‘Always prepared’: NC farmer describes caring for 18 horses when the power goes out
Having grown up in hurricane-prone Alabama, Adele Baker says she is “always prepared” in case the power goes out.
At Fox Lake Farm, her 55-acre horse farm outside of Southern Pines, Baker relies on multiple generators to keep everything running, and keeps high-power flashlights handy. Usually, the power goes out because of a hurricane or other bad storm. But between Saturday night and Wednesday, Baker and thousands of other Moore County residents were without power due to two electrical substations that were damaged by gunfire.
Authorities have said they are still searching for suspects, but say the attack was intentional.
By Wednesday evening, power had been restored for nearly all of the 45,000 customers across the county, including Baker, who were affected by the outages.
“It will be nice to go back to normal,” Baker wrote in a text message Wednesday, after four difficult, taxing days of running the farm and taking care of daily appointments and errands without power.
Baker’s farm is home to 18 horses, along with some chickens and ducks. Usually, Baker uses a large generator to pump water out of a well for all of the animals. A second, smaller generator powers her refrigerator and freezer.
But when the power went out Saturday, the small generator wouldn’t start. The only option was to replace it with the larger one, and move it back and forth between the well and Baker’s home on the property to pump water and keep the freezer powered. Her daughter Sarah helped carry water for the horses to their barns in buckets.
A local Tractor Supply store managed to remain open, Baker said, providing her and other farmers with feed and hay for the days that the power was out. And with enough grass and water in the paddocks, Baker’s horses were fine throughout the ordeal. She also said she was grateful that all of her employees showed up to work this week even though they didn’t have power at home.
People running smaller ranches, especially those who didn’t have generators, would have had a more difficult time, Baker said. But the local community of horse farmers in Moore County is “really strong,” she said, adding that she knew some people in need of backup power were able to get water from friends.
“Most horse people, you will find, are very resilient,” Baker said.
There were 733 farms in Moore County as of 2017, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest agricultural census. Across all farms with livestock, there were 1,398 horses and ponies in the county.
When the outages began Saturday, Baker and her husband had just sat down with his family for dinner at Ashten’s Restaurant in downtown Southern Pines. Soon after they were served their drinks, the power went out.
At first, the group figured the power would be back soon. But after about 15 minutes, word started to spread that something had gone wrong. Eventually the fire marshal stopped by and told everyone to go home. As the community would quickly find out, the two substations had been deliberately damaged, cutting off power to most of Moore County’s residents and businesses.
Now that the power is back, the focus of the community will shift to the ongoing investigations by the Moore County Sheriff’s Office, the State Bureau of Investigation and the FBI, whose Charlotte Division has launched an investigation as well. On Wednesday, state authorities announced a reward of up to $75,000 for information that leads to an arrest and conviction in the case.
Baker said she hopes the people behind the attack are held responsible.
“These people hurt all kinds of very innocent people,” she said.
