If you have a farm, you need weather forecasts. Weather effects all of the animals, and the things they eat and drink. This morning, my Iphone began beeping early, and I awoke to no fewer than five “severe weather alerts.” The Weather Channel hasn’t yet begun naming windstorms as it does winter storms but I suspect that is coming. Amid all of the beeping and hot red graphics and stacked warnings were urgent cautions about objects blowing, falling trees, downed power lines, slippery traction for cars, flooding and roof and structural damage. Be careful, stay indoors, alerts to come.

This is the point where I see that I know all I need to know and turn off the phone. The alerts can stack up. We did have some wind and rain and it was muddy out there. The animals huddled in the pole barn, and in between gusts they went out into the pasture to graze a bit. I took Lenore and Red to the groomer. I went shopping for food. At the grocery store, a customer asked the cashier if she heard that we were going to get “big gusts, up to 65 miles per hour maybe.”  Yes, she said, she had heard that and what she did was tie a bright purple banner to the antennae on her car so it would blow in the wind on the way to work. It was pretty, she said. And then she turned to me and said “well what are you doing about the wind?”

I am taking photos of the wind, I said, no small thing, since you can’t really see it. But sometimes you can get a photo that gives off a sense of it. We both laughed and high-fived each other. Stay inside, I said. Oh, I will, she said, I’m here till 5.