Last week was a difficult week for Texas and especially for people in Agriculture. Glad we are gritty and persevere. Traits well suited for adventure racing.
We spent the week feeding cows every day and busting up to ten inches of ice on stock tanks every day in temperatures sometimes below zero with negative wind chills down to -17.
We do not have calving barns and it is calving season. We had at least ten babies born last week. Most survived.
While we were not focusing on training or our upcoming Rock, Roll and Rattlesnake Challenge Adventure Race, we were getting our training in doing what we do every day.
We did loose two new born babies and two cows and one heifer walked out on the ice on the stock tank and did not make it. We used one of my kayaks to get to the floating animals and a retired climbing rope to pull the animals out. It was dirty, muddy and cold. Used my old Rattlesnake Racing pickup (now ranch truck) to pull the cows and heifer out. We were lucky, some in the area suffered far more losses. Knowing what knots to use in the rope, learned over the years from ranching to climbing, is invaluable when trying to get the rope untied after dragging 1000 pound animals out of a stock tank. We will survive and animals are doing great this week with the sunshine.
As for our home and ranch house, we were blessed since we live off grid and make our electricity. Our solar system worked great until it was cloudy and covered in snow and ice. We were prepared with a backup generator which we had to use two days to charge our battery packs. We never lost our rural water supply at our house, but did have to haul water to the barn to the orphan heifer. We were able to keep our home warm with a wood stove and wood we cut through the summer and fall. We are usually prepared with enough groceries for a month at a time because we live in the country. We have 600 pounds of beef in the freezer and frozen garden veggies. We did run out of eggs and fresh produce and our chickens are not laying until the days get longer.
I am getting back to my moving 2,021 miles in 2021 challenge this week and working on our May 15, 2021 Rock, Roll and Rattlesnake Challenge Adventure Race. Come join us in Texas for an Adventure.