Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, fsa 8a42222
The second of May saw 13 inches of heavy wet snow descend on my little part of the prairie – a noteworthy event even by Minnesota bachelor farmer standards (a group that is notoriously parsimonious with praise). Like all good storms worth of the title “the great ______ of [insert reference year]” (e.g.: the great wind of ’36, the great frost of ’09, etc.) this one left a bit of havoc in its wake. One particularly inconvenient bit of havoc left me without power for 14 hours.
For those of you who might brush this aside as a minor inconvenience, here is what no electricity means for my neighbors and me. No power means no water (we’re all on private water, aka wells, out here), no heat (takes electricity to power blowers, pumps and thermostats), no internet (those DSL routers don’t run on peanuts) and no computers (well at least nothing that’s not battery-powered). And, given that I had already changed the oil in my truck and tractors from the light weight winter oil to the heavier weights diesel engines prefer during the summer months, no power means that my snow removal equipment is not going to start (under 32 degrees, these summer time lubricants take on the same fluidity as wet concrete and need a bit of coddling and a bit of electrically generated heat before they are willing to flow) leaving me sitting on the waiting list for the local snowplow – at a quarter-mile long, my driveway is not one that lends itself to being shoveled by hand.
So, here’s the question – is your practice – that digital masterpiece of paperless perfection – robust enough to go 1 working day without power? Having just completed a review the hard way, the best I can say is that mine can, but things could be better. (more…)
But places to hunt are fading away as more landowners close acreage to hunters – set aside acres are being put back into production, woodlots and non-tillable lands are being put into private preserves, and some are simply closed thanks to, I’m sorry to say, the poor husbandry of the hunters themselves. As more and more land is closed or put to more profitable use than simple outdoor recreation there will be people interested in preserving their ability to pursue their form of communing with the great outdoors.
Out here in the little law office on the prairie, horsepower and hydraulics rule, so the term mobile is very, very broad; this is farm country where 1200 pound hay bales are stacked in the barn like Lego™blocks, and 2000 pound cows are lifted to table height to save the farrier’s back. Folks out here are much more impressed by the technology that makes large things mobile than they are in lightweight mobile technology – after all, it is far more awe-inspiring to watch a 4 man crew lift a house and move it 60 feet to the right than it is to watch one guy pick up a laptop and walk down the street.
