September 7 – Labor Day – 2020 has brought us a severe windstorm with power outage in the AM hours that has seemingly knocked out power everywhere in our area.
All our South stores are empty shelves and will be until tomorrow.
We also lost one of our last remaining aspens – snapped off halfway up – that hasn’t been lost in prior storms, a spruce tree in the heifer pen, roots and all, and lots of branches.
We were just getting set for bottling when the storm and all its dust hit. We made the immediate decision not to do that, which was a good move since the power started flickering and then went off. We switched to backup generator, but it has limitations on running the place and we have to meter what we run and where.
One day, we’ll put in a big diesel generator, but we’re not there yet from a financial standpoint as far as cost/benefit analysis and payback. Cost to put in a brand new one is over $11,000. Of course, we have had multiple big storms in the last 24 months with at least one day outages if not more.
It affects our bottling, our milking, our cooling, our pumping water. Everything.
So, we meter milking, milk cooling, running our backup well versus the high capacity deep well, and irrigation is off completely until the grid is back. Fortunately the wheel lines had water in them and have held position without getting blown – a significant proposition since they are both mid-field and not staked down.
