a southern snow. An interview with Brooke McDaniel’s

PHOTO BY HALLIE JEAN CO. PHOTOGRAPHY

My first thought was “Yeah that’s not gonna happen. This is Tennesse.”

My husband recalled seeing the temperature at 1 degree. I remember letting the dogs out and seeing it around 7. But for the South, that’s just unheard of.

Oh gosh, we can only imagine. I think the temperatures here in Nebraska reached -27 at one point. It was just crazy. What was your main concern in that case?

Our main concern was our horses, since they’ve never experienced something like that. So we kept them in the barn with blankets. Of course our water froze and we had to carry out buckets. We were pretty worried the pipes burst but luckily it didn’t. So we just kept hauling out buckest of water to fill the trough and break the ice since it kept on freezing.

We had it so much better than others. Some of our neighbors’ cattle walked through a frozen pond, only for the ice to break on them. Their cattle ended up drowning so we went out to help them.

When you first heard about the storm and the extreme temperatures, what did you guys have going through your mind? Did you and your husband feel you had time to prepare?

Our first thought was “Yeah, that’s not going to happen!” This is Tennessee. Once it hit we knew we would have to haul water and be prepared for the pipes to burst. And keeping plenty of hay on hand since that’s what keeps our animals warm through the winter. Our hay is kept at a separate location so we have to go there, bring it into the barn and just keep on top of making sure there is plenty. One of the sliding doors windows had broken, so we had to board that up to make sure the wind wouldn’t get through.

I really feel humble talking about this, especially in Texas knowing they had it so much worse than us. God blessed up with getting us through it. It’s our livelihood.

With what you have explained about Texas being worse, and your neighbors losing their livestock, was there ever a turning point where you realized that this realy is happening and it caused you to switch up some gears on what you needed to do?

My husband deals with a lot of farmers, he’s an agronomist. So he sells seeds and chemicals to the farmers who not only grow crops but have cattle too. He was mainly the one that would go help others' families. So much crazy has happened with Covid and we just really felt like God was really trying to us. It was very scary for sure. We’ve never experienced something like that. And we really didn’t know how much snow we were going to get. Then all of a sudden it would be another 1-2 inches the next day. Our trucks weren’t running so some people couldn’t go get food. We took food to some of our neighbors sinec they couldn’t get out in it.

You know, for us Nebraskans we are so used to our snow trucks going out to put salt on the road. Who on earth would think Tennessee and Texas would be equipped to have snow plows.

Shoot, I think the first time I saw a snow plow in my life was during this.

PHOTO BY HALLIE JEAN CO. PHOTOGRAPHY