The last few days have been a bit chilly. Temperatures dropped below zero and kept falling. This morning is colder than we have seen since last winter.
Friday morning was -22° and the truck would not start. These temps are hard on diesels. We plugged in the block/oil pan/battery heater to warm it up and let it sit all day but still it wouldn’t start. The batteries got low, which can be the end of even a new battery when it’s this cold. So Chris brought the battery inside to sit by the heater. It spent almost 24 hours warming up. Then yesterday afternoon he put the battery back in and the truck started up. What a relief! We were down to the last bit of generator fuel and the heating oil was getting low.
Typically we use 1 gallon of gas for 8 hours of runtime on the generator. We even have a schedule we keep. 8am, 4pm, midnight keeps it running. Plugging in the truck goes through more fuel. It has to be filled every 5 hours instead. Good thing we picked up a couple extra gas cans.
Indoors is colder than most people would like. I’m finding it hard to leave my nest of blankets this morning, and even the dog has come to appreciate his sweater. (It’s a blanket you can wear!) But the Toyo keeps it 70° warmer than outside. Using the oven to make dinner helps. We would use the propane heater as a booster, but the blower went out just in time for this cold snap. I’ll have to find a replacement soon.
This was last night, comparing indoor and outdoor temps. At least 60° warmer inside!
We shrink wrapped the windows yesterday and that helped a lot with the draft. Lots of hot beverages and soup helps too. Honestly, a cabin would be easier to keep comfortable, but we’ve mostly got this figured out. We’re ahead of last year by a longshot. All systems are working so far. The only thing to do is improve.
It’s been a long couple of weeks. I have lost track of the days. Today might be Monday or it might not. All I know is that I seem to not have a fever for the first day in a week. I bounced between 99 and 102.something for so long it started to feel normal. The coughing fits are less frequent and more productive. I can breathe without losing control.
Yeah, covid sucks. My son had a coworker exposed by a family member and the virus did what viruses will do. I figured okay, what will be will be. I will probably come out stronger for it.
So I’m not dead yet. I’m on the mend. In another day or so I’ll get into town for a shower. (That is the worst part of dry cabin living while sick.) Maybe I’ll get some appetite back and be able to eat something.
Until then I’ll have another day curled up with the snuggle dog foot warmer. I’ll snooze through more Netflix and YouTube videos. My brain isn’t ready to be super active yet and that’s okay.
I still haven’t gotten the roof over the outhouse. And if you want to complain about cold seats, just imagine it when feverish. Brrr!
It has been a while hasn’t it? I won’t make excuses for not writing since I don’t even know why I felt there was so little to say. In the time since I last wrote I have gained a Wilderness First Responder certification, the aurora season has started, other things have happened, and winter has arrived.
Yesterday wasn’t the first snowfall of the season. That was last weekend. What started yesterday afternoon has turned into the first real accumulation of the winter. This will still be here until April or May.
As I browsed through IG this morning everyone was posting pumpkins and leaves to celebrate October and fall. It made me laugh because we went through that last month. Alaska is a bit ahead of the curve on winter.
Last week I posted on IG about the start of snow and was asked if I had gotten a roof over the outhouse yet. The answer is not yet. I have a roofing panel to cut up and install, but I think I’ll wait until the snow stops falling. Hopefully this weekend.
Measure the snowfall by how much you have to sweep off each time you go out?Roof material waiting for installation.
Another project that got delayed was the installation of our new-to-us oil tank. We acquired two, actually. The 300 gallon tank and stand can be seen in the picture of the roofing material. The 200 gallon tank replaces the plastic 55 gallon drum we used last year.
This was the fast and rough setup last year to get us warm after the propane froze.New tank, proper stand, missing a fitting.
The new tank will be hooked up soon. We just need to find the proper connector to go between the pipe on the tank and the compression fitting on the fuel line. We have 15 gallons of heating oil waiting to go in and we’ll be back to cozy before too long. Then we’ll have to figure out the big tank for the generator. If we’re gone for work we can’t top it off, though I do know a kid who likes to earn money and might be persuaded to check on it for us. She already gets paid to make sure the dog is properly entertained and stays out of trouble.
Hibernation cave. There is a dog in this photo. Can you find him?
Cold days and colder nights call for cozy comfort. Short days call for more light. My boys occasionally mock me for my love of Christmas lights, but they make a great, low power solution for dark rooms. Between my pile of fuzzy blankets and new soft lighting I have a really nice place to curl up for hibernation when I’m not working. It’s the little things.
Even though I am a professional driver, I always had one thing that I avoided like the plague. I hate backing trailers! I can back Blue into any place I need my truck to be. I even confidently maneuvered 40 ft transit busses when and wherever needed. I would refuse to take the utility trailer to the dump by myself because I would have to back it in and embarrass myself. I had fully convinced myself that I couldn’t do it.
That ends here and now!
Since last week I have been hauling gravel for work. They need several hundred yards of gravel to top the driveway and paths and to set up a new septic system. So they gave me a work truck and a dump trailer and told me to see how many trips I can make every day. The gravel pit is open from 7 to 5 and is 40 minutes away. So far 6 trips is as good as I can do. Several hundred yards…4.5 yards at a time. And every load requires me to back up a trailer.
Yesterday I dropped multiple loads in front of the lodge. They are all lined up next to each other nicely. Just seeing that and thinking “I did that!” makes me happy.
Then today I was told to switch product to prepare a septic system. They need 90 yards here by Friday to keep the project from being delayed. It’s a good thing they have a second driver running gravel too! We might just manage it. The challenge is to get backed in down a winding driveway without hitting anything, then down a ramp built to allow us to drop the load in the hole. But of course it was raining and the ground is soft under the rock. The truck need to be helped out each time.
This time last year I could not have done this work. I would not have been confident enough. I would have found a way to get out of it, or if I tried it I would have had a nervous breakdown and fallen apart. Not this year. This year I am ready to tackle some of the hard things and succeed. Watch out for next year! Maybe I’ll quit making excuses to avoid upgrading to the Class A CDL.
It’s easy to find reasons to avoid things that are hard. But in avoiding those things you miss out on that feeling of triumph when you succeed. Go for the hard things. Don’t listen to the voice in the back of your head that says you can’t. Don’t hold yourself back. Keep growing. Be the windshield. Squash the bugs.
Just don’t expect to hear that I’m turning into an ice road trucker any time soon. My confidence has yet to exceed my skill.
I love to get comments from people. I love knowing that you read what I wrote and that you want to respond. I love hearing your thoughts on whatever the subject was. I don’t love bots.
Every few days I check to see if anyone has commented and I find something stupid. Like a person with a weird name asking how to buy cbd gummies in someplace I’ve never been. Or advertising a smoke and vape shop that is questionable. Or a comment that starts out complementary but quickly turns into a bad English pitch for something I would never look at. I have to mark these things as spam and delete them.
I tried turning off comments, but it only killed the ones on my new post. I don’t like that. Finally I turned to the school of the search engine and figured out how to set comments as closed on older posts. Now you have 30 days from the publish date to comment. I hope this helps stem the flow of spam. And maybe I will not have comments that I hate anymore.
These wild strawberries were shared with me by one of my favorite kids.
And now for my pitch:
Do you like the things you have found in my blog? Is there anything you didn’t like so much? Is there something you want more of? Here’s what you can do: tell a friend and tell me.
I would love to grow my audience. I want to share my adventures with others to inspire them to find a way to live that lets them become more themselves. The more people read and comment,the more it feels like I’m doing something worthwhile.
So for the next 30 days that comments are supposed to be open, can anyone who reads this tell me two things? First, who you are going to share it with (and why you think they’ll like it) and Second, what you want me to write more about. Or maybe you’d like a video? I kinda want to learn how to do videos if you want to see them.
In case you didn’t know, I have been living off grid for just over a year now. Off grid means different things to different people. I have seen some more extreme definitions include hiding your very existence from the government, but that is a topic for a very different person. My definition of off grid is simply not being connected to public utilities.
I am living on my friend’s land in an RV until I get my cabin built. There are no hookups. My friend and her family have used a generator for electric power for the six years they have lived here, though they are on the verge of getting a connection to the power company this summer.(It’s paid for and the work order is sent!) We still bring our water home in 5 gallon jugs. We still use an outhouse and have alternative arrangements for laundry and showers. This lifestyle is not uncommon up here for various reasons that I can go into at another time.
I think the reason I am writing this today is because I just changed the oil in my generator. It’s the second time I’ve ever done it since I have been up here. That doesn’t mean that my generator has been neglected, it just means that I have great support people who currently aren’t here to do it for me. I might be spoiled!
My resident experts make it so I can neglect my own expertise. Here they are last summer tearing a generator apart to figure out what went wrong.
Expert No1 is my friend’s daughter. She’s so good at making them run that she wants to become a mechanic, but she doesn’t want to do it at home anymore. She trained No2, who is pretty good himself after keeping the lights and heat on all winter. Between the two of them I don’t have much to worry about. And that’s enough bragging on them for now.
When you think about energy, what comes to mind? Often it will be words like green, renewable, fossil fuel, solar, etc. When you dig down it often comes down to electricity. Windmills, solar panels, hybrid vehicles all generate electric power that is used to do the work. We think of massive freight trains and ships running on diesel, but that fuel really powers a generator that runs an electric motor to move the vehicle.
How much of your life depends on electricity? If you went to the main breaker in your house and shut off the power how much would that affect your ability to do basic things? Could you cook food? Take a warm shower? Heat your home? Do you have a well pump that you rely on to provide your clean water? How would you charge your devices? How would it limit your communication and entertainment? How long do you think you could leave the power off before you start itching to turn it back on? I am not telling you to actually shut off the power, but I highly recommend it as a thought experiment. Spend a day where you deliberately take note of every time and every way you use electricity. You might be surprised by how ubiquitous it is.
The first time I really wanted to dig into this topic was last fall when Oregon was dealing with wildfire. PGE made the decision to shut off some high voltage lines that pass through the Mt Hood National Forest due to high fire danger and high winds. As a result my family in Oregon was out of power for a couple of days. We discussed the possibility of them getting a generator, but were distracted when almost the entire county was put under evacuation orders due to wildfire.
The topic came up again in winter. Remember that week that half the country got hit hard with winter weather? My family again was without power for three days and the house got kinda cold. I spent time on a phone call discussing how to use a generator without powering the whole house and how to decide what is most necessary. I’m sure that they’ll get a generator at some point, but only after a few more annoying outages.
So now you have thought about how much you use electricity. Maybe you want a generator. How much do you need? I will argue for minimalism. I will state my case based on my own experience. I will not claim expertise because my experience pool is shallow. But what I know is good enough to keep you alive and comfortable.
11 months in and it still runs like a champ.
I use a Honda 2200 generator. I am not getting paid to say this. I chose it because my friends told me that they are the most reliable, long lasting, and efficient generator they have tried. Remember, this family has exclusively relied on generators for power for the last 6 years, so I figure they know what they’re talking about. So far I’m pretty happy with the units I own. They run up to eight hours on a single gallon of fuel. I have been told that they will last up to 18 months running almost nonstop if they are properly maintained. That includes changing the oil about every 300 hours of runtime. I set a reminder on my phone for every 2 weeks. The process only takes 5 minutes.
Old oil out, fresh oil in. Time to close it up.
So how do you hook up your generator to what you need to power? I remember my mom asking where the cable was to hook up the generator to the house. If you scroll up a bit you will see that we use a standard extension cord. That’s all!
Let me be perfectly clear. Unless you buy a big whole house generator and pay an electrician to install a special switch to connect it to your home you should never, NEVER connect a generator to your home’s electrical system. There are good reasons, like not sending power back into a grid that should be dead and harming people who are trying to get the power back up. But also, a small generator like this won’t run your whole house.
What should you do? Set your generator up outdoors where the exhaust won’t build up or fill your living area with carbon monoxide. Plug in a heavy duty extension cord and run it to the house. Connect a power strip and plug in your basics. Lights, phone chargers, TV, fan, all the simple things. You might even be able to run a small AC unit to cool a single room in hot weather. The generator will let you know its limits. This is where you figure out the basics of what you truly need. I discovered I couldn’t use a hair dryer. Most heaters are not likely to work either, so you might have to put some thought into another way to keep warm. It’s probably a good idea to try it out before you really need it, too.
If you are going to use a generator you must have fuel for it. The simplest way to store it is in 5 gallon gas cans. If you are worried about it getting stale then set up a system to rotate it. Number your cans. Fill them up. Set a monthly reminder on your phone. Pour gas can number 1 into your car’s tank, then take it with you to the gas station to fill it up again. Next month do the same with gas can number 2, and continue down the line until you get back to 1. Five cans will usually last for a week with this generator. Will the power be back on by then? Most of the time the answer is yes, but it never hurts to have some extra on hand.
My power bill fluctuates with the price of gas. These cans represent one week of electricity.
Let me talk about gas cans now. The design has been messed with a lot over the last 20 years or so and most of what they tried sucked. For a while I missed the vent on the can that allowed gas to pour freely into the tank you were trying to fill. I guess the EPA didn’t like something about it so if you look at my picture above you will notice only one can with a vent. Today that is my least favorite. I call it the spitter. Every time I set it down it will spew gas at me. I hate it. The one that works best is the childproof one. It’s the one with the black and green nozzle. It took a while to figure out how to work it, but it gives you great control and has a vent integrated into the nozzle that lets air go in as fuel goes out without chugging. I fully plan to replace the spitter with another one like it before winter.
You may notice that there is a second generator in the picture of the gas cans. That is the 2200 companion generator. We bought it as a backup. There were several times that it saved us from the cold last winter. There is nothing worse than waking up at 3am, -°20 outside, and you hear the generator choking itself to death hours before the fuel should run out. It is far better to pick up the spare, top off the tank, swap it out and go back to sleep instead of trying to fix the main unit as the heat slowly disappears. Our oil heater requires power to run so if there isn’t any we get cold fast. If we can just swap them out, the struggling unit can come inside to warm up, which often solves the problem.
Of course the other benefit of the companion generator is that you can use a special cable to connect it to the other generator and run them together to double the energy output. Flexibility is a good thing to have. I’m pretty sure that the spare will put in time at the cabin site once we start building. We need power to run tools and charge batteries for the cordless.
To sum it up, our modern lives call for power. Lately it seems more and more questionable whether we can rely on the power to stay on. Having an alternative source is a simple way to keep yourself and your family comfortable. You don’t have to default to solar or wind systems with battery banks that you have to maintain. If you know how to run a lawnmower you can use a generator. The battery backup can come later.
I think I’ve covered enough ground for today. Again, I’m not an expert, but I feel that living this way for the last year gives me a good enough foundation to speak from. I encourage you to at least run the thought experiment to become aware of what you use and need. If you do buy a generator, I highly recommend trying it out for a day, even if it’s just a backyard campout. It makes a great confidence boost to know that you can take care of at least one major need.
It has been a busy couple of days. It’s over 80° and it feels so good. Things are starting to get moving up at work. And this morning I got to experience my first real traffic jam since coming up here. It was caused by a moose. Of course!
Nobody wins when it’s moose vs traffic.
Early on I learned that you never doubt braking on the highway. The guy three cars up might be a jerk trying to mess with traffic, or he might be trying not to mow down a moose. The moose doesn’t care what’s coming at him, he’s just going to do his own thing. It’s in everyone’s best interest to avoid hitting the moose. This morning someone hit the moose. Traffic was at a standstill, backed up for a mile. It took us an extra fifteen minutes to get in to town. Tragedy, I tell you!
The cool thing is that the meat won’t go to waste. The troopers have a list of people to call to pick up the carcass. Any meat that isn’t ruined will be shared out by whoever can pick it up first.
It looks rough and it’s old,but inside looks cozy.
Now for work. The staff housing unit has arrived and been set up. My assignment this week has been to clean it. This is a man camp unit that spent years up on the north slope. From the outside it looks like trailer houses set side by side. Inside there’s a really nice commercial kitchen, washrooms, a common room, and nine bedrooms. Yesterday I scrubbed down the kitchen. Today I cleaned the pantry and four bedrooms. This is a job I can do. It really isn’t too dirty, except for the road dirt that got in everywhere when it made the trip down the Dalton.
And now for the concerning bit. Heading home there was smoke on the horizon. We saw a helicopter with a bucket headed towards a nearby water source. Later there was a string of three airplanes that flew past the smoke column and back towards town. Farther north of Fairbanks there is a wildfire. I don’t know anything more than that, but after Oregon’s fire season last year I can’t help but want to pay attention.
I am not too worried. Basecamp is set next to a firebreak and it looks like they’re trying to get a handle on this fire early. I’d hate to see anyone’s property go up in flames, but I will be okay no matter how this goes.
So there’s a brief update on my eventful day. I hope yours is even better.
When I stepped outside this morning I was struck by a wave of mosquitoes that crashed against me. Literally. I did what I had to do and hurried back inside, trying to leave as many as possible on the other side of the door. It doesn’t always work. I probably have a dozen or more perched on the ceiling, wall, or some inconspicuous place near me, just waiting to buzz past my head.
Vampires? Yes. But whoever wrote that rule in literary vampire lore that they need permission to enter a home must have never seen a mosquito. Ugh. They are bad enough during the day, but try to sleep with that buzz at the edge of your consciousness is less fun. A fan helps, but I can’t stand air blowing on me at night so instead I either hide completely under the blanket or I rig a sheet over me like a mosquito net.
I love dragonflies. This might seem like a change of subject, but dragonflies are the good guys. They are predators. They eat mosquitoes or mosquito larvae. Yesterday morning I found a dragonfly on the steps. Last week the kids found what I believe is a dragonfly larva in the creek. I’ll encourage them. Give me more dragonflies! I’d like fewer mosquitoes.
I’ve been stuck in a rut. I’ve started and deleted a couple of posts. I have a bunch of things I’d like to write about but the words just won’t take shape. It feels a little frustrating and I haven’t been able to force my way through the block. I’ll need to find a way around.
It has been a year since I left Oregon behind. Right now I feel like I am in the same position as I was when I arrived in Alaska. I don’t have reliable transportation. (Chris is working and uses my truck. The Scone is still not working.) The cabin is still on hold. (We should be able to pull the sawmill off the property today so we can get it repaired.) I’m not working regularly. (Okay, I’m scheduled for two days a week, but they’re having their own roadblocks so it feels like no progress there.) On top of all that, when I do work my feet and body end up hurting so bad that it takes all week to recover so I can do it again.
I came across someone’s quote yesterday, “Don’t be afraid of failure, be afraid of being in exactly the same place year after year.” And that’s where my mind is. I’m seeing all the ways that I am not making progress. I feel like I’m going backwards, especially with my physical condition. It doesn’t help that I had a cold knock me down for a couple of days this week.
Forgive my whining. I don’t like to do it, but sometimes it’s like sweeping up the dust from the floor and starting fresh. My brain generates all these negative thoughts and they collect like dust bunnies in the works. You can sweep them under the rug, but that doesn’t make them go away. Saying them out loud and acknowledging them seems to work better. Bring them out into the open and cancel them with reality, then they can be collected for the trash. There will be another batch soon enough. It’s best to not let them build up.
So how am I in a different place than I was last year?
I have done a lot of healing. I don’t have nearly as much bitterness in my soul as I did last June. I know myself a bit better. I know some more of what brings me joy and I have been learning how to allow myself to settle into that. It seems simple, but it’s harder than you might think.
The cabin is actually started. The beams are in place and it looks like they didn’t settle much during mud season. That’s good. All we need is a working sawmill and a couple of days and we can have our stack of lumber. Then it’s a matter of getting the framing done and the roof on. If we put the RV on site I can even do some of the work while Chris is in town. I really should see about getting some gravel down in the parking area…
I do have a job that I like, even though what’s available over the summer is kicking my butt. I know they want me to be available for when the season starts again in August. It’s good to know that I’m wanted.
I have also learned a lot over the winter. I learned about my abilities and limits. (I can do more than I thought I could.) I learned that I can live well with less. I know I want to share some of that. I just have to get around that imposter syndrome crap! Why does it feel fake if I’m doing it?
Tamarack, or Eastern Larch,is a deciduous conifer. The needles turn gold and shed in the fall,then grow back for summer.
Life runs in cycles. Every year follows a similar pattern to the year before. I guess the question is whether you are on a track going in circles or if you are in a spiral. If you’re just making your run deeper then I hope you like where you are. I’d rather be working my way up the spiral.
I think that’s enough for now. I’ll try to make more posts and fewer excuses. And I hope you will talk back to me. Ask questions. Tell me what you’re curious about. Some things about living here are slightly surreal, like having daylight all the time. That’s a post for later. For now I’ll leave you with some flower pics.
Lingnon berry flowers. They grow like a ground cover all through the forest, and are especially thick at the edges where they get the sun.Wild current. I know someone who calls them high bush cranberries. Both these and lingnon berries taste very much like cranberries. The wild roses are now in bloom.
If you have been reading this blog over the last year there has been one major theme, aside from snow. When can I get on my land so I can build?
All last summer the unusual amount of rain made my new driveway treacherous. All winter there was enough snow that we weren’t going to try. This spring we were waiting for it to melt. And now we wait for the mud to dry out some more.
My driveway a month ago. My driveway yesterday.
One of the things that kept coming up when I was looking at land a considering the purchase of the property I now own was that you always look at access and water. I know how to handle water for consumption on the property and I know where most of the water flows across or collects on the property. I’m mostly okay with that at this point. What I’m struggling with is access.
Putting in the driveway was a great starting point. Now I really need to put in some time, effort, and gravel. That means money. I think I’m going to get off my butt and call up a local gravel company to see what it’s going to cost me to get started. If I can get something done on that then I will have an easier time getting started on all the other things that need doing.
I’m so glad I bought some supplies last fall. Prices on those two stacks have gone up considerably.
Part of the reason we went to check on the property was to see if our plywood was still there. I bought a stack of 5/8 and 20 sheets of tongue and groove subfloor last fall. I’m glad I did. Bulk price on the 5/8 was under $25/sheet last year. I just checked and it’s going for $67/sheet now for the same stuff. The subfloor is over $90/sheet now where I think I paid $60. I have a slightly irrational fear that it will grow legs. Maybe that comes from where I grew up, but at this point it might be worth the bother to someone.
Clay is getting the lay of the land.
I also succumbed to temptation and tromped across more of the land. I know we’ll extend the driveway in the future. I want to put in a guest cabin or two and maybe a second residence. This place is big enough to do some interesting things. I didn’t get very far, but I love what I saw. I can’t wait.
