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A request for rain


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Tragedy is widespread throughout the US right now, with the flooding and damage from Harvey and the coming damage from Irma. Then the west is burning - literally hundreds of thousands of acres (almost 100,000 in WA alone) gone. 

We have been smoke-covered since Monday night. Thankfully, to this point, we have not had any major fires. One small one the other day, but it was quickly contained.

But Sequim is a prairie. And so it doesn't get much rain in the summer anyway. This summer, though, we've only had rain once since May, and it wasn't much at all. We are dry. I would greatly appreciate it if you would join us in prayer for rain. It is in the forecast for tomorrow and Friday, a little, but we all know how weather forecasts go...

Anyway, the link I've put at the end of this post is from the town paper. We've been bumped up to very high on the danger list. Clallam and Jefferson counties are where we live - we are right on the county divide.

I am not worried. I know God is in control. I would be lying, though, if I said I wasn't at all concerned. Thank you for praying.

http://www.sequimgazette.com/news/fire-crews-staying-put-as-local-fire-danger-increases/?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialmedia

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Yes we had a fire from a lightning strike, maybe 1/2 mile from our farm. praise God the wind was blowing it west, while we were north, but it still got pretty close. We were all loaded up, ready to release the animals and lead them to the lake about 1/2 mile the other way at the edge of our property, but the crews and the planes got it out before we had to. burned about 80-100 acres.

But yes, fires everywhere, over 600,000 acres in Montana already, a real mess. I don't see these things as any kind of judgment by God, as some do-rather, I see part as the result of the wrong-headed environmentalists not allowing forests to be thinned and undergrowth to be cleaned out, making normal fires much worse, as well as people throwing cigarettes out of cars, and apparently one large fire from someone playing with fireworks. As for the storms, well, it IS storm season and the storms have overall been much less of late, so two storms seems so odd right now.

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9 hours ago, HappyChristian said:

Tragedy is widespread throughout the US right now, with the flooding and damage from Harvey and the coming damage from Irma. Then the west is burning - literally hundreds of thousands of acres (almost 100,000 in WA alone) gone. 

We have been smoke-covered since Monday night. Thankfully, to this point, we have not had any major fires. One small one the other day, but it was quickly contained.

But Sequim is a prairie. And so it doesn't get much rain in the summer anyway. This summer, though, we've only had rain once since May, and it wasn't much at all. We are dry. I would greatly appreciate it if you would join us in prayer for rain. It is in the forecast for tomorrow and Friday, a little, but we all know how weather forecasts go...

Anyway, the link I've put at the end of this post is from the town paper. We've been bumped up to very high on the danger list. Clallam and Jefferson counties are where we live - we are right on the county divide.

I am not worried. I know God is in control. I would be lying, though, if I said I wasn't at all concerned. Thank you for praying.

http://www.sequimgazette.com/news/fire-crews-staying-put-as-local-fire-danger-increases/?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialmedia

We have been inundated constantly with heavy acrid smoke since June 4th. This last week has been unbearable. No matter whch way the wind blows, it blows smoke from different directions and numerous fires, both here in Northern California an d Southern Oregon.

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I appreciate the public testimony of Assistant Chief Dan Orr in the Sequim Gazette newspaper that HappyChristian referenced.

Assistant Chief Dan Orr said, "Assistant Chief Dan Orr said an SUV caught fire on the U.S Forest Service’s Forest Road 2880 off Palo Alto Road in the afternoon but due to being so rural that by the time crews arrived it was mostly burnt up already. “By the grace of God, it burned in a spot not by the forest,” Orr said."

 

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Praise the Lord, it has rained here! Forecast was for "sprinkles" of rain. But sometime in the middle of the night (probably about 3 ish), I woke up to llwind and RAIN!!!!  IT continued throughout the night, and has rained much of the day. Not a torrential rain, but a slow, steady rain. The kind that allows the ground to absorb the water. 

We are still praying that the fire areas will receive rain as well.

Thank you to all who prayed with us!

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On 07/09/2017 at 2:51 PM, Ukulelemike said:

Yes we had a fire from a lightning strike, maybe 1/2 mile from our farm. praise God the wind was blowing it west, while we were north, but it still got pretty close. We were all loaded up, ready to release the animals and lead them to the lake about 1/2 mile the other way at the edge of our property, but the crews and the planes got it out before we had to. burned about 80-100 acres.

But yes, fires everywhere, over 600,000 acres in Montana already, a real mess. I don't see these things as any kind of judgment by God, as some do-rather, I see part as the result of the wrong-headed environmentalists not allowing forests to be thinned and undergrowth to be cleaned out, making normal fires much worse, as well as people throwing cigarettes out of cars, and apparently one large fire from someone playing with fireworks. As for the storms, well, it IS storm season and the storms have overall been much less of late, so two storms seems so odd right now.

The more trees you take out the less rain you get. The green absorbs the sun's heat to a certain extent, and when you take them out the ground gets hotter .  Someone said he didn't like sheep as they are desert makers.  I replied "It is not sheep that are desert makers, it is man.."

Greenery also absorbs carbon dioxide from the air overnight.  The plants then use that CO2 and extract the  carbon which build up the plant.  During the day they then breath out the oxygen. The carbon builds up the wood in trees and other plants. Isn't creation wonderful.

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Quite plainly you have absolutely no idea about living in this kind of area.....

He is not talking about cutting down trees, but removing bushfire fuel.

Over here we do cold weather controlled  burning to remove the fire fuel when it is relatively safe.  It doesn't kill the trees and in fact many plants over here seed better after fire.

But it does reduce the intensity of summer fires - which can be devestating.

Good winter makes a lot of bush grass and small shrubs grow, then a dry run into summer dries it all out - perfect for starting fires in, whether by lightning, cigs, even broken discarded bottles can catch the sun and light it up, and boom! You lose thousands upon thousands of acres of bushland, and the trees die because of the intensity of the fire. 

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5 minutes ago, DaveW said:

Quite plainly you have absolutely no idea about living in this kind of area.....

He is not talking about cutting down trees, but removing bushfire fuel.

Over here we do cold weather controlled  burning to remove the fire fuel when it is relatively safe.  It doesn't kill the trees and in fact many plants over here seed better after fire.

But it does reduce the intensity of summer fires - which can be devestating.

Good winter makes a lot of bush grass and small shrubs grow, then a dry run into summer dries it all out - perfect for starting fires in, whether by lightning, cigs, even broken discarded bottles can catch the sun and light it up, and boom! You lose thousands upon thousands of acres of bushland, and the trees die because of the intensity of the fire. 

I understand that I was not speaking about undergrowth.  

Sorry I did not make that plain.  

I once read a book entitled Soil and Civilisation.  In one of his chapters he said the the settlers bringing their European farming methods took 30 years to turn virgin grassland into the great dust bowl, but today's farming methods could do it in 10. A horticultural expert I knew said that would never happen.  I replied that it had quite recently. The Soviet Union I think under Kruschev  planned to open the East of the country up to farming.  He had a big campaign to send young citizens to the East in Siberia to open up the land. But it failed.

Many years ago in my youth, I had Polish friend who had been a POW and was in a camp in Siberia for many years.  He said there was permafrost, and although the topsoil defrosted about 12 inches  down, it never melted, they could only grow things which matured quickly.  Probably nothing to do with the thread but I thought it was interesting.

I do think of you in the US and in Australia and wherever else there are disasters.  We have forest fires in Europe, Greece, Spain and in the South of France. We sometime have them here in the UK.

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5 hours ago, DaveW said:

You quoting Mike made it look like you were being criticle of his post.

Modern farming methods are destructive to the environment, to economies, to employment, to famikies, to nutrition.......... etc

No just a few thoughts that came into mind at the time.  I realise I should have thought more of them before I posted.  

Not only modern farming methods but old ones which used slash and burn. They  slashed the forest, burnt the trees etc. then cultivated the ground for a few years without replacing any nutrients till the soil was depleted, then abandoned it and moved on and did the same to another patch and it all happened again. The book said the top soil on the earth is all that supports us. That goes, we go.  It says the topsoil is many feet thick in places and less than an inch in others.  

I watched a TV prog some time ago about plant life in desert regions.  They showed a part of the Sahara that had a short shower which left a few pools of water, within a short time a number of flowers suddenly sprang to life and flowered, dropped seeds in a very short  time which waited for the next shower which may be many years away. It also mentioned a place in Arabia, can't remember where, that they said never had any rain but had luscious plant life.  It was watered by a mist which came from the sea.

But I digress.  We always try to remember the victims of disasters. The new one is an earthquake in Mexico.

Trouble is there seem to be several occurring every day. 

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Actually, the farmers hereabouts are pretty good with their work. They do a lot of crop rotation, allowing the fields to rest a year or two, including letting the cattle onto it to eat the leftovers and provide more manure. MAny of them also do great at adding more nutrients than just NPK, (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium), especially sine our area is naturally very deficient in copper and selenium. And where we have had fires, we've done some great replanting-recently i drove past an area that was burnt out about 15 years back, and today it has many trees 10-20 feet high and thick, but well-spaced, as well.

 

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A few years ago my wife and my cousin and her husband went to visit a farm where we were evacuated to when war was declared in 1939. War was declared on Sept 3rd and we were evacuated from London on 6th Sept.  My cousin said she spent her 6th birthday in the fields with orange squash and cakes on Sept 9th.   She said there was a pond near the entrance which she fell in the first day, and there we chickens and other farm animals around.  

She said I am going to knock, which she did and said we were evacuees here in the war.  The farmer's wife said come in and offered us tea and cakes,  In the conversation that followed she said she was German. When the farmer arrived home he told us about the pond and that it was used to clean the horses hooves after they returned from the fields. In snapshots I had of me in the fields (I was one and a half  when was was declared) the were meadows with wild flowers growing in them.  You rarely see that now. There is a campaign to try to get meadows like that brought back.

Hedgerows which harbour beneficial wild life have been removed and great open fields have been created. Although we still have hedgerows around the edges of fields in many places.

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