Last Thursday, during a beautiful afternoon, we lost our power and phone/internet. Ever since the derecho storms over the summer, we periodically lose our power. It can be quite frustrating at times, especially when it happens on a beautiful sunny day with no wind. We were fortunate to get our power back later that day, but we were without our phone/internet until Tuesday night.
On Monday morning, we lost power again. We were fully prepared, at least mentally, to be without power for a few days with Sandy's arrival. We were not thrilled, however, when the power cut out before it even started raining. We were incredibly lucky in that the power was restored after lunch. Dan had come home in the morning because he forgot his laptop at home. I am so glad he made it home because we needed to light our woodstove. The first burning of the woodstove can cause some smoke to come off as the paint heats up. Needless to say, we had to remove Kole's smoke detector from his bedroom for a while because it kept going off. The detector ten feet from the stove was fine, though!
On Tuesday, Dan was able to work from home as his office was closed to regular, non-emergency employees. We woke up to about 3 inches of snow, which was quite fun to see! The woodstove was roaring, Kole and I played, and Dan worked. They took a brief break in the afternoon to go outside to make snowmen. Kole really, really enjoyed that. And we found our phone had returned that evening! Kole was thrilled as he loves watching Netflix. I don't like for him to watch it all that much, but it is a real lifesaver when pregnant to help keep a little boy occupied!
My mom and step-dad got hit a lot harder with the storm, receiving roughly a foot of snow. There were numerous trees down on their road. They hope to have power restored this weekend, but that's still up in the air.
With the storms this summer and now Sandy, it has really made us realize that a nice addition to our homestead would be a backup generator. We borrowed my dad's over the summer and we used it for a little while Monday morning, but we hope to be able to get one that we can hook the whole house up to. We love the woodstove, so we don't have to rely on electricity to heat things up!
It has also deepened our resolve to become as self-sufficient as possible. We won't have to worry about food during a power outage if we have a stocked pantry with home canned goods, a root cellar with vegetables, a freezer full of homegrown meat, and some dairy animals for milk. It simply makes sense to us :-)
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