January 24, 2026 in the wee hours of the morning, it began to snow. It pretty much snowed all day then turned to sleet and ended with freezing rain. Upwards of half an inch of ice covered the ground AND the trees in its frozen grip. Thousands of limbs succumbed to the weight of the ice and many trees had the tops snapped out of them.

We were safe and warm in our Hendersonville, TN home while many areas around us were without power. Then the temperatures dropped. You see, usually in Tennessee, and many places in the South, you will see a big storm followed by seasonable temperatures in the upper 40s. So the snow and ice doesn’t usually stick around too long. This time was different.

We wondered about the fate of Patriot’s Rest. How much snow fell on our little cabin in the woods? Did we lose trees? Did we have frozen pipes? Were the solar panels okay? Were there any damages to the house that is still very much under construction? So many questions. Fortunately one of the neighbors was able to get over there and sent us a report.

His message started with, “you’ve got a lot of clean up to do”. With a picture of trees down across the driveway.

So exactly one week later, we headed down to the property to assess the damages. All the main roads were clear by this time but being very rural, the back roads are still quite icy. But we safely made our way down early and arrived to start our cleanup efforts. We had to pull out the chainsaw to get the F350 fully out of the road into the driveway.

Tim had actually prepped well for this storm. He blew out the water lines and added some extra batts of insulation to the water shed. He also completely shut down the solar array, charge controller, and all the things electrical. He added some insulation board to the windows of the cabin and shut up everything on the house before coming home to be with Betty and me during the storm.

So we left the truck at the end of the drive and hiked in, just in awe of all the pines that had snapped and fell, some onto the drive, even more onto other trees in the woods. We got to the cabin and were astonished that structurally there was no damage.

Tim went to start the generator while I built a fire in the wood stove. He also started the tractor to get it warmed up. He used the tractor to push many of the downed trees off to the side of the driveway. Then we started cutting the one that fell towards/on the cabin. It’s pine so we’ll probably use the trunk sections to add to the log wall across the front of the property. One day we’ll get back to that project.

God has so incredibly blessed our family.