Today is January 9, 2008, it’s 2:00pm, 36-degrees (f), the winds are calm and the sky a slate-grey. There are several inches of slushy snow on the ground, and the Great Drip has begun.
The past five days have not been so calm, as the storm of 2008 slammed northern California. The very rural Sierra foothills, where I share 15-acres with Ma, Jeff & Dale, and the Girls of Penny Lane Farm got hit hard. So, I have some pictures to share, a few tales to tell, some lessons learned, and a wish list.
First - thank you, Gaia, Mother, Mary, Lady in all Your Forms and Names for protecting us through this expression of Your Passion. It was exciting and challenging to experience your Fury as the Moon waned towards new, thank you for keeping us safe.
In the dark hours of the morning of January 4, 2008 the first of several winter storms landed with winds in our Sierra foothills measuring 80-90 mph. At 6:46am the power went out. I had filled all of the gas cans the previous day, so starting the generator was no problem; but there was no sense in going out in the worst of it just then.
I fed the dogs and went back to bed. I watched the trees swaying and listened to the wind howl. I was sitting in my room upstairs at 12:30 when I heard a very loud crack, the house shook, Jeff & Dale looked at me alert, ears straight up! It wasn’t an earthquake, the earth wasn’t moving.
I went downstairs, it was much darker than it had been, the top of a tree was pointing at the window, branches overhanging the patio. Branches were hanging down outside the sliding glass door of the dining room. There was a tree on the roof. A 100-foot Douglas Fir tree had blown down, catching the very corner of the dining room.
No windows broken, nothing broken in the dining room hutch, or pictures knocked from the walls. Nothing had come through the ceiling.
Sitting on the bookcase in that corner of the dining room was my mother’s white porcelain Madonna. Ma is a very catholic Catholic, the Madonna and the saints are a very important part of her faith. She is very accepting of my spiritual path. This specific Madonna belonged to my grandmother - a gift from Grandpa to Grandma when Ma was born.
She hadn’t even moved. I picked her up, thanking Mary, Gaia, Isis for protecting us, enabling the tree to fall in such a way as to do the least amount of damage. I then moved her out of harm’s way and lit a fresh candle.
With the cost of gas so high, I decided to limit myself to one 5-gallon tank of gas in the generator per day. During the five-day outage I learned that a hot shower is equal to watching TV by candlelight for 3 hours.
As soon as the crew had removed the tree, the snow began in ernest. I dug trails to the generator in the shop, the well house, the garage/chicken coup, and the mail box. It took over an hour to dig the trails, and there was an inch of snow on the first ones when I finished the last. I groomed them again an hour later, and then was out of daylight.
We only got 7" of snow - the trails would take a lot longer to dig out if we get much more than that.
What I learned from the Storm of ‘08
The generator “ought” to charge the battery on the starter when it’s running - it’s not. Now that I know that, I know to hook up the charger to the battery while I’m running the generator. Thank you to my great neighbor who could pull-start the generator when the battery was dead.
We “ought” to have a power-tool to deal with snow, shoveling is for the young - we’re not. We have a snow-blower, but I don’t know if it’s working or how to operate it. We have a snow-blower for the tractor, but the tractor is dead and it takes a man with an engine-lift to put the blower on the tractor - or so I’m told. Shoveling is also risky since I’m out of shape, if I have a heart-attack the response time is 45-minutes with the helicopter. Resolve in ‘08 to somehow solve this “ought” before it eats me.
Trees “ought” not to walk, but they do, but only for one or two steps before becoming horizontal.
It's snowing again.
Blessed Be,
Julie Epona
