How Not to Start a Year

From December 27 until January 1, I dumped almost 8 inches of rain from my gauge. After all this precipitation, on New Year’s Eve winds of 50+ mph blew through our area leaving fallen trees, broken limbs and downed power lines behind. On Brumby Road the power went out at 10:11 PM. We stumbled around looking for candles and flashlights, got out some extra blankets, and went to bed.

A call to the PGE outage line at 6 AM on New Year’s Day told us they were aware of the outage and we would get an update at 7 AM. That update told us that a crew would be in our area at 2 PM. Didn’t happen, but another update was planned for 7 PM. That update informed us that we should to expect the outage to continue overnight.

When the power goes out on Brumby Road, we obviously have no lights or TV or Wifi. Our cell phones worked, but we couldn’t recharge them. And our house well water pump is dead, so our water supply is quite limited and must be conserved. No showers or baths, and flush only when absolutely necessary. We have a heat pump, so we can’t heat our house.

We do have a propane stove, so we were able to warm up some leftovers and have a hot dinner. We needed it, by this point the temperature inside our house was down to 59 degrees. After dinner we sat under some blankets sipping Côtes du Rhône and watching the candles flicker. And so to bed…

Finally at 3 AM the power came back on. Soon everything was back and functioning. Another Memorable New Year’s Eve…

I say that because while Stoker and I were sipping the wine by candle light, we reminisced about another rainy New Year’s Eve sometime back in the late 1980’s. We had a very special bottle of sparkling wine on ice. In those days our budget could not accommodate Veuve Clicquot, so it was probably Korbel Brut. We also had a very nice red to accompany the steak au poivre we planned for supper. Things did not go as planned…

We used to have pet goats, and that year one of them was getting near the end of his life. But on December 31 the poor guy got down and couldn’t get up. Diane called the vet, but they couldn’t come until the next day, when we knew we were going to have to put poor Macavity out of his misery.

Macavity got his name from one of the cats in Cats. The other two goats were named Jennyanydots (also from Cats) and Pogo. They arrived as a set of three and Diane loved and spoiled them for almost 10 years. Mack is the big brown one, Jenny is on the left and Pogo is in the middle.

The weather forecast was for rain starting around midnight. I knew I was going to have to dig a goat sized grave, and I didn’t relish the thought of doing it in the mud. So around 9 PM I went outside in my farming clothes with my farming shovel and a flashlight and started digging in the dark. Poor Diane was sitting next to Macavity and holding him and crying her eyes out. I’m digging away and it started to rain.

Finally I finished the grave. It was about 6’x6’x6′. It took me over an hour. I went back into the house and made the steak. I know I ate some but I don’t think Diane did. She was in and out of the house for the rest on the night.

On New Year’s Day, in the afternoon, the vet arrives and does the necessary humane thing. Diane is crying and my eyes are watering a bit but I am trying to keep myself together. Macavity was a huge goat, well over 200 lbs. That is why I had to dig such a big grave. There was no way to carry him out of our goat pen and into the grave, but I have a garden cart and I asked (begged?) the vet to help me load Mack onto the goat hearse. He did, then left the interment to us.

I wheeled the cart to the grave site, then told Diane that there was no gentle way of doing this; I was going to have to slide the corpse off of the cart and let it fall into the grave. I can’t remember if she watched or not. I do know we were lucky, Macavity kind of folded into what looked like a fairly comfortable position on his side. I got into the grave to adjust his legs a bit, and Diane was satisfied. She dropped some hay and granola bars into the grave. Those goats loved granola bars; I told you they were spoiled. I think she covered him with a blanket. She said goodbye and I back filled the hole. A memorable start to a year.

And 2023 started with 29 hours of power outage and with stitches and a pedicle flap on my face. Things can only improve.