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If you're new here: Joe and I milk seventy Holsteins north of Watertown, New York. The ice storm that came through the North Country the first week of January knocked out our power, and it is still out. My sister Sharon lives in town and has her lights back, so I'm typing these at her kitchen table on her computer. Her husband Bill set the page up for me. The newest news is on top.
Please pass this along to anyone who has been asking, especially Aunt Yvonne in Florida and Uncle Leroy and Aunt Nancy in Arizona, so you can all stop calling Sharon's house at six in the morning. We love you. We know you're worried. We're all right.
Please don't send money to us. We're managing. If you want to help, the church in town is collecting for families who are worse off than we are, and Sharon will drop off anything you mail to her house. They're asking for:
And letters! Sharon prints out the e-mail and I read it by the lamp at night.
The crew says power on our road by Wednesday. A line crew from Ohio (we know by the plates on their trucks) worked down the county road all day yesterday setting new poles. Joe walked out and brought them coffee and a dozen of my molasses cookies, and they told him ours was the first farm all week with a cookie. I doubt that, but I'll take it.
This is day eleven without power at the farm. The generator is still running the milkers, the bulk tank and the well pump, and we're all sleeping in the kitchen by the wood stove, because the rest of the house is as cold as the barn. Sarah went back to college this afternoon. She was a big help, and she can milk as well as her father now, though I'm not supposed to say that in front of him. David's school is still closed.
Church this morning was by kerosene lamp, and the minister kept it short, which nobody minded. The cows are milking a little better. We're still down from before the storm, but the vet says that's to be expected after the missed milkings the first two days.
I'll write again when the lights come on. I can't wait to write that one.
Good news: the milk truck has been getting through since Monday, so we've stopped dumping milk. The plant has its power back too. We dumped three days' worth, and I'm not going to say what that came to in dollars, because Joe gets a look on his face.
The National Guard stopped at the farm on Tuesday to check on us and ask whether we needed water or fuel. Soldiers from Fort Drum have been out clearing roads all over the county. Some of them don't look any older than David.
Sharon and I worked the supper line at the shelter at the high school on Tuesday night. It's mostly older folks from town who can't stay warm at home, and a few young families with babies. People are doing everything for each other. Somebody brought in a whole venison roast, somebody else brought a guitar, and the kids had a checkers tournament going on the gym floor. I have never been prouder of the North Country.
So many of you have asked about the cows that I'll explain. You can't milk seventy cows by hand, and you can't keep milk cold without power. Our lights went out about nine o'clock Wednesday night, the 7th. Our neighbor Edwin Meiners had a generator big enough for one barn at a time, so for two days he and Joe hauled it back and forth between his barn and ours on a hay wagon, milking in shifts around the clock. Nobody slept much.
But there was no truck to pick the milk up. The roads were blocked with trees and wires, and the plant had no power either. Milk you can't ship has to be dumped. It about broke Joe's heart.
Then on Saturday Joe's cousin drove up from down near Syracuse, where the ice wasn't so bad, with a big generator on a flatbed. It runs off the tractor and drinks diesel like you wouldn't believe, but we've been milking on our own schedule ever since, and Edwin has his own barn back.
The trees are the saddest part. Every tree on the place is broken. The maples along the lane look like somebody went down the row with a giant pair of shears. The sugarbush behind the barn is a tangle, and we won't be boiling sap this spring, maybe not for a few springs.
We're all right! That's the main thing. Joe, me, David, Sarah (who was home from college on break), and all seventy cows.
The freezing rain started Monday night and didn't let up until Friday. Everything was coated in ice, an inch thick and more in places. Wednesday night the trees started breaking. It sounded like rifle shots all night long, one after another, and then a crash. In the morning the poles along our road were snapped off like matchsticks, with wires down across the driveway and over the barnyard fence.
The President has declared a disaster here and in the counties around us. Watertown has some of its lights back. We're farther out, and the crews say it may be a while.
We have the wood stove, the kerosene lamps, Edwin's generator for milking, and good neighbors. Barry Ashe came up the road with his chain saw on Thursday and cut us out to the county road before he went home to start on his own mess.
Sharon says I can come into town every couple of days to use the computer and her shower (what a gift!), so watch this page.
Love to all,
Dot (and Joe)
You are visitor number
since January 11, 1998.
Write to us at [email protected]. Sharon will print it out for us.
Last updated Sunday, January 18, 1998