We had another inch of rain, I think.

I'd rather it be us than Baton Rouge or the other flooded areas in Louisiana. It was a pretty quick storm. About 40 minutes of thunder and lightning. About three minutes with no power. Not bad at all.
Please keep Southern Louisiana in your prayers. Be safe and God bless you all. ♥

No matter where you live

Thank a farmer for what you eat.

And on another note, we here are fine. I thank the good Lord for that.
Our garden plot is underwater, but the raised bed has saved the broccoli and basil. I think.
The broccoli was not happy with its first day out from under the row cover I've had over it for a couple weeks, but I think it was time.

The other bed you see has been covered with diatomaceous earth. I am trying to use non-poisonous methods to kill off the fire ants that came with a truck load of garden soil we bought, and then mixed in with our compost pile unknowingly. Hubby had not mixed all of it in, so discovered it was in the garden soil, and not our original compost. Yay?
It is frustrating. If we have to use poison, we just won't be able to plant there till fall. I was glad that hubby decided to use the raised beds this year, finally.

However, his corn didn't fare so well. Fortunately he only planted one row before the rains came.

Other areas of Louisiana and Mississippi were not as fortunate, so keep them in your thoughts and prayers, please.

The Ides of March give us in America one week till our taxes are due. We got hit this year, but the Lord will see us through.

Hope you all have a wonderful, blessed week. ♥

Was going to tell you about the New Kid on the block

But, after mowing the pasture there were other problems to attend to.

Those of you with pantries, may or may not have had this problem before. I know I've read some bloggers post of it, but since this is my first time dealing with it, I have questions.

Hubby had opened a bag of brown rice to fix some for dinner, and found bugs in it. While not happy, I told him I wasn't surprised because I've read of it happening.
Now while we are not really 'preppers' in any way other than we know we should have food and water stored in case of the zombie apocalypse hurricanes or power outages; we do stockpile some things. Dreamfields pasta is one. Hubby is diabetic. Not many stores carry more than one or two varieties if they carry any at all. So we tend to buy it by the case on the internet.
And short grain brown rice. We prefer the nutty flavor or the short grain rice, so we tend to buy several bags when we can find it. We eat a lot of rice. More so than potatoes.
It was one of the bags of rice with the offending bugs in it.
Now I've seen on TV, and read on blogs about storing stuff in five gallon buckets. And while we probably should buy the fancy storage bags, we don't. We do, however, store extra purchases in labeled five gallon buckets with the spin top lids.
My question is this. We had two other packages of rice in the bucket. One is a vacuum sealed bag of Basmati rice. The other is a normal package of short grain brown rice. I am relatively certain the vacuum sealed bag is not contaminated by this infestation, right? But what about the regular package of rice? We looked at it closely and don’t see any creepy crawlies in it, haha. Do you think it still be okay, too?

The offending bucket has been soaked in hot water with bleach; followed by a scrubbing with hot soapy water and a rinse with hot water.

Now for my second question. If any of you have wells that supply your own drinking water, have you ever had your water smell like sulpher? Our well is 300 feet deep. There is an aquifer under this part of central Louisiana that probably supplies our well. The water started smelling a few months ago. We’ve talked with the local Ag Extension office, and we've called a half dozen water offices, trying to find someone that can tell us something. Or test the water. Because it’s a private well, they won’t test it for us. They just said there is probably nothing to worry about.
Now, I don’t subscribe to gloom and doom per say, but there is a natural gas pipeline just more than a stone’s throw from our yard, and Louisiana started fracking last year. :-/
I suppose we’ll have to cough up the money to get our well tested; but I was wondering if there is something less expensive we might look into that someone could suggest?

Oh, and I should let you know there was no heat exhaustion today. I didn’t sweat much – probably because it was windy and humid; but I also felt okay after all the mowing. Tired, but good.
I'll tell you about the new kid in another post.

You all have a good evening and a happy Tuesday!