Hen23's Journal~Goodbye

[Farmfresh]

For the OTHER side of the Haflinger story ...

A person who was sort of an instructor of mine when I was little (but I no longer agree with most of his training ideas as soon as I could think for myself) used to be a ride 'em hard put 'em away wet sort of a trainer. He trained Quarter Horses and Paints and did very well in the show world, but if he was having a problem with a horse his answer was always get a bigger stick. The technique usually worked on the stock horses, unfortunately. Well this "cowboy" finally got married to a second wife who was/is a true horseman. They for the most part got out of the stock horses and went into heavies, like Percherons and Shires. His wife told me she loved to watch him "try" to cowboy those big old boys, cause it just didn't work. (Smart gal)

Anyway this lady convinced her man to buy her a nice pair of Haflinger ponies, 1/2 sister mares that were broke to drive. She started showing them a bunch. One day her cowboy man decided to work them a bit in the pasture hitched to the buckboard. (This is the story the lady told me.) He had some little thing that he was intent on teaching them to do better. So they worked a bit and things were going fine, but then the cowboy gets mad at the ponies and starts (this is an important word) starts to get rough with them. According to my friend - one pony looked at the other pony they came to a rapid agreement and that was that. Cowboy man was taken on the ride of his life! It included crossing the creek several times, an extensive tour of their woods and several circuits of their hilly pastures. The "tour" ended with the buckboard in a shambles and the cowboy a new man.

Moral of this story. Haflingers ARE wonderful hard workers and sweet as pie. They are also still at heart a pony. Don't mess with a genius!

 

[Henrietta23]

At the library checking in. DH had to report to work for staff meetings but 2 of the town's schools where he is are still without power so they may or may not actually start school tomorrow.
We are holding our own. We still have lots of water for toilets and animals and drinking. Plenty of food and the roads are passable. I haven't been to a grocery store to see what the shelves may or may not hold anymore. It may be several more days before they get our power restored and who knows about cable. I am supposed to go in for staff meetings Thursday and haven't heard that we aren't starting on time.
Limited time here so take care all! I'll check in when I can!

 

[Henrietta23]

Lying in bed at 5:40 am I heard a large truck drive by and saw lights reflected off the wall. I didn't get up in time to look at it but we're a dead end road and don't get big trucks with flashing lights often. Sure enough 20 minutes later the power was back on. I immediately flushed the toilet and got the hot water running for a shower. I went back to work at school yesterday so I need to run but wanted to check in. Thanks to Abi for keeping tabs on me and keeping me up to date this past week.

 

[LovinLife]

Woohoo! Welcome back! We went without power for 4 days. I'm glad you're ok!

 

[freemotion]

 

[Farmfresh]

 

[abifae]

Lying in bed at 5:40 am I heard a large truck drive by and saw lights reflected off the wall. I didn't get up in time to look at it but we're a dead end road and don't get big trucks with flashing lights often. Sure enough 20 minutes later the power was back on. I immediately flushed the toilet and got the hot water running for a shower. I went back to work at school yesterday so I need to run but wanted to check in. Thanks to Abi for keeping tabs on me and keeping me up to date this past week.

Welcome home!!! LOL!

 

[modern_pioneer]

Hows your son doing? Do you like this years school arrangement?

 

[Henrietta23]

He doesn't start until Tuesday but he is looking forward to going back, at least a little bit! He knows his teacher since her boys are in his Cub Scout pack although they are older. So there is a comfort level about this year. We know that one student has left and one new student is coming so still 15 in the class which I love. The public schools are typically more than 25 these days! That doesn't work well for him.
Soooo I typed a little update but my computer hiccuped and I lost it. Here's the basics. We had little damage here. One tree right on the property line came down. It fell onto the neighbors' deck and broke part of the railing and damaged their gutter but it missed the house by mear inches and spared the roof and windows. We are not sure whose property it was growing on. It was on our side of the fence but we put up that fence with them and it's really just a barrier to keep our dogs apart and our birds in our yard. So both insurance companies have been notified but tell us it will be a while before they can come out and look.
We did lose most of the food in the fridge and freezer. We ate a lot of it as the week went on, having put the best of the frozen meats in the upstairs freezer. The water bottles that were in there weren't completely thawed by this morning so it was still coldish in the basement freezer. We'll have a lot to toss just to be safe.
Aside from fixing the fence the tree ripped down and cleaning up branches and leaves from the yard we are in pretty good shape.
Now,I don't pretend to know the first thing about how we get our power. But we noticed that around the corner from us there was a telephone pole with a metal box (transformer?) For several days there was what looked like a generator on top of it. It was never there before. Yesterday our elderly neighbor's daughter got fed up with no information about when we'd be getting power back so she called the power company and waited to talk to a human. Said human told her there was no record of an outage on our street!! I know at least 5 of us called it in to the automated system. This person claimed no calls were recorded. So today I was at one of my schools talking to the custodian who starts telling me that someone in his mother's neighborhood hooked up a generator to a utility box and what he described sounded a lot like what we saw around the corner. He also said because they did that the power company got false information that there was power in that neighborhood! Hmmmm. He also said there's a $5000 fine for doing this. Interesting. If I waited 5 days for power because some idiot did something illegal and messed up the system........

 

[abifae]

So today I was at one of my schools talking to the custodian who starts telling me that someone in his mother's neighborhood hooked up a generator to a utility box and what he described sounded a lot like what we saw around the corner. He also said because they did that the power company got false information that there was power in that neighborhood! Hmmmm. He also said there's a $5000 fine for doing this. Interesting. If I waited 5 days for power because some idiot did something illegal and messed up the system........

D'OH!!!!