was home by myself and had to contain animals in the pastures and pens, call 911 and fight the fire with our water pump.
I have to tell you where the Lord impressed upon me and my hubby the most during this initial fire. We had so much snow this winter that in the middle of May we still had snow banks along the fence lines, but the pastures were drying out fast because the snow was evaporating and not melting. In our pens tho, it was melting and we were having a heck of a time trying to dry them out. We were using a pump and pumping the water out into the field. The morning of the fire I went into the pen where the pump was and it was just droning along like it was low on gas. Sure enough I checked it and it was almost but for a few drops, empty. So I shut it down and went about my day with chores and various repairs.
Hubby and I were taking a break and spoke about who should go to town to get more gas for the pump, we got talking and onto another project and no one went to get gas. Out here when you need to move old hay bales, you burn them. We had some old ones that we had been burning all week. We put the lighter to the bale, decided against starting it as the wind had just picked up and squished the flame out with our foot. We turned away to look at our males horses and two minutes later I turned around to see flames spreading into the pen and over the pasture! We grabbed what we could to put it out but nothing was working. Hubby ran for the tractor and I pulled my shirt off, soaked it in the pond of water near by and kept slamming it into the flames to try and put it out. Nothing was working. The tractor caught fire and scorched hubby's arms and face and neck. Our daughter who just got off the bus from school, frantically called 911 and our neighbours. One came with a tractor and started dumping the leftover snow on the flames and the other neighbour came with a cultivator and started turning the soil to bury the flames. Hubby and I ran back to the pen to grab the pump, loaded it on the truck and headed back towards the fire. As I placed the one hose into the pond, hubby is about to start it when I realize and yell to him "THERE'S NO GAS IN IT! NO ONE WENT TO GET GAS!" Hubby looked up at the sky and yelled back "THE LORD WILL PROVIDE!" and when he pulled that string to start it and it whirred to life, both of us were beside ourselves with relief. I held the intake hose under water in the pond, the water was cold and soothing to the burns on my hands. I took turns lifting water up over my burnt shoulders and face. One of the fire fighters had the other end of the hose and was fighting the fire with it. There were 4 fire trucks, two tractors, our pump and a cultivator all going like mad to try and contain the fire. 4.5 hrs later it was out. The minute the fire chief said "Ok I think we got this under control" our pump sputtered and spurted and ran out of gas!!!!!!!! No one realized it except for hubby and myself, that the Lord had allowed that pump to run for all those hours when there was no gas in it and as soon as the danger had passed, He shut it down! God is simply amazing and we thank Him every day for saving us, our ranch, our animals and for making the impossible possible!
The Lord is GOOD ALL THE TIME!!!
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