It's been a long 3 weeks here in hell. I just got power a few days ago and I fixed my own phone line down the road, a tree stump took it out. My wife says " you know you're a redneck when you sit on the side of the road and fix your own phone line". Phone company said that the repair date was December 13. I don't think anybody was prepared for this beast, including myself. Our farm has hundreds of 100+ year old trees down everwhere. This place looks pretty bare now, or maybe I should say more like a war zone. All of our buildings are still up, besides a few sheets of metal here and there. My moblie home is still standing which is a surprise, because their are alot of moblie homes destroyed. 1 mile down the road there is a moblie home and all thats left is the floor and frame, so I think I'm damn lucky. I've learned alot in the past 3 weeks, like who really are my friends and who are not. Sometimes some family members can be a pain in the ass. I hope my children and I never have to go through a storm like this ever again. It's going to take years to get over this, but right now we're taking it just one day at a time. It could have been a lot worse though, I wasn't stuck in a attic or on a roof for days.
Did you evacuate before the storm hit? I can only imagine what the feeling is like...as a fellow farmer leaving your Ranch behind and wondering if you will have anything left of your livelyhood, your life basically, to return to after the storm is through. I feel for you a lot. Most of the people will be able to go back to their jobs once the companies and businesses rebuild. It's different if you are a farmer.
My wife and son left and went to her parents house. I stayed behind here to keep the dairy going. We basically worked during the whole storm. First we had a sheet of 50x200 plastic covering a silo, it tried to blow off, so we secured it down with some rear tractor tires and sand. Next we had a tree blow down at the corner of the driveway were all the heifers were standing, so we ran down there with the backhoe and some wire and patched it. The last thing I want to do was chase cows in the middle of the hurricane. Even with all hell breaking loose around us, we still never missed a milking. We still manage to keep milking even in the middle of the storm, with a generator of course. I tell you things have been pretty wild here in the past few weeks. The first week you couldn't even find gas anywhere. The second week you could find gas but the lines were hours long and had soldiers with M16's at the pump. Some stations shut down because of riots and fights. Thank god we had a fuel tank here on the farm, but its empty now :doah: People were drilling holes in gas tanks and stealing gas. Some people were just stealing cars for the gas. For the first time in over 100 years it is marshall law here. The motto around here is "Shoot to kill". Somebody would have hard time stealing anything from me as am armed to the gillls with guns waytogo . I always had a sawed off shotgun and a 357 wedged between the seat and console. Well it will be back to normal one day soon I hope
I've been wondering how you fared! Glad to see that you made it through with minimal damage and that everyone in your family is OK. waytogo
