I think we have gotten 8″ of snow in the last few days. This is by not any scientific measurement, it’s based on how much snow I sweep off a certain seat every time I go out. It has become habit to grab the broom as well as TP every time I go out the door. Yes, I confess. I do regret not putting a roof out there. Even a tarp would help, but… whatever. I do have a wonderful view if it is warm enough to take time to look around. Sunrise is especially pretty.
I haven’t written in a few days because I have things I want to say about current events and how I think it might affect my plans for the future. I’ve been thinking about energy a lot. Also about being prepared for challenging times. The winter weather that hit nearly the entire country in February took many people by surprise while I’m gaining experience in how to handle that type of weather. I’m thinking about redundancy and alternatives and how I can set them up so I won’t be taken by surprise if the current systems are disrupted.
I’ve been thinking, but I don’t know how best to share my thoughts. I want it to be a discussion with other interested people. I want people with experience to be able to advise those without. I probably want more than I will ever achieve on my little blog, so I guess I’ll just have to figure out where to start small. So instead of the deep thoughts I will share a couple of stories.
Yesterday was warm by February in Alaska standards. The temp was about 20° so we took advantage of that by shoveling some of the snow away from the truck and off our paths. Not that it did a lot of good, but there’s less than there would have been.
Clay has a new squeaky toy. We bought it so he won’t get so bored when we’re gone and won’t look for trouble. There have been too many incidents of getting into things that should not be touched! He made the mistake of bringing it outside to play. He lost track of it and the other dogs got to it and brought it into the cabin across the creek. Hopefully it will come home soon now that the kids know where it came from.
The funniest story is when Chris came in completely covered in snow. I guess he was by the generator, near the trees that are heavy with excess snow. He says an odd noise got him to look up just as a branch let go of a load. A raven happened to fly away from the branch right about then. Apparently they have a twisted sense of humor and find ways to tease.
As for me, I got to join friends on a trip to the hot springs. It’s a really nice day trip. We left home at almost 5, picked up some snacks in town, filled the tank in the car, then headed out of town. Due to all the snow the road was more of an adventure than usual, but we had the ice road trucker driving the Prius. So yeah, it was an adventure. He’s got no worries tackling an actual paved road in a bit of snow when he drives the haul road on a regular basis.
The hot springs were almost too hot with the weather so warm. They are best enjoyed when it’s -30°. Some of us were ready to get out much sooner than others. But the soak did me good. The minerals in the water really do something to your joints. One of these days I’ll manage to schedule a massage to go with the hot springs trip.
Now another week is coming, and with it another month. There’s only a few more weeks to the season at my job. By April I need to be ready to see what I can get started on for my cabin. I’ll have the free time and hopefully Chris will have a job to cover living expenses. I’m excited as I look forward to the next couple of months. This RV has worked well enough to keep out the weather this winter. I just don’t want to still be here in August.
So I guess that covers where we are for now. I hope everyone got through the bad weather well enough. I hope you are all making plans for how to make the next time go easier. And I hope you go into spring with plans to improve your life.
Good for you Bonnie, yes, we had it pretty bad with the ice storm but only lost power for about 24 hours. My trees dropped big limbs on the house and car, the insurance is way backed up, 3 weeks before they can inspect the crushed roof, gutters, huge dents in the car. As for being prepared, I am looking at a dual fuel generator as a backup. Some near us were without power and water for 8-10 days. Those people on wells with electric power couldn’t even flush or bathe.
I know my family was out for three days. We have an older gas powered generator that got pulled out but not used. My mom asked me after the fact where the cables were, not knowing that you can just run extension cords in to power specific devices as needed. We’re also going to talk about water storage for cooking and drinking. Should I do a post on simple preparedness?
Between the fires and the ice this year, I have been doing extra thinking on what we need to do to be prepared. We’ve been able to practice both an evacuation and how to hunker down.
We have a generator and a woodstove, but we didn’t make sure that we had extra fuel waiting in the wings (fortunately, we were able to buy more, but I know for many that was a huge ordeal because most gas stations were closed for a few days). Also, because we just got the wood stove put in, we hadn’t put up much firewood, and what we had was pretty wet. We could get a fire started, but it wasn’t ideal. One bonus, with all our downed trees, we will have plenty of firewood to put up for future winters. The RV provided our water, but we didn’t start off with a full tank there either. The one area we were prepared was having propane fuel. Our lesson learned was, it doesn’t matter what you have, if you don’t have the things to make it work, it’s not so helpful. We didn’t expect to be without power for 6 days, so we didn’t make sure the water tank was full in the RV and we didn’t make sure we had extra fuel for the generator. There’s not a lot we could have done for the woodstove, but now that we have it, we know we have to make sure there is a good supply of dry firewood. Extra ice chests will also be useful for helping keep food cold if the power outage is due to ice (not so much if it’s in warm weather… unless we’re able to buy ice regularly enough). Having my new kitchen in will also allow me to stock up on more canned foods (that don’t have to be refrigerated) and paper plates and plastic bowls and silverware to help to save water. My goal for my container house is to eventually get it to where we can be off grid with it. This last storm has just helped to solidify my resolve to do so. There are more things to consider, some I can think of (like how to keep my stored water from freezing), some I won’t be able to until we’re in a situation, but the more prepared we can be, the more comfortable and safe situations like this can be.
I also have to think about how to keep the water from freezing. I’d like to put a tank in my loft when the cabin is built, so I can have gravity fed water supply. The other option is to put it under the cabin the way they do at Basecamp and use a pressure tank and well pump to supply it to the sink. I plan to go help with summer work just so I can learn! I did see what happens when a tank freezes though. They had to bring one to the shop to thaw. It only had a few inches of water frozen in there but it took two days to thaw and it was heavy to get off the trailer. Best to avoid the situation.
Since we don’t have the freezing temps you have, I will probably go with a gravity fed system from a tank on the roof. However, one thing I am learning (repeatedly), is nothing is as simple as it sounds!