Saturday, November 01, 2008

Ghostly Cows & Flashbacks


I spent Halloween night in the pasture amongst the ghostly images of cattle. The flashlight would not stay charged and it was hard to make out the outline of the bovines. A flash of light and I see the bull. He has never been aggressive towards me but I am not taking any chances. I move to the other side of the truck. As I come around the back of the truck I come face to face with a big bovine. I don't know who is more startled. She stopped in her tracks. I turned her around and led her back to the Rubbermaid tub we were using as a watering trough. We normally have a nice fountain that does not freeze in the winter time and supplies constant water for the cattle. Unfortunately, with our well out, this wonderful luxury ceased to work. (See yesterday's post for the beginning of our water problems.)

Mike had borrowed a big tank and put it in the back of his truck and went to the spring several miles away to get water for the cows. We were fortunate to have access to a tank we could borrow and a spring where we could get the water.

As I am waiting for the well to be repaired, I am very carefully heating water to wash a few dishes & wash my face and hands. It was fun trying to wash the milker out without running water. As I conserve water today it reminds me of a time when I had so careful with water.................a time when we hauled all of our water in because we didn't have any plumbing in our house.

For a while when I lived in Alaska, I lived in a cabin without any plumbing or running water. What an experience that was! We had an outhouse but when the temps dipped to 40, 50 & 60 below zero, we resorted to using a portable potty. All of our water had to be hauled in and there was an artesian well close by where a lot of the locals got their water. The area we lived in was called named "Goldstream", a little community outside of Fairbanks. Most people in the area either had water delivered to them, or hauled their own water because well water was too nasty too use.

What an experience it was dressing two young children (gosh they must have been maybe three and four years old) in all their winter gear and putting them in the little grey Geo Metro along with every container we could find to put fresh water in.

Sometimes we would have to wait in line at the spring. Ice and snow was frozen all around but in the center would be fresh water bubbling up. We would fill our containers and haul them back to the Geo. When we would put the cold water in the warm car the windows would start to fog up and freeze on the inside. The ride home was spent scraping little patches in the ice so that we could see to drive. Once home, we had to haul all of that water inside so that it did not freeze.

Hauling the water was just part of the work! I had an old fashioned ringer washer. I would heat my water on the stove and pour it into the ringer washer and wash my clothes. I would then have to haul all that dirty water back outside, away from the house and dump it. It would freeze almost instantly and we had a nice thick hill coated with ice that the kids could slide down! Inside, I had a clothes line strung across the front of the balcony and I would hang my clothes there to dry.

Even though we had to haul all our water, I was obsessive compulsive about being clean. I would heat water and pour it into a big tub and bathe the kids in it every day. I would also use the tub myself to bathe and wash my hair.

Of course I had to heat the water for dishes and then carry it out and dump it as well. Gathering water, heating water, dumping water..........my days became an endless circle that all revolved around water!

These flashbacks to more difficult times only serve to remind me how good I have it today and how minor this inconvenience is with the well.

With any luck, I will be taking a nice hot shower sometime soon!