Chickamauga Creek and Pigeon Mountain after the Great Blizzard of 1993. Hard to believe, but just a few days ago, March 13th, marked the 30th anniversary of the Great Blizzard of 1993. The storm covered much of the South and dumped a foot of snow on Deer Run Farm. Other places got even more. The storm was driven by gale-force winds that twisted limbs out of trees and brought with it near-zero temperatures.
Our electricity was out for a week. This was before our house was built, and we had only a kerosene heater in our trailer. We hung blankets to close off everything but our bedroom, bundled up in the rest of the blankets, and rode it out as best we could. Refrigeration, at least, was not a problem.
We had three beautiful young heifers that year that Louise had made her pets. George Queener's enormous Brahma bull had jumped the fence and bred one of them, so of course it was during the storm that she went into labor. She was too young to be a mother, and the calf was so large it would have been a challenge for a mature cow to birth. Our vet, Dr. Marty Rogers, somehow made it through the storm to give her a shot to ease her pain and hold off birth contractions until he could come back in daylight to perform a Caesarean Section. We spent much of the night in the barn with her and our neighbors, Ken and Sarah Parris, inside a ring of hay bales to break the wind.
The next day Marty came back with his assistant and they did the Caesarean. Sadly, the calf died just as he was completing the surgery. Our calves usually weighed 70-75 pounds at birth. This one weighed about 135. Another of the three heifers was also bred by that bull and died in birth a few months later.
For us, it was a sad loss. But that's life -- and death -- on a farm.
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Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
Dave, I have been researching family history and my Great Great Great Grandfather and his
ReplyDeletetwo brothers were with the 86th Indiana Infantry and fought in the battle of Chickamauga and McLemore’s Cove in September 1863.
Two survived the war and lived until their 80's, the other brother died during the battle of Stones River and is buried in a marked grave in the national cemetery
Greg, here's an excerpt from an article I wrote for Georgia Backroads Magazine in 2018:
Delete"In September 1863, McLemore Cove was the scene of a missed opportunity that could have changed the course of the Civil War.
Union General William Rosecrans had maneuvered his forces around Chattanooga in such a way that Confederate General Braxton Bragg had to abandon the city or risk having his supply line to Atlanta cut. Rosecrans's army was divided into three columns, with one column under General George Thomas coming into the Cove from the west, headed for LaFayette. On September 9, Bragg devised a plan to trap Thomas's forces. He sent Generals Thomas Hindman and D.H. Hill on a forced march to bottle up the Union army in the Cove; once on the scene, however, the Confederate generals dithered instead of engaging the Yankees. Then they retreated, the Union troops doing the same. A few shots were fired, but what could have been a battle that would likely have changed the outcome of the Battle of Chickamauga a week later went down in history as only a minor skirmish."