Rusty is fine. There is at least 15 gallons of water in the trough, plus 3 gallons each in two separate buckets. The well man said he would be there Friday morning. I'll try to catch him then. I would be willing to bet the water is back on already. He probably stopped by either yesterday or tonight. He just lives a couple of miles away. He is a really nice man. He grew up in the house next door, now rental property. He always tells me stories about Ezra and Daisy who owned my farm when he was a kid. Last time he kidded me about my parents. He said every time he did work for them, they would be standing there with their checkbook trying to pay him, as if this was odd. I guess we're unusual. I do the same thing. lol These female hummers were going crazy yesterday. Darting around chasing each other. You could hear them hit each other sometimes. Maybe they are exercising, getting their strength and endurance up for the trip. Last year they didn't leave 'til the first week of October. It seems to get later every year. At least one of them this year was a return visitor. He wasn't the least bit afraid of me this spring. I will miss them.
I jinxed everything by predicting the well man would have the pump fixed when I got there this morning. He moved the appointment to Saturday morning, but not until after I waited for him a long time. It was a long day. Mostly preparing in case he couldn't come until Monday. He said I absolutely did not have to be there while he was there tomorrow. I believe water is the second most annoying thing to be without, after electricity, especially if you don't even have a well with a hand pump. How many times did I turn on the faucet today? Not telling.
Nope, in my opinion being without water is number one annoyance before electricity any day! Atleast you can have candles, etc. when there is no electricity but you gotta be able to flush those toilets!
I agree that having water is totally important. However, if you have a pickup (or trailer) you can always haul water if you are set up to do this. When I lived in Idaho, I had to haul my water for about two years, but I did get electricity sooner than that. I don’t ever want to have to live without either one ever again.
I remember one winter the electricity went off out there for several days due to a big snow storm that knocked trees down on the power lines everywhere. Without electricity, we didn't have water either, because the pump was electric. Finally figured out to catch water from snow melting off the roof from the gutter downspout. At least we could flush. LOL That was a nightmare, and my cousin from Ohio just happened to be visiting at the time. Poor guy. He never came back to visit.
We seldom lose electricity for long, but when it happens in the winter, it can be catastrophic if we are not prepared. One winter a few years ago, we lost power for a day and a half when the temps hovered around -40. We keep drinking water canned and have a wood stove and oil lamps, but we have no outhouse. We fetch water from the lake behind the house to flush the toilets if the pump is off, but the ice gets awfully thick when the temperature is that cold. We got through it fine, but I don't want to do it again. The outage was caused by a miscalculation by linemen restringing the lines along the highway. They made them too short and when the temperature go so low, the wires/cables contracted and snapped one or two of the poles, dropping the lines then they snapped. The repair guys then had to reinstall the poles(s) in the deeply frozen ground and restring the wires. I guess they won't do that again. Most of our outages are caused by vehicles skidding off the road or by eagles arcing out a substation.
Oh my goodness, @Don Alaska. It would frighten me to live anywhere it ever got down to -40 because of loss of power. It happens all the time here. But we aren't very well prepared for it. I guess people are careless about taking it seriously in warm climates.
Most of our power outages seem to be in the spring, summer, and fall, and they are attributed to traffic accidents taking out a power pole or, I think more often, to squirrels. In the winter, when we have outages they are usually due to ice building up on the lines.
Got a call from the pump man 10 minutes ago. He just now got the water running! He says there is something still wrong, because the pump is pumping too slowly, and he would come by one day next week and diagnose it further. I actually hope they find something, so they can fix it permanently. This is the 3rd time it has gone off in the last year or so, and they couldn't find anything wrong, except fire ants possibly shorting out some kind of circuit in the control box.
Joe Riley, the Fire Ant Video was interesting. When we lived in Mississippi our central air went out and the techs found that fire ants had built a huge mound inside the outside condenser and basically "fried" it! They are "mean" little dudes!