Preparing for a Storm - Water

1.  Get everyone showered. 

Sounds too unimportant to mention - until you've had no hydro for 2 days and you start to feel really grubby.  Doesn't do much for morale.  We've had no water at times for varying reasons - winter storms, lightning strike, broken well - and the kids are the unhappiest about the no-shower situation moreso than everything else.  Maybe it's because the heat and food can be dealt with (we always have heat and can open a can of food) but there's nothing we can do to get a shower once the storm is here.

When we lived in town for 1.5 years we could still run all the water in the house but the hot water only stayed hot for about half an hour but in the country, ALL of the water will run for less than 30 seconds and then we're done. 

2.  Do your dishes.  Another seemingly unimportant thing until you go through every last dish in the first few days of no hydro and can't wash a single one.  Would be good to have them all washed and then use paper plates, etc. as they can be thrown into the fire. 

3.  Get all of your laundry done and put away.  Another seemingly unimportant one until you have nothing clean left to put on and you find yourself and your whole family looking for your cleanest dirty shirts. 
A lady on YouTube mentioned this along with the dishes idea and the comments underneath were, as usual for YouTube, pretty vicious, indicating that no one ever has dirty dishes in their sinks or on their counters.  Bull!!  Most people have some dirty dishes - somewhere!  At least any house I've ever been in - especially if there are teens, toddlers or anyone in between.

4.  Flush the toilet!  Wow!  This one will really sound stupid and miniscule but it's something that we always had to deal with - kids not flushing the toilet.  Suddenly we're without hydro and knowing that we only get to flush that toilet a few times, we have to decide how long to wait before flushing it the first time.  Better to start out with it empty but that's not something I could get through to my kids.  Listening to other mothers, I know that their kids were the same so I'm thinking that it must be universal child behavior.  If you don't have kids or your kids never do this, consider yourself lucky and ignore  #4!!!

5.  Fill the tub (or pails) with water.  I've heard this mentioned numerous times before on YouTube, blogs, TV but never an explanation as to why.  I just pictured someone getting desperate to be clean and jumping in regardless of how cold the water was.  But it was mentioned on Anderson Live that you need that water for flushing the toilet.   You could do that with pails of water, also.

We sold our 2nd farm to old-order Mennonites.  Part of the deal was that we would take everything out of the house that was modern -light fixtures, light switches, hydro outlets, pumps and everything else - except the toilets.  (They wanted this stuff gone and would burn it or take it to the dump.)  They kept buckets of water beside the toilets for flushing and I guess we can do the same.

6.  The usual - fill up any container possible with drinking water and store in fridge.  Have lots of bottled water stored and ready.

Need to change or improve---Well, since my kids have outgrown the I-don't-have-to-flush-the-toilet-because-someone-else-will stage, that's not a problem anymore but having every dish and all the laundry perpetually done is not so easy.  I just need to get the kids to stop drinking all the bottled water.  I refill my water bottle repeately and I'd like them to do the same.

Preparing for a Storm - Wood

I watched Anderson Live today and had a good laugh when I saw 3 people in his audience.  3!!  No less, no more.  Good on Anderson for doing the show and updating everyone on the situation with Hurricane Sandy.   The show had more of the look of a news show than a talk show with the usual reporters blowing away in the storm while trying to update us with the latest wave height and wind strength.  I honestly hope that there are no fatalities from people staying behind. 

It got me thinking about what we do here to prepare for a possible blackout in an upcoming storm.  In other words, when we have a warning and time to get ready.  We often have blackouts that occur any time throughtout the year.  No need to wait for winter!

I usually stay away from writing lists myself although I love reading them because a). I figure that everyone else writes great lists that pretty much cover it all and b). I'm pretty sure that my lists would be incomplete and I'd always want to add to it but oh well, here goes.

1. We have lots of wood cut. 

Well, that only applies to 3 seasons but it's pretty important during those 3, expecially winter when it's life and death.  It's quite amazing how much wood we can go through in a season.  Last year when we filled our front porch for the first time, I was sure it was plenty for the year.  DH wasn't so sure and he was right.  We filled it completely again and that just got us through.

Have the wood close by.  Sounds obvious but don't most emergency things...after the emergency happens?!  The first stop for our wood, of course, is the bush where it's cut.  It then gets piled along a fence out behind the barn in order to dry for the summer so we can enjoy our front porch.  If the wood is still out behind the barn or still standing in the bush, it isn't much good during a storm.

Bring extra wood inside.  I have a problem with this and don't really like doing it.  The first year in our 2nd farmhouse we did this.  We brought the wood into our basement for our wood furnace and then brought it upstairs for our wood stove.  I sat one day with the wood stove door open (it was not glass) to watch the fire and to warm up.  As I watched, hundreds of large, black ants crawled out of the burning wood and all over it, trying to escape.  Of course they could not.
The next summer, we noticed thousands of small bugs covering the wood that was still outside.  They turned out to be earwigs that we were bringing into the house unaware.  No wonder we had an infestation of ants and earwigs.
For this reason, I'm not very keen to store any more wood in the house than necessary, unless there's an upcoming storm called for.

Need to change---I'd love to exchange this wood stove for a new one.  This stove was in this house when we moved in 2.5 years ago and already installed so it made sense to leave it, especially since it had the glass window that our other 2 stoves did not have and that I was hoping for.  It also does a fabulous job of heating the entire house.  The only problem is that it does not work well for cooking on top, something that would be important in a power outage, expecially a prolonged outage. The top is 2 levels and most pots and frying pans don't fit on either level.  The kettle that is filled with water and is sitting on top of the stove for humidifying the air does not ever boil so there doesn't seem to be enough heat to actually cook food.  Our other wood stove boiled the food so I'm thinking that this would be a better option.
 
We need to replace the stove pipe that rises above the roof.  We live on a very windy (the highest spot in this area for miles around) and very exposed farm (lots of trees but very few around the house for protection).  The wind not only whips around the buildings but occasionally down the stove pipe and blows the smoke out into the house.  We're hoping that a higher pipe on the roof would help with this problem.

Matches!!!  Lots and lots of matches.  They're something we just always have around and that makes it easy to not notice when they are low in number as we assume that there's always more somewhere.  If not matches then something to light the fire. 

Getting Ready For Fall - Storing Wood

The end result of the kids clearing off the front porch in order to make room for...

...lots of wood for winter.  We only have one source of heat in the house, a wood stove in the living room.  Amazingly, it does heat the entire house, top to bottom and back to front. 

There was an old oil furnace in the basement when we moved here 2.5 years ago,  along with 2 old oil tanks.  All 3 were done and had to come out and have not yet been replaced.  We have a 2-year-old used oil furnace and tank bought and waiting to go in but we need to finish digging out the basement dirt floor first.  A lot of drudgery work as each heavy bucket load has to be carried up the old, crooked steps, dumped into the tractor and carted away.

http://huonview.blogspot.ca/2010/09/apple-crates-in-place.html
We tried storing the wood in large apple crates like the ones above and putting the crates in the garage throughout the winter but this did not work out so well.  Too bad, too because the crates were easy enough to move around with the forks on the tractor.  On the days when the sun was shining outside, the ice on the wood inside the crates in the garage never thawed.  If it rained, snowed or was freezing rain outside, the liquid, one way or another found its way into the garage under the garage door in spite of us putting old towels, blankets, etc. under the door.  This liquid would invariably turn to ice, seldom thaw before winter was over and create a slippery floor that we had to walk on several times a day to get wood.

I expected the front porch to be a worse choice but last winter when we tried it as a last resort, it turned out to be much better.  If the weather warmed up, the wood warmed up also and the snow and ice melted.  We only had to go a step or 2 outside the front door and we seldom had any ice where we had to walk.  So we're doing it again this year.  The only possible downside is that most people would not like the look or mess of wood on their front porch but I don't really mind it at all.  It looks like the country to me!

Time For Autumn

Thanks to my computer, I'm a little behind on these fall photos but it's nice to see fall again in all its glory.  This is the fence that my son rebuilt this summer as it had fallen apart in our hands when we touched it.  It had been there a long time so I guess it was pretty authentic.  Another one still to be rebuilt but there's always next summer!

The 2 Autumn Joy plants are looking pretty good, all things considered.  The one on the left just got planted this summer and has not only survived but has doubled in size.  The one on the right has been there for who knows how long but got a bit trampled this summer when the the fence was being rebuilt. It's not as full as the other one but it survived and will do well again!

More Summer Memories

Summer Memories - Algonquin Park

Summer Memories

Where has the summer gone?  We can say that every summer - and do! - and yet we were right there all along  - and we're still surprised every year when it flies by.  It's nice to lose the heat and humidity but I'm always sad to see the long days of sunshine leave us, as well as all the leaves.