Family Farm Friday #50: Coming Over the Hill

"Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

You guys already heard about the grass fire on the ranch a couple of weeks ago. In a minute, you're going to hear....the rest of the story. (Where's that from?? Anyone??)

Our house sits sort of at the bottom of a hill, so when you are driving home, you crest the top of that hill about a mile from my parent's house, and can look out at our house and land from there. I always love topping that hill and knowing that I can see home all spread out right there in front of me. When the fire started, we were at our sheep sale, along with several of our neighbors who were there helping us. Because the sale was literally about to start, we couldn't leave to go get on a fire truck (mind you everyone is a member of the volunteer fire department where we live), but our neighbors headed that way. Even though we were about 15 miles from our house, all I could see when I looked out the door was the sky covered in black smoke.

At one point, we got word that the fire had burned down our rental trailer where my parents' friend lives. Next, we heard our neighbor had lost his entire place. Then another neighbor called and said that while she did not think the fire was by our house, she couldn't see our house due to all the smoke, so she couldn't be sure. Those were not fun reports to be getting while you were unable to do anything to help.

We worried about our house, our cattle, sheep and horses, our neighbors, and our history. At one point, my dad said that he was just praying that the tree row was okay, and that he would rather lose the house than that tree row. See, for 3/4 of a mile preceeding our driveway, there is a row of evergreen trees. My dad planted those trees when he was a kid with his dad, before his dad passed away. When you think about the things that could have gone up in smoke, history may have been the worst.
When we finally able to get to our road to head for home, there was charred grass as far as you could see. It was like a sea of black.

And then, we came to the hill. I just kept wondering, and dreading, what we would see when we came over it as I had done so many times. I'll show you what we saw....
Our house. And our barns. And the tree row. Not a bit of black in sight I'd never been happier to come over that hill than I was that Saturday afternoon. (And FYI, the reports were wrong--in this fire no homes, barns or livestock were burned. Praise God!)

Unfortunately, many people have not been so fortunate in the last couple of weeks. Huge grassfires have burned up homes and cattle and millions of acres in the southwest. Please say a prayer for those who have been impacted. Not everyone was able to come over the hill to the same view as we were.