The great Blizzard of ’73 in Iowa will never be forgotten. It was a crippling storm with snow drifts reaching as high as 12 to 19 feet in some places. https://www.thegazette.com/community/time-machine-the-april-1973-blizzard/ Special snow plows had to be brought in to blow the massive amount of wet snow far enough away to plow a tunnel thru. School was out for the first week and the second week school was only attended by those capable of getting out or at least getting to the main highway to catch the bus.
In early April of ‘73 we lost electricity for almost two weeks, thereby relying solely on wood heat. The Des Moines Register and Tribune called it “the worst spring storm in at least 80 years”
My mother had purchased a grill for the Ben Franklin stove and we used it to grill hamburgers and cook stew.
My mom had purchased a popcorn popper that we used over the fire in the fireplace.
With no electricity, the neighbors on our country road that had a milking herd, needed help getting the cows milked. This had to be done manually or “by hand” the old-fashioned way. My father milked our two cows by hand each morning and night so he was ready and willing.
There were four families on our mile-long gravel road and all the men pulled together to get the milking done. Most of the milk for the first week had to be dumped or fed to the pigs, even though the creamery (MVMPA-Mississippi Valley Milk Producers Association) that normally purchased the milk, located right at the end of our gravel road, less than a mile away! The depth of the snow made it impossible to get the milk out. By the next week, our neighbor was able to get the milk to the creamery using the old milk cans shown in the picture, as no milk truck could yet get thru.
