Ugh, Snow

So my power went out at 2PM, but somehow got restored at 3PM. Exceptionally fast for out here in the country.

Then is went out again at 6PM and was not restored until midnight. It forced me to crack open one of my backlogs of books: "Murder At Green Springs."

Green Springs is the area of the county I live in. This is the true story of a murder that occurred here in the early 1900s and of the cover-ups and botched investigations that still cause controversy here. It's an interesting read, now that I've been here for 10 years and understand the references and the history of families I've heard of and encountered.

 

My primary heat is my wood stove. I'm glad to have it...this place has NO insulation. If it gets 40' or below, I'm burning wood.

I did go out about 9:30 heading for Applebee's in Charlottesville (20 miles west) to get something to eat (they are open until 11PM.) It was still sleet/rain here, with evidence of cleared debris all over the place. I had to clear stuff out of the way as I slugged my way out to the hard surface road. On the way, my XM Weather Alert indicated that there were still advisories in place for all points west, so I just went to the local McDonald's drive thru with about 10 minutes to spare before closing. *burp*

I actually swung by IHOP first...they were closed. At 9:45PM. That place has always sucked. It is a blight on the chain. For being one of the few sit-down places within many miles, they fall flat. Such a missed opportunity.

I went out mainly because I wanted to keep the fridge & freezer sealed. The USDA conservatively says all is good in the fridge for 4 hours. The outage was 6 hours, I did not open the doors once, and I keep it at 37'. I'll smell the milk tomorrow, maybe toss the open mayo and the oyster sauce, and let the rest slide.

 

I am so frustrated there is no way to adequately capture the spectacle of being surrounded by acre upon acre--literally as far as the eye can see--of ice covered trees with the sun in the background.

 

Funny you should mention it, Nancy. As a matter of fact, I have. I've looked at what's out there off & on for a few years.

It would be nice to easily patrol my property, especially during hunting season. And one guy to the east of me loses his cows every once in a while...it would be handy to help him out.

I'm just not certain how the resident hawks would take to it. And when I research this, I get caught up in not wanting to waste my money buying something cheap, only to then go get what I should have bought in the first place. But I have this way of dabbling-then-abandoning stuff, which is fine when you're talking tens of dollars, but not-so-fine when you're talking hundreds. So now I'm off to Craigslist in search of some other guy's short attention span deal.

Men have such a hard time making up their minds...

 

My neighbor called me to clear out some stuff he cut up early this AM so he could get out of our right-of-way and on his way to work at 5AM.

I got my tractor started, went up the hill, and encountered something that obviously happened after he got out:

We're gonna need a bigger tractor...or a bulldozer.​

I gotta wait until his nephew (also lives down here) shows up with his chain saw.
I need to get me one of those things (as though I need another gas engine device to mess with.)

 

Yup. And with my tractor, I could make real short work of it, too.

I have a small chain saw that has not been used in many years. I'm not sure it's salvageable. I'm real bad when it comes to winterizing gas engines. That's why I get as many PTO accessories for my diesel tractor as I can, rather than buy separately-powered equipment...but I don't think they've made PTO chainsaws since the 50s (probably too much liability.)

My 2 neighbors have chain saws, and their families gotta get out, too. So it kinda works out that they can cut the stuff into a small number of heavy sections for me to push aside with my tractor rather than cut a whole lot of pieces light enough for us to manually lug. And it's rare that I can't just push the fallen stuff aside in one intact piece. These are 3 really heavy tall trees stacked on top of each other. There's another 15' to 20' of them off-camera.

 

So it took us a 2 1/2 hours to cut these apart and for me to drag them off using a chain, and then shove them into the woods with the front end loader. It was low 30s and wet. The ice was still on all the limbs. I dialed back my wood stove since I was not going to be around, and when I finished and got back home, it was 67' inside. It felt like heaven.

How did the colonists do it?