Chapter 19

Monday morning, I awakened and found I was alone in bed, but the side Andy had been sleeping on was still warm. After a quick trip to the bathroom, I went downstairs to find her in the kitchen, making coffee and breakfast.

"Good morning." She smiled. "You got up too soon. Here I was planning to surprise you with coffee and breakfast in bed."

"Mmm." I murmured, pulling her into a quick hug. "Sorry, but I'm used to waking up early."

"Me too, now let me go, or you'll have burnt eggs for breakfast." She laughed after a few seconds. "We might think about getting some more wood inside today, just in case the hydro goes out like the phone did."

"Okay. If the power does go out, I'll have to move the generator down from the equipment shed. It'll supply enough power to keep the furnace and small appliances going in the house and still have enough for the well and the barn." I answered. 'There's no 220 volt power from the generator though, so we couldn't use the electric stove or the water heater."

"You've got a generator?"

"Yeah, it's on a trailer in the implement shed. It'll give us about a thousand watts at 110 volts." I explained. "When Uncle Silas rigged up the outside waterers, he had to think of a way to keep power on if the hydro went off and it was freezing, otherwise there'd be no way to water the stock."

"Wow, I'll bet Dad wishes he had one. I know if the power goes out, he sure worries about watering the animals."

"Yeah. Probably every farmer around here would like a generator to have just in case, but it's actually a big expense to have just sitting there. I think the only reason we've got one is that Uncle Silas bought it cheap at an auction." I looked out the window and sighed. "Actually, looking at this weather, I think I just might move the trailer over to the power pole and hook it up this morning as soon as the chores are done. That way if the power does go out, all we have to do is throw a switch to disconnect the hydro and connect the generator, then start the generator."

My glance out the window had been enough to show me that the wind had dropped a lot, but the snow was falling heavier than it had been before. I didn't like the look of it at all. We were both quite quiet during breakfast, but as soon as I stood up to get the milk pail, Andy put the dishes in the sink, then began to dress to come help me do the chores.

"Why don't I do the milking and start the chores in the barn while you get the generator trailer moved down to the power pole?" She suggested. "If the power does go out, I really don't think you should be trying to do that in a hurry."

"Okay, but I'll carry the water down to the barn and the milk back." I agreed. "And, no heavy lifting, don't try to clean all the stalls, don't haul any bales, none of that, okay?"

"Dammit, I'm not helpless and I do know my physical limits." Andy snapped back.

"Okay." I sighed. "I'm just worried that if you hurt yourself, there isn't any way I can get help and I'm the world's worst doctor."

"Oh." She calmed down quickly. "You're right. I'll be really careful and watch out that I don't strain myself, okay?"

"Thanks." I smiled at her, then swung an arm over her shoulder to hug her gently to my side.

My gentle hug didn't seem to be enough, suddenly her head was buried against my chest and she hugged me tight.

"I am sorry." She sighed. "I wasn't thinking about both of us being in danger because of the weather. I was just assuming that you were being overprotective because of my miscarriage."

I didn't comment, because in fact I felt that I actually was being slightly overprotective, but at the same time I was feeling somewhat vulnerable to the constraints that the weather was forcing us to live under. One of the things that had come to mind was the death of Nettie Granger, and I certainly didn't want to say anything out loud about that. It took several moments before I thought of a way I could express my feelings without being too open about anything of that sort.

"Well, Missy, I can tell you that I plan on being extra careful myself because right now we're two people alone and defenceless against the elements. If we make a mistake, it could be our last one."

She just nodded and hugged me very hard for a minute, then stepped away and zipped her parka.

"I think we'd better get going. That cow will be looking for one of us." She sighed deeply. "Her udder will be full and since she's in a nice dry barn, she doesn't give a damn about the weather. She just wants to be milked."

"Yeah." I answered.

I finished doing up my parka and grabbed a pair of winter mittens. By the time I turned, she had the milk bucket half full of water in one hand, the bucket of skim milk for the sow in the other and she was going out the door, ignoring my protest about her carrying anything. I didn't want to have an argument with her; instead I watched her progress toward the barn as I went outside myself and saw that she wasn't having problems. I resigned myself to the fact that she probably knew her own limits, then carried on with my other plans and walked toward the equipment shed.

It was cold outside, but not as cold as it had been last night and the wind had certainly dropped. Instead it was snowing much more than it had been. The wind was still blowing the snow, but now it wasn't drifting nearly as badly as it had been the night before.

The farm yard had been swept almost clear of snow except for the latest fall; the only drifts were those that had formed in the lee of the buildings and solid objects. It wasn't until I was approaching the implement shed that I was forced to fight my way through deeper snow. In fact there was a three-foot high drift across the front of the building and in front of the main door. Luckily the main door rolled upward and the regular door opened inward.

It only took a moment to open the big door and then get the tractor started. While I waited for it to warm to operating temperature, I walked over to the generator trailer to check the oil and fuel levels. As I'd suspected, Uncle Silas had left them topped up and ready for emergency use. Checking that the battery levels were up, I moved to the control panel, flipped on the ignition switch and pressed the starter button. The little gasoline engine rattled into life and I grinned.

"Thanks, Uncle Silas." I whispered to myself.

Leaving the generator engine running to warm up and recharge it's battery from the startup, I moved back to the tractor and hopped onto the seat. It took a few minutes to plow the three-foot drift from in front of the building with the front end bucket of the tractor, then I backed into the building to little trailer, carefully lining up the hitch pin through the tractor cab's back window. Hopping down, I shut off the generator's engine, dropped the hitch pin in place between the tractor and trailer, then stowed the jack-wheel that had been holding up the hitch.

I had to stop as I tried to ease the trailer out of it's parking space because Fran's boxes of herbs were in the way. I had to shift some of them over a few feet to swing the trailer out of its parking space. I glanced outside at the weather and had to chuckle about the idea that anyone would be coming to pick them up very soon.

"Sorry Fran, we were willing to help, but I suppose someone is going to run out of tea." I thought to myself as I moved the bulky boxes and I chuckled at the thought for some reason.

With the boxes out of the way, I towed the trailer out of the building, then into position near the main power pole and unhitched it, resetting the jack-wheel and blocking both trailer wheels so the trailer wouldn't accidentally be shifted. After that, all I had to do was plug the heavy three pronged power lead into the switch box and the generator was ready for use in case the hydro went off.

With that job done, I sighed in relief. I would have hated to have had to do that job late at night. Yet as I was getting back onto the tractor, I realised that I should have done the job the day before. That upset me a bit. How many more little jobs were there that I should be doing, but wasn't, simply because I'd forgotten them or really hadn't thought about them? Since I was so new to this farm, I didn't have the advantage of years of experience to draw on so that I could recall special tasks or unusual circumstances and it bothered me.

I took a few moments as I sat on the seat of the tractor and glanced around the farm yard, my mind flashing over each item or building that my gaze confronted. In each case, I paused for a few seconds, thought about what special treatment anything might need because of the weather, then passed on. The only things I could think of were regular chores, anything special seemed to have already been done and only needed to be rechecked for changes that might have been caused by the storm.

While I had the tractor out, I decided that I'd move some hay and straw bales to the cattle pens, and while I was there I checked to be sure they were all okay. A few of them were actually up and around, moving out to get feed and water. I chased them up to make sure each of them was able to get to its feet, then added a bit more bedding and checked both pens to make sure feed and water were still available.

When I was done checking the outside cattle, I used the tractor again to move a few straw bales just outside the barn door since I knew we'd need them for bedding inside of a few days. Then I moved a load of dry firewood from the old woodshed to the wood bin that opened into the back porch of the house. After that, I put the tractor away, plugged in its block heater and closed up the implement shed.

As I walked to the barn, I made up my mind that I was going to work out a methodical pattern to the repetitive jobs that needed to be done around the farm. That way, checking for problems would become a habit. This was my place now and I didn't want to make any more work for myself than I had to. More than that however, I didn't want to have to go back and do a job over because I'd forgotten to do some small task and by forgetting it, I'd created a problem.

I was in a thoughtful mood when I opened the barn door. Andy was finishing up feeding the animals, but the rest of the inside chores were done. I set about shifting the straw bales that I'd moved just outside the door into the barn, stacking them along the aisle.

"What about hay?" Andy asked. "Is there lots of it in the loft?"

"Yup." I answered shortly.

"Is there something wrong?" She asked.

"I don't know." I sighed as I stacked the last bale into position. "As I was moving the generator, I was realising that it should have been there and ready last night. I've never spent any time on this farm in the winter, so I was wondering if I've done all the things I need to do to keep the place operating smoothly."

"Oh for cripes sake!" She snapped shortly. "I was just thinking how well you look after this place. Look around you once, you don't fumble or fart around when you do any of the jobs you need to do. It's like you've been here forever."

"Well, you've got a different perspective than I do." I sighed. "Now, what else do we need to do in here?"

"Nothing. I've done it all." She grinned. "See, and I didn't hurt myself either. What more has to be done outside?"

"Nothing, everything out there is done too." I managed a smile.

Later when we were in the house and warming up over a coffee, I tried to explain to her why I worried that I'd forgotten something. I couldn't really explain it, but I knew there was something I'd wanted to be sure I did, and I knew that I hadn't done it. I explained that I'd started to have the feeling the day before and that it was worrying me.

She actually tried to help, asking me questions and making suggestions to try and clear my mind, but nothing seemed to leap out at me. Finally, we simply gave up trying to discover what was bothering me and we simply talked for a while.

The radio didn't have good news for us concerning the weather. It seemed that the weather system had stalled over us and was going to carry on pounding us with wind and snow for at least another day.

Before lunch I put on my winter clothes and went out to check everything, but couldn't see any problems. After lunch, I was feeling loggy, so I went upstairs and laid down for a short nap while Andy had another soak in the bath. I awakened briefly to find her snuggled at my side, so I simply wrapped her in my arms and dozed off again.

Our afternoon chores went as smoothly as they had the day before and once more we spent part of our evening sitting in the parlour quietly talking before we went to bed for the night.

We awoke on Tuesday morning to find that although the wind was still blowing, the snow was falling heavier than ever. In actual fact, the snow was building up faster than it was drifting away. In some ways that meant that chores were a lot harder to do than they had been.

Tuesday was one of those days when we had to simply keep slogging away at things to get done. Everything seemed to take longer and little things seemed to keep cropping up to slow us down. At least it wasn't as bitterly cold as it had been and that helped with some jobs; for instance the outdoor cattle all made the effort to get up and wander out to visit the feeders and waterers. Other than that little gem of good news, the whole day was boring and quite tiring for both of us.

That evening both Andy and I felt tired and uncommunicative. Both of us spent some time reading. Andy was reading a novel and I did some studying from a school text, but it wasn't long before both of us were yawning and feeling sleepy. We finally decided to simply go to bed. While neither of us was in a great mood, at least we weren't annoyed with each other and we fell asleep, gently cuddling together

Wednesday morning the blizzard was back with a vengeance, but now it had the added ammunition of the previous two days' snowfall to build higher drifts and cause more problems. To make things worse, the wind had changed direction. Now we not only had the old hard packed drifts to contend with, but we had a new set of drifts building at almost ninety degrees to the first ones.

Our first real problem of the day was actually getting into the barn. The wind had formed a drift in front of the barn door and we had to shovel snow just to get inside so we could do the chores. Of course I had to get a shovel first and since the closest shovel was in the barn, that meant I had to get in by way of the back door, which also meant I had to go through two gates that were drifted in solid. I ended up climbing over the two fences, both ways.

At that point, I should have realised how the day was going to go. If anything, it went downhill from there as the day passed.

When I had picked up the shovel from inside the barn, I hadn't realised that it had been used to jam the door of the chicken pen closed. Andy had slipped the evening before and had broken the latch on the door, but hadn't thought to mention that it needed fixing. In her hurry to get done the chores, she had used the shovel to jam it closed. By the time I'd shovelled the snow away from the door and we'd gotten inside, several of the hens were out of their pen and investigating everything they could get into.

Before we'd caught all the chickens to put them back into their pen, then had repaired the latch on the pen door, the rest of the animals had been thoroughly disturbed. Of course Andy found that in the time we'd wasted chasing chickens, the water she'd planned to use to wash the cow's udder had gone cold. She decided she wanted to try it, but the cow wasn't at all happy, so Andy had to go back to the house to get more warm water.

While she was gone and I was cleaning the manure out of the pens, the sow got impatient with the time I was taking to feed her. Somehow she got her snout under her trough, tore it free of it's mounts and began flinging it around her pen with every toss of her head. How she got the trough free in the first place is still a mystery to me; it was made out of pieces of two by twelve planks, spiked together with four inch nails, then the whole unit had been spiked to the timbers of her pen with six inch spikes that had been clinched over on the outside of the two by four rails.

By throwing some ground grain on the opposite side of her pen to where the trough had been, I managed to get the trough away from her and dragged it back into place. Then I managed to fasten it down again while keeping her from savaging my leg by threatening to clobber her with the hammer each time she came close. As soon as that was done, I fed her to cut down on the commotion. After that I went back to mucking out the stalls. By then Andy had come back and gotten ready to start milking the cow.

I was just finishing feeding the two old horses and Andy was almost done milking the cow when a huge gust of wind rocked the barn and blew the front door open. Andy jumped, the cow kicked and the bucket, with almost the whole of the morning's milk, went into the gutter. Of course the old mare tried to turn and see what was going on, but when she turned, she shifted her whole body slightly. The problem was that I was between her and the old gelding, so I got squeezed, but good. I had to actually beat against the mare with my fist to get her to move back because I didn't have enough breath to speak, let alone enough shout at her.

I managed to stagger out from between the two horses, but I was more worried about Andy than myself because she was still sitting on the floor of the stall. It turned out that she was just annoyed, not hurt, and she was trying to calm herself so she wouldn't lose her temper. I finally caught my breath and went to close the door, only to find that the latch on it was broken now. That meant I had to find a piece of wood and make a temporary latch for that door as well.

When we got outside to check the outside cattle, we found that they were okay, but the bales of hay and straw that I had moved the day before were now in the wrong place because the wind had shifted. Now they were causing a drift that was swirling through the poles of the corral. Eventually it would have drifted right into the shelter where the feeder cattle were kept. My neat stack of bales all had to be moved in the high wind.

What with one thing and another, it was after twelve when we finally took a break and went into the house to warm up with a coffee and a hot sandwich.

The afternoon didn't go much better. Actually, we spent most of the day fighting the weather in one way or another. I don't think I've ever shovelled so much snow or worked outside for so long in such cold, miserable weather. I was worried about Andy, but I think she was in better shape than I was. By the time it got dark, we'd done the essential work, but we still had a lot of small things to do, however we simply had to give up due to a combination of lack of light and sheer exhaustion.

Although we were hungry, there was no way either of us felt like doing any cooking that night. Thankfully Andy had thrown a stew on to cook in the slow cooker that morning. After we'd eaten, I had a quick shower, then collapsed into bed and Andy was right behind me.