Chapter Two: Ice Storm

When we last left off, I was out in the car trying to charge our cell phones.   Silly me.   It didn't matter if they were charged because the cell towers were out!  On Saturday and Sunday we could only send and receive text messages occasionally.   Forget trying to get an actual call through, it just wasn't happening.  And now you can see why......

Hmmmm, how's that for a slick sheet of ice?   There was no way we were going to try and walk out on that!  I like my bones and hip joints fully intact, thank you.

And here's the view looking out toward the barn.   Everything was coated with a thick layer of the shiny stuff.  It was pretty to look at but deadly to walk on it.

Now, here's a pic of the really scary part.   See all those white "bumps" on the ice?  Well, those are the ice chunks that the wind was hurtling off the trees and slamming down on the icy earth.   For hours.   While the wind roared.   And the trees groaned.   And limbs cracked and fell to the ground.  The noise was incredible!

Can you see the ice that fell off of the tree trunk on the left side of the pic?   All the trees and buildings were covered with ice on the southwest side as that was the direction from which the winds blew the storm onto our farm.   And the poor bird house on the lower right was drenched in icicles.

We spent Saturday helplessly keeping an eye on the trees around our buildings, praying none of the limbs or trees themselves would crash onto them.   It was time to turn our attention to the inside of the house.   It was cold, cold, cold outside and without electricity to run our heating system, we were losing heat in the house fast.   Thank goodness we have one of these in our living room.

Excuse the truly messy living room, but we had to push my antique sideboard to the right away from the heat of our wall propane heater.   And the leather love seat had to be moved over as well because the heater was throwing off a tremendous amount of heat and making the couch hot.

When we first bought the farmhouse, I was not thrilled with the ugly appliance installed right on the living room wall!   Who would do that, I thought to myself?   My friends all know how much I love to decorate our home and that atrocity just wasn't going to work in my decorating scheme.   HA!   I love that sucker now!   If it wasn't for that little heater we would have been Popsicles.   Jeremy slept on the couch until we got power days later as the living room was the warmest room in the house.  

So, that was how we survived 4 days without power.  Many other folks in our area weren't so fortunate.   We've had at least 9 deaths due to hypothermia since this storm hit.   Really.  Deadly.   Stuff.   By cooking and baking during the day on our antique propane kitchen stove I was able to warm up the kitchen while providing us with yummy food.   We may not have had light, but we sure ate well.

Late Saturday the temps began to rise to 35 and we heard the drip-drip of ice melting off the rooftops.  All night long the temps stayed above freezing and by Sunday afternoon the ice was beginning to relent.   Joel and Jeremy trudged out to the barn, breaking through the ice as they stomped their way across the thinning ice.   Once they reached the barn they were able to break the ice that had built up at the bottom of the garage doors. 

Yea!   A small victory!    Now it was time to see if our "hurricane" generator used during our years in Florida would fire up once again.   Thank goodness my guys are really handy because they coaxed that little monster back to life.   And then they managed to bring it up to our porch, get it running again and run wires into the house to keep our freezers and refrigerator running.   We had a lot of food stored in them and didn't relish the thought of losing it all now.   Especially after all the hard work we put into the pigs! 

Eventually they had all our food stores chilling once again.   Since we never opened the doors of the freezers, everything in there was still frozen solid.   Thank goodness.  We stuffed old towels in the crack of the windows where the wires came into the house and laid a carbon monoxide detector on the kitchen table, just in case.  It pays to be safe, right?

Thanks to Joel's dad, Fred, for all the tools and skills he gifted to Joel over the years.   This old bedraggled piece of 2x4 (Fred probably made this 40 years ago) with 2 electrical boxes mounted on it has been put into service many times over our marriage, and this past weekend we were once again grateful to drag it out of the workshop and use it to safely power a few precious items inside the house.   Thanks again, Fred.

By Monday I was getting a little bit of cabin fever so Joel and I took a short drive to see how what the rest of our area looked like.   Wow!   What a mess.

Just a mile from our farm there were trees strewn across the country road.   One of our neighbors must have gone out with his chainsaw and cut up the tree so cars could pass.   I can't tell you how many trees were across the road as we drove along.   You would see the base trunk on one side of the road and the top of the tree on the other side.....with lots of chopped up wood laying off to one side.

 Sometimes the road would only have one passable lane.

This tree on the right must have been really tall as the tops were spread out over the left side of the road.

And then we started coming across electric and telephone poles leaning like this one was.....and we drove over downed electric lines many, many times.

The tops of some trees looked as though they had been blown off by a bomb.   There was destruction everywhere we looked.

Ka-boom!   Hundreds of trees look like this everywhere we go.

And on and on it goes.

Thank the Lord for the tireless work of the men of our local utility companies.   These guys are working around the clock desperately trying to bring life back to normal.  The governor of Tennessee called out the National Guard to assist with clearing trees from the roads so crews could get in and repair the lines.   Thousands of people are still without power as I write this 6 days after the storm hit.

By Tuesday at lunchtime we were getting ready to eat and our lights flickered on and off and on again.  I was a little surprised that I shed a few tears of joy at the prospect of having lights, hot water and heat once again.   The power clicked off as fast as it came on, but a few hours later we had full power that stayed put.   Yippee!    All I could think about was taking a long hot shower and shampooing my hair.

Our house is at "the end of the line" and we didn't think we'd get power until this weekend because we are so far out of town.   Our neighbors down in the valley, however, were not as fortunate as we were as it took another day and a half for them to have their power restored.  And our friends who live north of town are still without power and have been told it could be days till they get the lines repaired.

So, what lessons did we learn from our experience this last week?   Ha!   A whole house generator has popped to the top of our list of "wants".   Joel is also determined to keep our generator and other essentials in top working order because you never know when you're going to need them. 

We had been shopping for a wood burning stove for our living room and had planned on getting one in March.   That will also be at the top of our list of "wants" because that would have been an excellent source of heat, especially since we have an almost endless supply of firewood right outside our back door. 

Next, what would have happened if the water towers had been unable to pump water to us?   The local authorities asked everyone to conserve their water use as the pumps were working at partial capacity.  With that being said, maybe it's time to have a well and a solar/wind powered pump for it.   Just thinking here......

Thanks to everyone who was concerned for our safety and well being this last week.  We three stuck together and kept warm, dry and fed.   I got a lot of knitting done and the guys read a lot.   I must say I surely do appreciate having lights once again..........and hot water!

Still lovin' it here,
Debbie