02/18/2021
A great friend just tagged me in this, and this couldn't have hit home more! We lost power Sunday, power to the farm and house, and finally had power restored Wednesday afternoon. Which doesn't sound too bad, or stressful, except for the fact that our home could never maintain over 40 degrees WITH a raging fire in our fireplace, and our home has been packed to the brim with 6 dogs and two toddlers. But the temps were in the negative here. I'm talking we had -4°, and I hand-to-Bible never wanted to know what -4° temps felt like. We are fortunate that my parents live 1 mile away and had electricity, so we packed up yo stay there. So, every day, every couple of hours through the day, those days with sub-freezing temps and no electricity meant that Jay was having to HAND CARRY buckets of water filled from the last reserves of our hot water tanks inside, and make multiple trips to each pasture, to break up ice and give the animals water, at the very least of 3 times a day. It's having to increase our feed bill to be able to ensure all of our babies are able to maintain their energy so they stay healthy and warm. It was a nightmare, and still is a nightmare. Today the high will be 30° and I never understood how excited I would be to have a 30° high. See, Texas farms and farmers are not equipped to handle this winter storm. Our water lines aren't buried deep, we have acres after acres, pasture after pasture, of animals in various places...we have multiple barns meant to be able to allow airflow thru to keep animals cooler in our constant warmer temps, not insulated to keep them from freezing to death. It was a nightmare of epic proportions, and now we are just waiting for the feet of snow accumulated to melt, to be able to find all the busted water lines and dig them out and fix them, as well as busted faucets. But I'm thankful that our animals made it through the worst winter Texas has seen in decades...so don't be surprised when our prices are comparable to Japanese Wagu beef, because we basically killed ourselves living in the cold to make sure they stayed warm and fat and healthy 🤣😂🤣 Just kidding, but please pray for all your local farms and farmers, not all of them were as lucky as we were to not have lost livestock 🖤
Texas ranchers worked overtime to haul water and hay to cattle to keep them alive during a freak winter storm, but some cows have already succumbed to unusual icy temperatures that also killed chickens, idled meat plants and threatened crops.
