Emergency Preparedness--What if we had a blackout, or other emergency on the farm?

Emergency preparedness comes natural to my husband, a pig farmer, Ohio farm boy his whole life. When our electricity went out for a about a day, we had the wood stove for heat. We could heat our foot on the top of it. He got an small TV out and hooked it up to what we call the "hotbox" the thing we use to jump-start our cars and trucks. He had a DC light hooked up. We had flashlights and candles. All in all we were relatively comfortable until the electricity came back on. (Well, I missed the computer.)

During this past year I have also become interested in emergency preparedness. So I have been trying to build up an emergency food and water supply and think about these things. You know: what if? What if? After I stockpile soup, beans, flour etc. for us, what about the dogs? What about the horses? What about the goats?

The reason I'm bringing this up is the news that down in Kentucky there is a huge blackout caused by a terrible winter ice storm. The national guard is going house to house to help out residents. I'm sure there are farms and animal owners down there also without electricity and heat. Hundreds of thousands of people are off the grid and suffering. Children are no doubt being traumatized and everyone is stressed out to have their lives interrupted one way or the other.

I'm not going to list out a bunch of "hints" for preparing in animals, especially dogs, goats and horses, in mind even though I could. I would rather you think about it. Mull it over. What if I ran out of feed and the roads were blocked? Or the feed store was closed since they don't have electricity? What about water? How would I get water to my animals? Do i have enough flashlights on hand? Do I have a kerosene heater or something similar in case I need it? What if the cell phones go down....

Ask yourself "what if" and then just start mentally making plans for an emergency, short term and maybe even long term. For example, I think I'm going to bring home a couple of round bales of hay and store them behind the barn, just in case. I'm also going to get a rain barrel out there close to the barn.

Please leave comments about this. What are you thinking about? What can you do to prepare? We can toss this around.