Wednesday, February 12th
Green Flamingo Organics
Oak Hill, FL

Today after harvest and planting were done, we focused on a lot of preparation for the upcoming party/event – on Friday it  would be Valentine’s Day, and GFO was hosting a dinner and movie on the farm.

There were muddy puddles all over, thanks to the incredible amount of rain they’d been having, before and after we arrived here – in what is normally the dry season. With over 60 guests expected,  we worked to help fill in some puddles along the walkway from the area the event would be held to The Duffer – the composting toilet that was the only available place for people to relieve themselves other than the palmetto thickets outside the edges of the farm.

The woodchip pile we used was infested with large, angry red ants – much larger and scarier looking than the horrid Fire Ants we were used to dealing with. But these lacked the burning venom of the fire ants, so it wasn’t actually bad.

After work was done, we gathered some firewood – but we woudn’t be able to use it that night, as it turned out.

The weather quickly changed – the temps dropping in a blink.

And then the rain came. And it came HARD.

Yeah, it had been raining  lot a few days previously, leaving us farming through the mud puddles in our rubber boots … but that had been steady & delivered unimpressively.

This though – this was crazyrain; falling in bathtub loads, driven sideways by incredible epic winds that bent the palms and shook the trailers and rattled the outdoor kitchen, soaking everything.

The solar power failed, leaving us with flashlights and candles for lights – but the candles were almost impossible to keep lit in the gusting, furious tropical gale storm.

We built tarp barriers to tame the wind in the kitchen, and hunkered down over warm, comforting piles of pasta and farm fresh veggies.

I LOVE storms.

It was

absolutely

AWESOME.