Friday, September 14, 2012

Fiber Optics, Fires, and More

I'll start with the fiber optics. Earlier this summer, we went 40 days without a phone. We didn't get the phone working again until they got a new, fiber optic line plowed in. We also have gone from satellite internet to internet over the fiber. It is over 4 times faster than satellite. However, we did have a bunch of problems with it, but I think we have gotten things worked out.
Here they are plowing in the line.


It's pretty dry now. We were trying to watch a movie one night when we saw lightning. There wasn't supposed to be any thunderstorms, but one had popped up. We went upstairs to watch to make sure the lightning didn't start any fires. I was trying to take pictures when a bolt hit less than a half mile away and instantly started a fire. Dad and I ran out and jumped in our firefighting outfit, (A pickup with a water tank and a pump on it) and headed for the fire. There was a little bit of rain, not enough to put it out, but enough to slow it down. We got there and were able to put it out easily.

Where the fire burned.


Luckily there wasn't much wind. You can see our haystack and our house in this picture.


We finally got around to hauling our portable panels home from the mountain. We didn't want to make two trips so we were able to carry 30 at once.


Thursday of last week we sold our yearling steers in Dickinson. Their weight exceeded our expectations averaging 1,020 pounds per head. When we got home, we took off in the Bearhawk and headed to the Badlands Fly-in in Hot Springs SD. We had a really good time. This year we toured Wind Cave which was pretty neat. I created a web album with pictures I took.

DJ