“…all residents in adjacent counties are advised to take shelter immediately. A tornado has been sighted, and may have already touched down. Stay tuned for more information…”

My 19 year old son looked at me with a certain level of teenage contempt. “C’mon, Mom, I want to watch a movie!” He tried to stick a tape in the VCR. I don’t often need to raise my voice to my children, but I turned to him and shouted: “LEAVE THE TV ALONE! THIS IS SERIOUS!”

My boy’s eyes registered surprise. He realized that his mother was on high alert, and that he might be in serious danger.

Continued below…

Max, from How to Get It Done, explains how to prepare yourself and your family for a tornado.

Just as the meteorologist was about to recount the specific location of the twister, our electrical power went out. I was near panic mode.  Standing in the darkness, listening to the distant siren wailing its warning, I realized that our tornado plan was woefully inadequate.

**********

My husband and I knew when we bought the farm back in the ’70s that the area was often hit by tornados.  Since we have five children, it seemed wise to make plans for disasters or emergencies.  The problem was that our hands were full, and we just never got around to putting together specific procedures to implement if faced with the unknown.  We only had a vague notion of what we would do if we encountered an unexpected crisis.

In all of our years on the farm, we never did run-throughs for emergencies, nor did we try to do a tornado drill.  We always just told our kids that if there was a tornado, run across the street and get into the deep ditch with the 5 foot culvert.   We didn’t know what else to do, since our old ramshackle farm house has no basement.

Had we run our tornado drill in March or April, we would have quickly changed our plans.  In the spring rainy season, the ditch is full to the top with run off and rain water.  No one in my family is a scuba diver, so we would have found ourselves up a creek, without an…oxygen tank?

 *************

I shouted to Richard to follow me.  The howling of the wind was intense.  I ran out of our front door, my heart feeling as if it would come out of my chest.  I slid and fell as I crossed our rutted dirt road.  I scraped my hands and knees as the jagged gravel tore my flesh.  I scrambled to my feet.  

The fury of the storm pressed me forward.  I knew I had only seconds to reach the safety of the culvert.  The pelting of the rain and hail told me that the tornado was upon us.  Fortunately, this storm was in early July, and there were only a few inches of mud in that pipe.  Thank God!

I spilled into the ditch and crawled into our sanctuary.  I spun around and looked out of the drain.  I exhaled in relief.  I was safe at last!

And then it hit me:  Where was Richard?!?

Continued in Tornado!!!–A Survivor’s Story (Part 3)

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Lesson #2: Identifying Maple Trees and Harvesting Sap from Them

In this lesson, Charlie Shelton (’The Survival Nut’) explains how to identify maple trees.

Young maple trees have a smooth gray (or as the Brits say, grey) bark and a narrow unfolding ‘Y’ of branches at the top.

Of course, identifying the trees during the summer months is easiest, since the trees have their leaves.

An autumn maple leaf

We wrap the tree with yellow ribbon and number it for our sap collection in the Spring.

Happy gathering!

Read all about our maple syrup adventures in Grandma’s Shoestring “Oh, Sugar, Sugar!”

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