Chehalish Mucking

We had a very muddy, very rewarding day yesterday.
On Tuesday, I got word from a friend & longtime Heifer volunteer that her friends in Chehalis had been hit hard by the flooding--Brad & Meg of the Black Sheep Creamery. They donated cheese for the recent Heifer art reception & are a big accomplishment in small scale dairy, as they are Grade A certified (very difficult to do when you're small) & had just begun to receive national attention for their cheese. My friend & volunteer, Gretchen, sent out an email for help & we were happy to be able to respond. Thankfully, another volunter, Carla, coordinated the work party efforts & we ended up with nine people heading down to Chehalis for the Heifer International Work Party.
Read more about the Creamery & their flood story, here. Under "Musings" you'll find their experiences from the flood & the aftermath.

Here's Boo & Bet, all ready to work in their waders.

Mucking out the barn was a huge job--with manure & hay saturated with mud, everything was heavy & stinky!

All of the dead livestock had already been removed, but while we were shoveling out the barn I did come across a dead rat!

Towards the end of the day, the barn was completely mucked out & rinsed down. Brad & Meg worked all day in the house, & were very grateful for everything accomplished in the barn, as they would not have been able to get to it for at least another month.

Everything on the farm--the barn, the house, the creamery, the out buildings--had water reach up to 30 inches & leave behind 4 to 12 inches of mud. The hay caked onto the fence in front of the farmhouse is evidence of how high the water rose.

Here's the "field" behind the barn.

There was a tractor working all day, moving mud around & hauling the piles of muck we were clearing out from the barn.

This is the actual creamery, where the cheese it made. The cheese is stored in a separate "cheese cave", which broke free in the water, but was stopped from floating away by the fencing that Brad had finished building just a month prior. Thankfully, their stock of cheese (their income) was saved--neighboring Beecher's Cheese sent a truck to load it up & they will store & care for it until the Gregorys are once again able to house it themselves.

Here's the river directly behind the farm. It rose so fast they had to be rescued from their home by boat.

Carla clearing wood out of the barn.

Moving all the damaged wood to the burn pile (with the cool old barn in the background).

The bonfire was huge!

Levi testing out the depth of the mud in the "temporary lake" across the road from the farm.

Half of our Heifer International Work Crew.

After seeing & hearing the horrific stories from the flooding, it was incredible to get out this weekend & really pitch in. I was amazed at the resilience of the community, as we drove by houses with entire contents on the front lawn & small lakes taking up residence in people's backyards. I admire Brad & Meg so much for their commitment to their farm--there's definitely a part of all of us that would look at the 6 inches of muck covering everything (including the first floor of the house) & throw up our hands in futility & walk away. While living on a flood plain is dangerous, major floods are few & far between. The muck is river silt, rich in nutrients. As it is turned & moved, it will dry out & become part of the landscape, providing rich soil for numerous crops. It was so hopeful to watch the volunteer cars line up along the road, to work side by side with a dozen other people donating their time & labor, to see the stranger come by offering pizza at dinnertime, & to hear the neighbors announce they would be back tomorrow to continue the work.
Our Heifer volunteer group will stay in touch with the Gregorys & put together another group when they need help rebuilding fencing & preparing for lambing in the spring. Of the 23 sheep that survived, the majority are ewes expecting lambs in the spring. We hope to continue to help the Gregorys so that the ewes can come home & bare the renewal generation at the Black Sheep Creamery.