Powered

After a night of freezing rain and 40 to 50 mph winds, the power finally gave up the ghost Saturday morning around 9:00 a.m. About noon I packed up the kids and headed for Mom & Dad’s house, as did my brother and his family. Mom & Dad have a large pto-driven generator which can provide electricity to the house, well, and outbuildings – a necessity to power the fans in the farrowing house which was full of my brother’s sows and newborn piglets.

Back here, Matt found a small 5hp gas-powered generator to borrow. Our main concern was the freezers. We have 4 large freezers – 3 filled with meat – plus the refrigerator/freezer. The generator was enough to power the boiler…or 3 of the freezers…or the other freezer & refrigerator/freezer. One at a time. So he spent the three powerless days here babysitting the generator, switching it around every couple of hours or so. Our health inspector called this afternoon to see how we had handled the outage, and I was happy to tell her that all was well thanks to that borrowed generator.

But it was not enough of a generator to power the well, so when Matt wasn’t tending the generator he spent a good deal of time hauling water for the livestock. We opened the gate to the pasture so the cows & bull could go out and drink from the creek. It was warm enough that the ducks were out there as well. But the feeder calves, pigs, & chickens had to have water hand delivered. And when he wasn’t hauling water, he was moving snow.

Of course I took my camera along, so I’ll share some pictures this week from my parents’ farm where I grew up.

There are still areas here without power, as well as those further south (and I’m assuming here, too).