Power?

I realized more fully last weekend that I am living up north. Since there are lots and lots of trees and a lot of the ground is rock, all the power-lines are above ground. This is all fine and good until a storm comes and blows those trees around. That is what happened last Saturday. We had a sneaking suspicion when we started building on our property that we would get our fair share of power outages and would be some of the last to get it restored.

We had stopped the outdoor wood boiler the week before because of the wonderfully warm weather but had decided to re-start it because it was getting cool again. David had gone out and begun the long process of getting the fire started in the furnace and had success just when the power went off from wind and rain around 4 pm. (The only bummer thing about the furnace is that it needs electricity to run the water pumps to circulate the heat in the floors!) In the last few hours of daylight I gathered candles and found a good book, not knowing how long we'd be without power because we'd never remembered to actually buy a corded phone that will work without power.

Thankfully, it wasn't winter so we were able to layer clothes and use blankets and it wasn't that bad. (The only thing that does work in our house when there's no power are the thermostats because they're run by batteries...so you can always know how cold you are. =])

When there's no power you don't have the luxury of looking in your fridge very long, but I remembered the enchiladas I had made the night before. Cold enchiladas did not sound very appealing, neither did going out in the pouring rain to cook them over the grill. However, I was inspired by the candlebra we were using for light. We have a pan that we'd used camping so it has a blackened bottom already. Perfect! So after about a half hour of holding the pan over the candles, we had warm delicious enchiladas. Normally I would have eaten two but I suddenly wasn't all the hungry at the thought of standing another half an hour over the candles.

However...if you're ever desperate to heat up your food - try a candle, it just might work!

Our story didn't end there. The next morning we went to a church an hour away where David was to preach. When we arrived we were informed that this little country church was without power as well! Some of the surrounding people had power so they still came to church. They had a small propane stove that still worked, but without power the fan wouldn't work to push out the heat. We all circled up around it and carried on the service. It certainly was memorable!

We had been invited to lunch with the head elder and his wife who shared a wonderful hot meal! Later that day the power was restored to our house, totally about 24 hours without power. It was actually a really good practice run for winter's possible power outages which may not be so easily breezed through. We have since bought a corded phone, charged the batteries that can run the heat pumps for 36 hours and bought oil so the generator can be started. Hmm...anything else?