By JournalTrib.com Staff | on July 26, 2022
Following a devastating windstorm Monday night last week, friends descend on the author’s property to help with cleanup. Sydney Glasoe Caraballo photo
My sister and I scan the western horizon of deepening blue above the west bank of our farm buildings and old white barn. The air is still, pillaring with dampness and the fevered pitch of mosquito hums.
Kerry and her children are spending their final night on the farm before they fly back to North Carolina. My nephew, age 8, is a whirlwind of dark caramel skin, glossy black curls and a gap-toothed smile racing past us in twilight to hug the dog dashing down our front porch. My niece, age 12, walks carefully past, all graceful and gangly sun-kissed arms and legs as she proudly carries a Norwegian kransekake ring cake she made with her grandmother this afternoon. Ava promises she’ll share the cake with me, and I tell my sister eating cake seems better than slapping mosquitoes and storm gazing.
Growing up, my sisters and I spent lightning-lit evenings with our father on the front porch, our heads expectantly tilted toward a panoramic skyline of the coming fury.
But tonight we go inside to eat cake. Our electricity flickers at about a quarter after 10 p.m. The yard light is out as I open our front south-facing door. Our Alaskan Malamute lies on the threshold, a sentinel. She rises and lifts me off the ground as she rushes through my legs for shelter, along with four or five farm cats. In the blackness I hear a crescendo roar.
I yell at my sister and her children to run for the basement. The wind blasts our screen door and front door wide open. I smash my ample body against it to shut out the storm.
Impact booms shake the house and the roof above us in harmony with the cracks of splintering wood and the screams of tearing tin and metal as we run. We land at the bottom of the stairs and hover in the downstairs hallway. Wyatt opens his bedroom door as the house settles into the more familiar sound of wind and rain. My other two children are in Bismarck, and I am surprised to hear footsteps fall on the steps above. Kevin fills the gap. I have forgotten my husband came home for a late-night nap before going back to bale hay if the storm missed us. He tells us he passed through the kitchen while a farm shed’s walls and roofline sections impaled the deck.
Kevin leaves to help other volunteer firefighters in town checking on people and clearing roads. Kerry cuddles her shaken kids on a couch downstairs while Wyatt and I take a spotlight to check on our horses and several bulls. The rest of our cattle herds are most likely safe in their north pastures. We survey the bull corral that now hosts mangled tin siding, roof trusses and splintered wood. The only lean left standing is the one in which our bulls now stand huddled together. Our horses graze the pasture in the midnight rain.
When the sun rises, we will note the damage done. The roof and south shelter of our bull barn gone. A few crumpled grain bins. Tin off one steel shed and the roof and walls of another and another. Our newly constructed pole building two miles to the west scattered and blown. Hay bales weighing nearly a ton swept across our hills and land as far as a half-mile east in the marsh.
Gone is the north wall and roofline of our old white barn, built long before my parents bought the farmstead a half-century ago. It has sheltered countless cows, calves, horses, cats, mice and barn swallows. My childhood was spent climbing its shingled, ridgeline peak with my sisters to watch meteor showers in winter and summer thunderstorms billow to the west and once a small tornado that danced across our field of wheat.
I hug my sister and her children goodbye the next morning – grateful they are safe. My insurance agent arrives shortly after with donuts, reassurance and the steadfast sturdiness of a long friendship. My builder, another dear friend, calls to say he is catching the next flight and is gifting us a crew to tarp our garage, clean up and reinforce structures until the adjuster arrives. Neighbors stop by with food and words of comfort. Friends near and far call and text with offers of help and encouragement. The following day our community comes – young and old – to clean up our farm, even though they have all suffered damage themselves. Ladies from the Alliance Gospel Chapel in Wildrose provide us and the work crews with a hearty lunch and supper.
The storm did not make me weep, but these acts of kindness do. The storm could be considered a bit of bad luck, but what remains is consideration of all the blessings. God protected us. Our livestock are safe. Our nearby crops weathered the storm. The house still stands. We can rebuild. We live in a community of dear neighbors and friends who help each other with good intent and purpose.
I step outside onto our tattered porch into full morning sunshine and a soft breeze, a cup of coffee in hand. The promise of another beautiful summer day on our farm and ranch awaits.
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