Freezing to Flooding

Our winter this year has went from unusually cold temps to flooding. 

We live in the North Georgia Mountains but in a lower portion in the mountains.  A little dip or valley.  All of the excess water from rain runs to us and down our property when the water table is up and the ground is saturated and has reached its limit.  We usually get flooded at least once a year in the spring time.  But after having much cooler temperatures this winter and even a dip down to 4 degrees one night and 7 another night, we have now gotten a lot of rain on top of it.  Our temperatures are still going to freezing many nights or lower but  now we are quite soggy.

During that very cold spell where night temperatures were so low we did loose a young goat.  The little goat that had polio last year and survived by a miracle, Pacer.  I brought him and his field buddy up out of the fields for the cold snap and made them comfy in a barn stall but surprisingly he still could not handle those temperatures.  We found him down and cold but still alive.  If you put your finger in the mouth of a goat and inside its mouth is cold when they are down, the only way to quickly rise their core temperature is to immerse them in warm water, slowly adding warmer and warmer water till they are warmed up.  We brought him in the house and tried this.  I have successfully done this with chilled kids that were born unexpectedly in winter and were dying but we worked on this goat for hours and he did not  make it.  Bless his heart.

Here are some pictures of our farm from the heavy rains we have had recently.

Water pouring down our drive way from the hill behind the barn.

Flooding down by the manure pile. Yuck!  William could not believe I was taking pictures of him by it and was laughing about it.

Water running across our fields and to our pond.

This is a picture I took of my daughter last spring.  You can see where the dock is compared to the normal water level of the pond.  Our dock is anchored with T-Posts for times when we have flooding.

 This is where the dock is with this flooding.  The road around the pond is even flooded.

When we get flooded like this, this is the only time our pond has and inlet and and outlet!

Inlet.

Outlet.  Right across the road behind it.

Looks like we are going to continue to have a wet/colder than normal winter!

Blessings and Happy farming!
susan