North Carolina

[paintedChix]

Hello everyone, we just bought 3 nice acres in beautiful Cameron, NC.. I am looking forward to meet and greet everyone I just got a gorgeous Peacock 13 months old and I got a baby one, I am waiting to see what sex it is.. glad to be here..
Carmen

Hi! Whereabouts in Cameron? That encompasses a rather large area, LOL.

Hope Florence isn't bringing you grief in your new home. We are starting to feel waterlogged, but we are draining well on all our sand, also in Cameron (between Hwy 690 & Hwy 24/27). 10 miles to Vass & 10 miles to go down to FL/fast food stuffs on 87...

 

[paintedChix]

Hurricane - Florence REPORT -

For us it's been high winds and today POUNDING, straight down rain - all day. It's filled a 600# capacity wagon to the brim and it's overflowing, all 100 gallon water tanks in pony pastures are full and overflowing today as are all the black barrels we put around to use if we should lose power (we haven't gotten a generator yet, and no water from well if out of power). Thankfully, our power has only been out a little over 1 hour and was right back on. We still have cell service (Verizon) and internet (Windstream) as well.

The critters are alive, though they are all certainly feeling this weather. Most of our "coops" have been tarped, hooped structures and several tarps haven't survived. In today's continuing wind and rain, we didn't attempt to put new tarps up to replace the old one(s)... We'll do that when the rain/wind subside. We have new tarps to put up in several areas, but will need a few more as well. We've lost tin on two outbuildings as well (the tin was on the ground and can be reused, though maybe not on the same buildings) - we don't know how old those structures are but they survived Mathew before this. We'd moved into this property in 2015.

There is flooding all around us, but we are good. We do have standing water (last check didn't show it to be flowing across our property yet - it's sinking in - which is good). The "coops" are all DLM and I didn't even think about layering any new materials into them before the storm. They are doing OK, but would have been better w/ added material(s) before rather than after. Oh, well. Will do what we can. All will get layered sheet cardboard, shredded paper, pine straw (long & short) and leaves/branches to raise the ponded areas so that the birds aren't walking thru a lot of water. I'm very pleased overall - we shall see how it goes...

We have a lot of chickens as I wanted to try out new "actual" breeds (from breeders) this year and I'm putting together breeding flocks. Have already decided will probably disperse some and concentrate on the auto-sexing birds I am very quickly coming to love (have 4 different breeds - 55 Flowery Hens, CLBs - both production and JR lines, Bielefelders and Rhodebars). We also have Ameraucana (Blue & Splash, lost black roo; Lavender), Australorps (blue), Orpingtons (Lavender), Bantam RIRs and barnyard bantamXs (Ameraucana - coming from lines we've had since got started in 2011). Our egg laying girls are a nice mix of color egg producers - BA, Delaware, EE, Leghorn, NH, , PR & RO. Most are 3 yrs old and as I figure out who isn't laying they will be replaced with newbies from new flocks that are being started. Since a lot of our birds had been raised in just loose pens on our front lawn, I did a lot of combining to get them to all fit in small areas/coops before Florence hit. Right now, none is totally happy even w/o all the rain/getting wet. They'll survive.

OUr dogs are happy and our cats have been in/out today w/ no problems. Bunnies are wet from blow thru but hutches are good. Ponies - they all seem to be doing fine out in their pastures and both yesterday and this AM in between rain bands different groups were running, bucking and kiting about.

Of our 3 adult age daughters - one chose to go down to Lumberton to spend time with her boyfriend during the storm. They are now cut off, and have been w/o power for 2 days. They do have food, their home isn't flooded (yet? - he rents with 3 other single "flatmates"), so they are doing OK. The oldest, with her hubby and our 2 grand daughters are just down the road from us in a mobile home. They chose to stay in their home, but could come here if necessary. The road should be clear of serious flooding between us/them (4 miles). The middle daughter with her husband, grand daughter, grand son and new baby grand son (well 6months old) are all doing great on the property they live at just before Fuquay-Varina off of 401. 401 has been closed between Lillington and them, and parts of Fuquay are closed due to flooding there. But last check, they also still had power and the pond they are next to hasn't risen too much to affect their home, so they too, are good...

Here's a link to a photo album I have set with pics from yesterday. DIdn't get any pics today, but plan on getting some tomorrow and in the days to come as we repair and restore our coops to their pre-storm apearances...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GQ9dDGS32UohuFsA8

 

[Stone Hill]

Hi! Whereabouts in Cameron? That encompasses a rather large area, LOL.

Hope Florence isn't bringing you grief in your new home. We are starting to feel waterlogged, but we are draining well on all our sand, also in Cameron (between Hwy 690 & Hwy 24/27). 10 miles to Vass & 10 miles to go down to FL/fast food stuffs on 87...

hi, we are in the lee county side of Cameron, down 15/501 and 1 .. down the road from the post office and the antiques stores..
Carmen

 

[paintedChix]

AH - you are in the "true" town of Cameron, LOL... That is actually quite a nice little drive from here. Go to the post office now and then (not for chicks - have had them sent thru Sanford and picked up by CTC for me...).

 

[Stone Hill]

LOL I love it here,we just moved from NJ last year..

 

[chickenE]

We actually had the worst of the storm last night with 3.7” of rain and a tree falling in our yard. Not so bad though.

Hope everyone continues to be safe.

 

[Miss Lydia]

We started getting rain early Sunday morning and it poured all day till sometime early this morning river over flowed it’s banks and we couldn’t get out yesterday but thankfully living in the mountains means water runs off pretty fast just sorry it went some where else and caused flooding but other than being very soggy no problems. Happy to hear from a few so far all is well.

 

[BrahmaGirl2018]

Hi there everyone. Anyone doing hurricane prep for Florence? I'm in Carteret County and have started. I'm going to lock the chickens in my shed; it's as sturdy as the house. If we have to evacuate I'll fill all four feeders and five waterers and deal with the poop fest when we're allowed to return.

Did you have to evacuate? We are north of Greensboro. I brought my 7 week old chicks inside for the worst of the storm. They are happy to be back outside. I hope you fared well and are safe!

 

[paintedChix]

Today is I think Day 5 of Hurricane Florence. Rivers and ponds have continued to rise all around - and a lot of the roads we have used/still use are completely gone around us or still closed due to current flooding. We are still good right in our little 21 acres, though.

We started repairs to our property on Monday - a church crew came and cut up the tree that was over one of our pony paddock fences; moved the flipped over the fence structure to the correct side of the fence and put the heavy truckers tarp back over the shelter frame work it was originally on. They were here and gone in 31 minutes - what would have taken my husband and I several days to accomplish by ourselves!! THANK YOU and KUDOS to the Grace Church of Southern Pines. We sure appreciated that. After that I tarped the chicken coop out in the pasture next to the barn, cleaned out the bunny hutch(s) and did all feeding chores again.

Yesterday, Tuesday. Our oldest daughter brought our granddaughters over to give me a hand before going back home to get a nap. She works in Apex and while she can get there, she goes - odd hours right now... W/O critters, she too is running on exhaustion.

The grand daughters and I dug into Coop 1 - removing a full size shovel spade blade in depth about a 2' wide along the back of the coop and along the one side approx 8'. That was WORK. We filled 8 bags with the sandy compost that we removed - some got moved up to the tires filling for certain plants. Rest will be moved later. Wagon still full of usable water for washing stuff off, so bags were carried and drug on the left over torn up tarps.



Then we started loading bags of pulled weeds and raked pine straw into the coop. We also put a bunch of pulled weeds/pine straw into coop 2 (w/o removing any of the floor 1st). Found I didn't need to lay down any whole cardboard like I thought I would need to... We DO need to remove the floor down at least 2" in all of these coops/pens to allow for piling up depth of new materials, but I can only do so much...




We will continue to work on it. Got the both of the coops re-tarped as well. The tarps are larger than we had before and lighter - don't like that. They probably will only last a couple of months, we shall see. Larry and I looked again at the heavy tarps - for 1 - 8x10 it's $67 + shipping (and these are heavy 18oz pvc tarps). Worth it, less than doing actual shed roofs out of wood and tin or shingles, just ouch.

 

[staceyj]

Hi folks. Checking in from Wilmington.
Phew!
Got my power back! Woo hoo.
I’ll never be ungrateful for air conditioning again!