DOGS, FLIES & STORMS!

When I woke up it was minus 16 degrees this morning. Warmer weather surely is on it way.

What does dogs, flies and storms have in common? Well, it seems like whenever there was a big storm coming later in the afternoon, the dogs would follow at our heels all day long and not let us out of their site. The flies would be on the screen wire to the screened in porch and the screens would be covered with flies. There still was another screen on the kitchen door. When we entered the house, we would have to chase the flies away and enter quickly. I think farm life had more flies than there ever were in the city. On a normal day there weren't as many flies, but on a day it was going to storm, this was a different story.

We would have fly traps that we hung in the kitchen. It was like a shotgun shell and you pulled this sticky strip out and tacked it to the ceiling. The sticky strip would attract the flies that just happened to come though the door as we were entering the house. My mother hated flies with a passion and would diligently try to catch them. We would shoo out the flies from the screened in porch daily by opening the screen door and letting them out.

When the storm approached we would go to the basement of the house and ride out the storm. The basement was like most basements, had small windows to look out and concrete floor. This is where we kept all of our winter supply of food. The basement was just under the kitchen and storage space under the rest of the house.

I remember a time when it was a severe storm and we thought we would have a tornado. My mother was praying and I saw the storm clouds part and go around our farm. Storms of any kind was not a fun experience. In my story about making butter, I told about the storm that the lighting hit the strawstack.

Wisdom for today--God hears our prayers and answers them.