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| Tornado Strikes. Where to Begin?
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First after a tornado strikes, like it struck our farm on May 22, a person just looks, in total disbelief. Total Absolute Disbelief. Shock. It's as though if you could just turn around, things could be back just the way they were. But you can't. The feeling is comparable to a death in the family...a divorce. Complete absolute shock and disbelief. Buildings and memories, blown away. Just simply blown away.
And then, the universal dilemma. You'll hear it over and over again on the news if you listen for it: "I don't know where to begin." Where to begin clean up, where to begin salvaging what can be salvaged, where to begin again a life that you weren't ready to give up in the first place.
In our situation, we began by rebuilding our barbed wire fences. Several footall field lengths of posts had simply been sheared off by the tornado, and in one of this tornado's quirky ways, it had left the barbed wire attached to the broken off posts. Then, having the time of its life, it twirled the posts end for end, over and over, winding the barbed wire into a prickly rope. It left the wire fastened to the next good post in the ground, but for the remainder of the fence it decided to play some wild raucous vibratory music with the barbed wire strands popping the remaining staples out of the posts, somewhere out into the underbrush. Three weeks later I bear battle wounds: scratches and puncture wounds from fixing that blasted stretch of fence. Took my husband, myself and a hired man three blistering hot days. But, this was an absolutely necessary job to do. A rancher can't have cows running the hillside, mucking around in the neighbors green wheat fields. Fixing the barbed wire was the first bastion of containing the tornado's damage. |
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Posted by KSGal on 2008-06-17 19:31:12 | Rating: | Views: 70
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I pray blessings upon blessings for you and your family!
I've never experienced such distruction. My heart breaks watching the news on such things! All anyone seems to be able to say is "Thank God we are alive". I know many are not alive to say that.
It seems disasters and destruction is so common place now.
I read your comment on the blog of the girl that moved to Iowa from Cali. I feel for you and it's true. People to run into help in other cases. Just like with the bad hurricanes OUR government rarely "rushes" to anyones aid. I understand they are not helping you at all. And that neighbor worried about suing someone over a tractor tire?!? What a piece of work! But your comment on why you should care about other people's problems is just that. So everyone on the planet isn't just not giving a crap about a neighbor or fellow human. That's what is wrong with most people today. Their hearts are so hurt by others we have all just turned on each other.
My mother in law lived in your state years ago before her death. Tornados are so common place I think half the world doesn't understand why anyone lives there. Hence no helping hands. Nobody seems to care about where food is grown or cattle is raised. Stupid isn't it!
Just like any other state we are all gonna have our disasters and destruction and the people that are able to help each others would be smart to before long everyone will need help at some point.
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Posted by anotherdaze
on 2008-06-18 12:40:46
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I appreciate your caring....something like this is like a huge gaping wound. When people don't seem to care one whit about what happened, it seems to make the pain worse. We are carrying on, cleaning up by picking up each piece at a time, one pickup load at a time. One more, one more, one more....a built in fitness gym, out there under the wide open sky. (Chuckle loaded with irony) Would you like to join our fitness club? The membership fee could go toward replacing mangled up tin, we'd get our work done faster, and you could become better fit!!
Yes, we who raise the nation's food are ill appreciated. I wonder if some people actually believe that eggs are formed in nice sanitized cartons..an even dozen at a time, hamburger and steak originate in polystyrene trays nicely wrapped in plastic wrap and milk grows in nicely handled jugs. A recent nationally released movie cartoon featured a bull with an udder, for heaven's sake! One telling question is if somebody actually knows what an ox is. In history, you know, they talk about oxen. What kind of critter is THAT? Pass the quiz, and most likely you know at least a little something about farming and ranching.
In fact, most people will bash the farmers and the farm program, but they don't realize that the Food Stamp Program to feed the poor is part of the farm program.
We don't even have to go to Las Vegas to gamble. We do it every day....Will it hail us out this year? Will a drought kill all the alfalfa and other feed for our cattle, so we have to purchase it at a premium price and have it shipped in? When we sell the cattle at the sale barn, will the news media publicize some trumped up "Mad Cow" story that cuts the legs out from under any profit we can possibly make? Rolling craps, right here in the cow lot, where crap can run right over your boot tops if it rains too much.
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Posted by KSGal
on 2008-06-18 14:55:22
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