The Big Snowstorm of December 2009

Yes, Virginia, we are going to have a white Christmas! At least, we are having one here in Virginia! Our home is in Rockbridge County, which yesterday received the dubious distinction of getting the most snow of anywhere in the snowfall area – that included West Virginia, Kentucky, Delaware, anywhere else in Virginia and so far, all the states to the north of us currently getting heavy snow.

Cliff has been plowing since 8 am yesterday, finally getting home at 4 am this morning. After a couple of hours of sleep, he was out digging out the livestock, re-fuelling and preparing to go out again. We expect he will be plowing until Monday afternoon, at least. We understand that another, smaller, snow storm is due on Christmas day, so we are especially anxious to get everyone cleared out as much as possible before the next snow.

While Cliff is plowing, I do what I always do - tend the hearth and keep the fires burning – literally. The woodstove is keeping our home very cozy and nice, with or without electricity.

I did make a shocking discovery yesterday, however, and I want to share this to stress a point to you ladies out there who are preparing for storms of whatever fashion. If you get a generator, and I am sure you should if you don’t have one already, be sure to spend the money and get one with an electric start. Our is a gasoline powered generator, and we have had it and used it for many years with great success. However, it has always been my husband who ran it. When he left yesterday to plow, he set up the generator for me, showed me how to start it, refill it, etc. But one thing neither of us bargained for was that I am not strong enough to pull the cord hard enough to get the engine to start. Thankfully, we have a neighbor who cam e and pulled the cord for me, since otherwise, I would have had to have gone without. Imagine – an accessible generator, more than enough fuel…and can’t get it to start because the operator doesn’t have the strength to pull the cord hard enough!

Ladies, if you have a generator like this, go out and start it BEFORE you need to! Be sure you can start the thing! If you can’t, you may as well not have it at all!

(For more snowstorm photos, visit our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/help/?guide#/profile.php?ref=profile&id=100000564877004)

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle - Revisited

This morning, leafing through the January 2010 issue of "Better Homes and Gardens" magazine, I came across two fascinating articles. Normally, I am really more of a "Mother Earth News", "Backwoods Home" "Countryside & Small Stock Journal" reader, but this issue had headlines about getting more organized, so I just had to check it out.

I never found the article on getting organized. Instead, I found two articles that that are notable for their very presence in this "upmarket adult female" oriented magazine. One article was about having swap parties. The idea is that you and your friends clean out and declutter all your closets and basements, get it all together in one spot and trade things, no money exchanged. This is an old idea - and a good one, but not something you'd be likely to read about in BHG.

The other article fascinated me even more. This one was about starting seeds. Starting seeds! Can you imagine? Not going to Lowe's and buying nearly grown tomato plants, but actually starting seed in little peat pots for use in your garden!

Now, among my family and friends, swapping, seed starting and so forth are old news. Very old news. In fact, it's a way of life. But for the readers of BHG, it seems to be a new concept. indicative of the narrowing gap between the economic classes and the rapidly disappearing middle-class. Very shortly, we will see "middle-class" as a briefly transitory state between becoming very rich or, as is the case for most of the country, very broke.

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article for The Texas Ring (http://www.thetexasring.com/) about a similar phenomemon - homesteading how-to books available through the "Doubleday Craft Book Club". Rather than re-write it here, I have included parts of the article below.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle...

If ever there was an doubt about the feeling of mainstream America in regard to the shakiness of our economy, one need only to look in the places where the average, middle-class lady may be found. One such place is in the crafts & hobbies market.

Having a bent toward being such a lady myself, I am a long-term member of one of the larger crafts related book clubs. Recently, I logged onto that website, looking for a book on building small backyard sheds, something which one can never have too many of.


While perusing the selection of landscaping and gardening books in the “outdoor section”, I came upon several books that shocked me with their presence. Here, the bosom of middle class America’s bookshelves were books on homesteading!


Raising chickens! Self-sufficiency! Keeping bees! Urban homesteading!

Do I detect a sense of uneasiness and/or dissatisfaction in the lives of my sisters? Or is the harsh reality of the future of our society and lives starting to reach even the most cheerful optimists? And rightly so, since our future no longer glistens like the morning dew. More like the hot, dry dust at the end of a parched summer day.


How appropriate to see the beginnings of change in a vehicle such as a crafts club. It will be the womenfolk (as our dear Bill Buppert once called us) with a penchant for “handiwork” who carry the bulk of the preparation and work involved in keeping our families (and possibly farms and small-holdings) alive. It will be the womenfolk who stock the pantries, learn to garden and can our produce, learn to cook from scratch and how to make do with a good bit less than we are used to having. It will be the womenfolk soothing the battered egos and easing the torment in the eyes and hearts of our men as they see so much of what they have worked for slowing dissolving into the sand of a past life.


It is telling that the larger publishing houses also recognize and capitalize on this trend. Is it so obvious even to the publishing houses that our country and society have changed, yet we cannot gain even a hint of recognition of this fact from our own government? When a solid 40% of our population is now owned, financially speaking, by the federal government, it seems plain that we have, in fact, experienced the beginnings of Obama’s “change”, though it certainly is not the change for which we’d hoped.


 The 2008 Presidential Election map, shows the territory won by Republicans was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare."

While I would certainly hesitate to generalize all of the pro-Obama voters as welfare or federal fund recipients, I do have to agree that the United States as we have known it is certainly on the downhill slide, and apparently the major publishing houses agree as well.

In a recent story on Yahoo news, it turns out that we, as a country, have a good deal less financial wherewithal that we’d been led to believe. The National Academy of Science uses a slightly different formula for calculating the poverty rate than the Census Bureau, in that the NAS factors in such frivolities as rising medical care, transportation, child care or geographical variations in living costs. Factoring in these items shows the poverty rate to be at 15.8 percent, or nearly 1 in 6 Americans, according to calculations released this week. That’s higher than the 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million, figure made available recently under the original government formula. Currently, a family of 4 making $22,050 is considered at poverty level, according to Federal guidelines. Shoot, that’s most of the folks in the county where we live, except the wealthy folks who have retired here, university professors and government officials. In fact, these days, $22,000 for a family of 4 in our area is GOOD money.

Everyday, despite the placid reassurances from Washington, D.C., we see another indication that homesteading might not be a bad idea. Articles abound telling us that it is perfectly moral and upright to walk away from your mortgage, forsake your car loan, default on the credit cards. We know in our hearts that this is just not true, but we know that it is a hard fact of life that difficult decisions must be made in difficult times. “Shall we buy groceries this week or chip away on the credit card balance?” is simply not a realistic question.


Prepare for a revolution, Friends. It will not come prefaced by the demolition of the Goldman-Sachs lobby, as predicted (hoped for?) by one prominent author. It will come quietly during the sleepless nights of those caught in the crux of the change.


It will come as decisions are made on the family level to abandon the McMansion, the car, the credit card bills, using that energy and money instead to simply stay alive and on our feet. It will come as more families realize that they have sold their souls to the devil in exchange for a pittance of mediocre care. Revolution will come when individuals and families, one at a time, make the decision to stand for themselves, out of desire or necessity, and to do whatever it takes to stay free or become free.

Life is Good

Several months ago, we were blessed with a homeless Yellow Lab pup. We are suckers for cute, homeless puppies, and everyone knows it - a liability when you hav a farm and a couple of empty kennels. So this pup came to stay with us. Her name is Polka (don't ask - she came with that name), and she came here with the intent of staying only until we found a home for her.

We have another dog who came here, 8 years ago, under that same premise. A Dalmatian-Lab cross who we named Lucky. Lucky came with a broken leg, and we agreed to foster her until "she found a better home". Well, who has a better home than us, for heaven's sake? We lived this lie for about 4 years. Then one day, my husband came home from the farm supply store with Lucky (who rides everywhere with him) and Lucky was sporting a fancy new John Deere collar. We knew she'd found a forever home.

I imagine Polka will have a similar experience. She is very much like our Lucky in terms of size, temperament and lovability. We figure that Lucky is now about 9 years old, so by the time Lucky is ready to pass onto that big playground in the sky, Polka will have grown up to be a sensible, adult lady dog. We hope that will help us make the transition and ease through the loss.

Odd, how as we age, we think in those terms. When I was a younger woman, I'd have never even considered that Lucky would ever die, much less bring in a companion for her to play with that will eventually help us with Lucky's ultimate transition. When the Lord calls me home, I'm ready, and I've made all the earthly preparations I can make, both for myself and for those I love.

What kind of preparations have you made? Have you even really considered the possibility that you may not live forever? Have you gotten things right between you and the Lord? Do you have your personal life & finances in order? Have you forgiven all you need to forgive?

Getting your house in order, as the phrase goes, both with God and with earthly issues will give you a peace and security that you have never known. You'll have a contented smile on your face just like Polka - sigh, life is GOOD!

Getting Ready for the Storm

Remember how we talked earlier this week about the warm tepmeratures, flowers blooings and all that wonderful spring weather? It's over. We have a severe winter weather forcast showing on our weather alert, predicting from 1" to 4" of snow by tomorrow, starting around daybreak.

In our area, a good snow storm is when the farmers like to burn brush piles. Last year, we burned a good size pile in January and the cows were very grateful. If you look closely at the picture, you can see the flame in the middle of the herd as they circle around the campfire! Even cows like to be toasty warm!

We have been preparing for a storm for a long time now. What kind of storm, we did not know, but we're ready anyway. If the weather is bad, rain or snow, we're fine. If the economy sinks to the bottom of the global ocean, we're fine.

Are you?

Can you get by if you can't get to the store for 2-3 days? Do you have at least 72 hrs worth of food and water stored somewhere accessible in your home? What about lighting? What about warmth? Do you have a "bug-out bag"? That's a bag packed for each member of the family with the barest essentials that you can grab and run with if you need to in an emergency.
If you don't have any of these things, now is a great time to start thinking about it. There are literally hundreds of sites online that talk about preparedness and stocking your pantry. We'll be covering some aspects of that here, too.

But for today, just see if you can prepare your family for 72 hrs. That's not much time, effort or money and will leave with a wonderful sense of security. You'll find that you already have 90% of what you need - you just have to get it organized. Here are a couple of websites to get you started:

72 Hours

How to Make a 72 hr kit for Emergency Preparedness

72 Hour Survival Kits

Take the time to start working on this today. You never know what storms might come or when!