Posted on November 8, 2008 - by Hubba

Out From the Snowbank

I did my podcast Wednesday night, turned out the lights and went to bed.  It had been a long cold rainy day moving cows.

When I got up Thursday morning, there were no lights and Old Man Winter was waiting for me outside.

My house has electric heat, so without electricity I had no heat.  I had to go to HQ anyway, so I took off.  It took me an hour to get there.  I couldn’t see anything.

Like most of the rest of western South Dakota, HQ had no electricity.  And there just wasn’t anything to do but wait.

It’s amazing how dependent we are on electricity.  We would go to the basement, come back for a flashlight, complete our errand, and five minutes later go the basement without a flashlight again.

But it was kind of exciting.  We made cowboy coffee, used one of the outhouses (the other one has become a depository for retired sporting equipment) chopped wood, lit candles, played pinochle, and watched old John Wayne movies til the battery ran out on Gemma’s laptop.

The power came back on yesterday afternoon, but now we are attending to the cattle.  And they are all over the place.  I haven’t heard of much death loss, but it seems like everybody’s cows moved one pasture over.

On the plus side, I am using the Blizzard Decimator 2000!