A Wild Day - And Then There Were 33

Awoke early Saturday morning to find an 'Active Weather' warning on the Weather Network. High winds, thunder and lightening and heavy rain forecast. Within half an hour of reading this, it got dark - very, very dark. Suddenly, about 6:30 AM the wind came up ferociously, thunder started to roll, and lightening flashed across the sky. For about fifteen minutes it rained so hard, we couldn't see to the end of our driveway! The power started to flicker, and continued to flicker on and off for about fifteen minutes. It was very weird; some of the electronics would buzz or beep as the power came and went. Just before 7:00 AM the power went out. The thunder, lightening and rain continued for quite a while - shaking the house at points.

Farmer Man went out to check the chickens when the storm abated somewhat, and found one poor Leghorn dead on the floor of the coop. We have to assume the thunder scared her to death, poor thing. Everyone else seemed fine, the coop seemed in good shape. We had to go into town; Saturday is currently the only day our dump is open and we were over-due for a visit. We were hearing stories everywhere about power outages in town, huge trees down and the Golden Arches of McDonalds, on the highway just a couple of miles from us, hit by lightening.

We returned to the farm a little after 10:00 AM, still no power. The storm had abated but it was still raining. What do you do in a power outage? We went for a nap! On waking, still no power. We watched some old John Wayne movies on the laptop until the power started to go, moved a table into the sun room and played some cards in the best light we had. Being without power for such a length of time became an issue: we couldn't cook or make coffee. We were worried about all our lovely Berkshire pork in the freezer, we were trying not to open the fridge to increase the temperature. The situation made us realize just how tied to the grid we are: couldn't get online, our phone didn't work, couldn't recharge the computer or the camera, couldn't cook. Because we're on a well, run with an electric pump, we even had to be careful of water use - using a bucket of rain water to refill the toilet as the day went on. We finally went out for coffee and some fast food about 4:00 PM. Thunder, lightening and rain had started up again. Just as the light started to fade, the power finally came back on! One of the first orders of business: looking into purchasing a generator!!