Saturday, May 11
I'm going to try and summarize the past few days, now that we are home. I've switched to the laptop for pretty much all our computer-use, since it has a lower power requirement.
Wednesday:
We leave for Ferriday early, awaiting the "official" lifting of the curfew. No sense in taking chances on a roving Apache putting a Hellfire through the engine-block. We've heard no reports locally about any riots or other nasty business in our area, so I think the kids will be okay while we are gone. The truck is empty, now, awaiting its cargo of chickens and the couple of goats she promised us. We are armed only with pistols - a 9mm and a .22lr - since anything longer would be almost unmanageable. We're hoping to beat the "river push" that looks to be forming up in New Orleans. Hard to imagine the port city fell so quickly - there must have been a fair-sized army of sabateurs in place for months, making their preparations and just waiting their activation calls. Our trip is going to be mostly backroads for quite a ways, so I doubt we'll see much of anything.
afternoon:
We made it to Ferriday in fair shape. Several towns have begun setting up "traffic control" measures - mostly cops sitting at the edges of town, eyeing people as they come in. We told them we were just passing through on our way to my wife's grandmother's house to check on her and they waved us through. We tried again - and were unsuccessful again - to convince Grandma to come back with us. She said Ferriday was her home and that's where she was going to stay. Uncle Jimmy was out of town - probably visiting his kids in Dallas - but when he got back, (DW and I just gave each other "Yeah, right" looks) he'd be able to help her out. In the meantime, she had a lot that needed doing. Sure, she could do it all herself and *would* do so given time, but we could help her get a lot further along if we helped out.
We could hear heavy guns firing over around Natchez and that made us work faster. I wondered if they'd fell the bridge or leave it in place to use later. There's supposed to be a Coastie station with a real-live armed cutter in Natchez...
We ended up leaving late - so late I was afraid we would be out past curfew. We tossed the crate of chickens in the bed of the truck and tied it down, then got the goats in. Grandma also gave us a table-top brooder and some nesting boxes that she wasn't using. She also passed along a couple of rolls of chicken-wire, some more canning jars, and a hand-cranked meat grinder with all its attachments. Bec managed to talk her out of a few heavy crockery bowls that she could use for making her sourdough bread, among other things.
Out on the highway, we raced for home as fast as we could. Several of the police we passed were the same ones who had been on duty earlier and remembered us. Everything was going well, until we got to Sicily Island. The local red-necks had set up a roadblock at the far end of a bridge leading into town and were manning it with a motley assortment of weapons. We stopped on the bridge and waited while a couple of grungy characters ambled out to look us over. They may not have been the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but they had their fair share of animal cunning. The livestock in the back of the truck was living gold, with the truck and assorted hardware extra coins in the pile. I could see they weren't too inclined to let us pass, no matter what we said. They didn't know us, after all. I don't think Skuzz 1 had yet realized my Ruger was out of its holster and pointed at him, albeit I'd be shooting thru the truck door "from the hip" if he tried anything. After that, who knew?
The boys were starting to get a little overly insistent about us getting out of the truck when DW leaned out the window and yelled at the only female manning the barricade. Turns out they knew each other from high school. Skuzz1 and Skuzz 2 looked more than a little disappointed, but everyone else on the barricade seemed to relax - a lot. Charlotte rode with us through town - such as it was - and her and DW managed to catch up a bit. She promised to be sure all the folks standing guard knew we were "good folks" in case we needed to make another run to Ferriday.
Thanks to the roadblocks, we were a good 45 minutes past curfew before we saw the lights of home. A quick call on the FRS let Caitlyn know it was us coming it. Didn't want a replay of Stonewall Jackson. Donny and Rodney were both outside working in their yards. Looks like a bunch of lawn is about to disappear into garden beds...
Thursday, May 9-
Been online just a little - reporting that we'd successfully made the trip and returned with livestock and checking to see how much worse things had gotten. Then, outside to get stuff squared away. After getting the goats staked out, we got busy on the chicken yard. We dragged the rest of the "dog-run" panels down from Curtis's place and set them up. I decided to go on and use all of them on the chicken run and let the goats live inside the yard with the chickens. We ended up having to clear a good deal more trees and brush, but we ended up with a stockyard 20 feet wide and 40 feet long, fenced 6 feet high by chain-link fence and then wrapped in chicken-wire up about 4 feet. I figure the goats will help discourage snakes, coons, and other chicken predators. We built a coop out of landscape timbers sunk a couple of feet into the ground, wrapped in chicken wire, and topped with roofing tin acquired from Rodney. It needs a "real" door on it, but it'll do for now.
We have a serious problem. Locusts. They are everywhere and are making an eerie warbling noise that drowns out almost eveything else. DW is afraid we'd not hear traffic turning off the pavement and onto the gravel road leading to us. I don't have any brilliant ideas yet - I'll hafta let that one stew for now. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm open for them. Everyone here is still going to work and school, almost like normal, so we are short on manpower during the daytime.
I had the guys gather up wooden pallets in town so I'd have some sort of platform to stack stuff on up underneath the trailerhouse. DW is worried about insects, so we sprayed the pallets down with deisel first. Curtis and Rodney claim this will keep the termites off for years. I sure hope it works. We moved all our "storage goods" up underneath the house as far in towards the center as we could and then spread tarps on them. I'm sure we'll be getting rid of things we don't need as time goes on, but for now it is all safe and out of the weather.
Friday, May 10-
More garden-work. Plus, today I got the solar panels mounted and the batteries wired into a battery-bank. YESSSSSS!!!! Boy, I feel like I've really accomplished something with this. Sure, it took me nearly all friggin day, but now, just in case our power goes out, we have a little bit of backup.
And if power goes out...we are fried. Man, Louisiana is hotter than Hades. We had hoped to get the trailer roofed-over, but things fell apart before we could manage it. Now, we just have to hope for shade-trees and maybe use a fan hooked to the inverter and battery-bank. I've got plans for a passive-solar "air mover," but I'm kinda short on building supplies and the cash to buy them.
Saturday, May 11-
No power. Dunno what happened where, but we have no power. We'll keep the house shut up until afternoon, trying to hold out the heat. Then we'll find out if the battery-bank and inverter will handle the "tornado"fan.
Thanks to the winds, outside and up under the trees is the place to be. We've got lots of clearing to be done and the goats have already made a marvelous difference. We stake them out in the areas we want cleared and they nibble away. Awesome.
We've got a little pocket-radio outside tuned to a local station, just in case they had any useful news. Thankfully, they pass on information about our blackout. Seems the invaders have hit several power-plants and the load-demand far exceeds the ability to supply the grid. Technicians are trying to reroute power supplies, but we are definitely in for rolling blackouts. Actually, it's more like we are in for rolling periods of available electricity.
The phones are still up, so I can still get all the rumormill info from TB2K. I just wonder how long they'll stay up, since the electricity is going to be spotty. Everything is interconnected and I know electricity is the lynchpin...but how long do we have?
We unplug the clocks, the tv, the vcr - everything that is useless without electricity and that doesn't count for anything when the power is on. Maybe we can help reduce the load on the system. I set the kids to boxing up all this "non-essential" stuff so we can get it all out of our way. The movies go in a different box - if we get lucky somehow and acquire a 12-v tv, I want to be able to dig them out for the kids...
<a href="http://outlands.tripod.com/rtso/">Riding The Storm Out</a> - a preparedness blog<br>
"What do you mean, 'We *ARE* the Cavalry?'"<br>
<i>There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind</i><br>
Don't prep to outlast the troubles...prep to not notice the troubles<br>
--Michael<br><a href="http://outlands.tripod.com">
The Outlands</a> ----- <a href="http://ldyherbs.tripod.com/">Celtic Heart Herbals</a>
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