We survived. The weather system has moved on to torture some other poor souls and our state of emergency has officially ended. Of course it actually ended on Monday evening but TEMA (Tennessee Emergency Management Agency) still insisted that we were all going to die anyway if we went outside. Mid-morning on Wednesday the thermometer crossed the freezing threshold and Tennesseans everywhere were rejoicing and singing hallelujah. By Wednesday afternoon it had reached 42 degrees and everyone in the state was running around in shorts. Actually we weren’t but we at least felt like we had returned to some semblance of normalcy.
TEMA announced the news that the state had survived 60 continuous hours under the freezing mark. We have heard over and over how amazing this is. TVA (electrical system) announced that they had the highest usage ever recorded on Tuesday as we all tried to keep our homes heated. Our lowest temperature at the farm was Tuesday morning with a low of 1.7 degrees.
During all of this the only time I felt I was truly in a state of emergency was when I needed to go the bathroom. When you wait until the last possible second to pee and you find yourself having to pull down your jeans and three layers of long underwear with frozen fingers . . . it is safe to say that was a real state of emergency.
Our tractor battery is no longer in our house hanging out with the other food items in our pantry. Jason reunited the battery with the tractor on Wednesday morning after the thermometer had crossed the freezing mark. After putting the battery back in the tractor Jason had a moment of silence and then, with some trepidation, turned the key to start the tractor. It came to life immediately. Jason did a celebratory fist pump and looked like he had just won a gold medal at the Olympics. He continued to revel in his glory today after he was on the tractor for awhile moving feed around and refilling hay feeders. After he was done with the tractor he told me for the 37th time me how brilliant he was for having the foresight to bring the tractor battery into the house.
I made the mistake of saying we did not really know if bringing the battery into the house accomplished anything since we waited until it had warmed up to start the tractor anyway. This was definitely the wrong thing to say. I was told clearly that I know nothing about tractors, and in particular nothing about our highly temperamental Ford tractor (and it is highly temperamental). Since I have no immediate plans to improve my knowledge on this topic I bow to Jason’s authority that the battery living in our house saved the day.
We no longer have any double (or triple!) blanketed horses. Everyone has on one blanket and most of those are rain sheets. I shall do my best not to complain about the rain this weekend and instead appreciate the fact that the air temperature is well north of the freezing mark.
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Jason reuniting the battery with the tractor
Fabrizzio and Merlin were very relaxed while waiting for the farrier
Walden was convinced Jason had food in his pocket . . .
. . . but it was just a phone. Walden wanted to try and eat it anyway.
Noble was looking relaxed in the sunshine
Sam doing his “that was sooooo good!” routine with his tongue after eating
Wiz hanging out
Darby, Alex and Dutch
Homer and Ritchie
Levendi and Apollo
Calimba
Toledo, Johnny and Walon enjoying their patch of green rye grass
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