Mud...mud puppies, mudslides, mudpacks, mud bogging, mud pies, mud holes, muddy boots...a hundred and one uses for mud including muddy roads. Take melting snow pack, add one dirt road and what do you end up with? Mud!
That is part of living on a mud, oops, sorry, a dirt road. There is one season that is dreaded by all that live on dirt roads. It is a time between spring and winter when the weather begins to warm and the snow begins to melt. This is mud season. There is no getting around it but if you are lucky you will get through it. And hopefully, you will not get stuck in it.
Dirt roads seem to have a mind of their own when it comes to mud season. The mud holes and washboards do not always appear in the same spots. One year we had a mud hole so large that our big ol' school bus ended up to its axles in it. As did my car and my neighbors car. This mud hole effectively closed our road in that direction for several days and took many loads of gravel to turn it from something with the consistency of pudding to something more like a road.
When I started writing this we were experiencing a lovely winter thaw. That has since gone by the wayside and now we are back into the cold heart of winter. We have had 40+ mph winds and 15 hours of listening to the generator hum because of the lack of electricity not to mention absolutely no Comcast cable, phone or internet for about 10 hours. This is always a reminder that we live out in the woods. But fortunately living out here also means you are usually ready for the power to go out. We went to bed with flashlights at the ready. When the power did go out (it wasn't a matter of if, but when) the generator had gas and the oil was topped off. So as my hubby went outside to the generator shed to get it running, I was down cellar switching over to our secondary panel. Smooth as silk, we were back online and were able to continue life fairly uninterrupted. There are some drawbacks, the generator does not power the entire house. It is there to make sure the freezer and fridge continue to run. That we can pump water to flush toilets and take showers and that the furnace continues to pump out heat. We can live with the little inconveniences such as no power up on the second floor. It is so much better then the alternative of no power at all. Ask my kids about 3 days of no power and having to bring buckets of water into the house to flush the toilets or not having heat when its 20 degrees out.
Well so much for the first of many little mud seasons. The next thaw is around the corner as is the next snowfall. But like I continue to say, sooner than later, spring will be here.
That is part of living on a mud, oops, sorry, a dirt road. There is one season that is dreaded by all that live on dirt roads. It is a time between spring and winter when the weather begins to warm and the snow begins to melt. This is mud season. There is no getting around it but if you are lucky you will get through it. And hopefully, you will not get stuck in it.
When I started writing this we were experiencing a lovely winter thaw. That has since gone by the wayside and now we are back into the cold heart of winter. We have had 40+ mph winds and 15 hours of listening to the generator hum because of the lack of electricity not to mention absolutely no Comcast cable, phone or internet for about 10 hours. This is always a reminder that we live out in the woods. But fortunately living out here also means you are usually ready for the power to go out. We went to bed with flashlights at the ready. When the power did go out (it wasn't a matter of if, but when) the generator had gas and the oil was topped off. So as my hubby went outside to the generator shed to get it running, I was down cellar switching over to our secondary panel. Smooth as silk, we were back online and were able to continue life fairly uninterrupted. There are some drawbacks, the generator does not power the entire house. It is there to make sure the freezer and fridge continue to run. That we can pump water to flush toilets and take showers and that the furnace continues to pump out heat. We can live with the little inconveniences such as no power up on the second floor. It is so much better then the alternative of no power at all. Ask my kids about 3 days of no power and having to bring buckets of water into the house to flush the toilets or not having heat when its 20 degrees out.
Well so much for the first of many little mud seasons. The next thaw is around the corner as is the next snowfall. But like I continue to say, sooner than later, spring will be here.
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