Rain and Chill

And Again With The Power

It has really cooled off.  On the plus side, I did finish stripping the stalls. At the moment, none of the Boys has much bedding in their stalls, but all the floors have rubber mats, and they just kind of go in there to stand when the days are hot.

Which the days are not, at the moment. In fact, it was so chilly last night that I ended up under a blanket. I had the window open and had to close it by about 4 AM or so.

While I was still wide awake, because I'd been tossing and turning since midnight. Why?  Because once again the electricity had gone off.  I can certainly cope with flashlights and my neat little headlamp for light, but out here in the country, with a well and a pump run by electricity, no power means no water.  Again, I can cope with my bottled supply, but I do worry about the horses. Filling a 50 gallon water trough--should it get hot again--is not an easy task when there is no water beyond what I have set aside in two 5 gallon plastic containers.  I lay awake thinking of ways to get water should I need it, including going over to the sandpit next door to carry water back in the five gallon containers.....  This train of thought, of course, led me to considering all kinds of emergency solutions to potential future power outages.  What to do? How to plan?  Will my generator run the pump if I turn everything else off?

Then, at some point, the power company's truck pulled up to the wires just past my driveway.  That was the spot where I heard that strange sound and the flaring blue light during the thunderstorm.  When I'd gone out to the mailbox yesterday, I saw a loosely draped wire sagging from the poles.  Apparently, there was something wrong there as the truck stayed for nearly an hour, lights flashing and the lift bucket groaning as it went up and down.

Shortly after the truck left, the power surged on for about a minute, then things flashed on and off again, and all went dark. Then it all happened again. Each time, as it did, I heard that strange sound--kind of a combination of a low pitched buzz and a tympani drum roll.  I called the power company to tell them about the sound, and the representative assured me it was just what the power sounded like when it went through the wires.

H-m-m-m....if that was so, then why didn't it sound like that all the time?  Apparently, the repair crews had discovered some bare wires along the road. What I'm guessing is that from time to time, wet tree branches were hitting the wet spots and shorting out the system.  What I was hearing was a short circuit, not a normal power flow.

Somewhere between 5 AM and 6 AM, the lights came back on, and this time quietly.  And so far, they have stayed on.

I usually do not have so many power outages, so all this is a bit surprising. But, if the wires around here are old, perhaps this latest series of incidents is a good thing.  Perhaps they have put some replacement wiring in up and now we will be OK during the wet weather.

You never quite know how much you depend on electricity until you lose it.