Glad that’s over….

We were without electric service the past several days thanks to a lightning storm that was the most spectacular display I can ever remember, at least over land.  (A few crossing the Atlantic in my flying days were probably about the same.)

But this storm came rolling over the Blue Ridge with a magnificent fury, the sky constantly illuminated with uninterrupted lightning across the horizon.  I should have gone to the pump house and cranked up the generator but it was time for bed and, as our guests will tell you, nothing interferes with my bedtime.

First thing in the morning we were greeted not only with the power failure but the news, thanks to the radio, that it was going to last several days.  After getting the generator started….and of course the battery was dead so I had to get the jumper cables.  That took awhile because Wooz, impatient that I hadn’t cleaned the basement, had put them away in the wrong place.  They’re supposed to be right there in the broken wheelbarrow.  I’ll get to that to eventually, too.

Anyway, with power restored to protect the meat in the four freezers, we did a quick drive around the pastures.  Some branches and even a couple of trees down but for a change they fell in the direction of the fencing, not across them.  And all the animals had survived the lightning.

Most of our pastures are fed by underground streams but there is one that depends on a well (electric pump not on our house system) and one that has been running low on water because of the drought.  Fortunately, we already had the tank on the pickup so we could handle the cows and the pigs pretty easily.  And our emergency procedure in the one pasture is to simply open the gate to a pond.

The generator does power the electric fencing in the front, so the heifers stayed to their mob grazing pattern.  The main herd fencing is not backed up but even two days after the power went out the cows had not dared challenge the fencing.  I guess touching 10,000 volts is not quickly forgotten.

But with day-time high temperatures around the 100-degree mark, working outside was exhausting and the house wasn’t much cooler.  The generator can’t handle both the freezers and the air conditioning.  We protected the meat and got by on minimum sleep.  I wanted to get a motel room but Wooz, true frontierswoman (or is it Scot?) insisted that we stay with the animals.

On the whole, the emergency procedures we had set up worked as we had hoped.  In fact, I was managing to nap yesterday afternoon, when Church came by to tell us the power was back on.

Still, not for the first time in the 10 years of our marriage did I decide we should ignore the expense and buy one of those 17,000 watt automatic generators at Tractor Supply.  It operates automatically, runs forever without lugging around Jerry cans of gas, and powers everything.  You notice I said “I decided”.  Can I convince the Scot?