Storm Wrapup

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. With the generator, I was as stressed as I had been. There was some extra work involved in doing the chores, but nothing that couldn't be handled. I continued trying to clear away the broken branches, but we got 2 feet of snow last weekend so there is still alot out there now buried under snow.

I got fairly good at cooking basic on the wood stove. One morning, I made bacon and eggs. with my cast iron skillet. I heated up soups for evening meals. The last morning without power I used up some shallots, gruyere cheese and eggs by making on omelet with my cast iron skillet. So, I really didn't do badly as far as that goes. I'm not sure how much gas for generator would have been used if I had used the cooktop or the oven for cooking. I preferred to make do and conserve.

Lessons learned--be prepared. I need to get an evacuation plan in order. I have 4 horses and just a two-horse trailer. What would I do if I had to evacuate?! Another one of those "it will never happen to me" things, that I now realize COULD happen. Just because I don't live in CA where wild fires and mud slides are common or in the southeast where there are much more devastating hurricanes, doesn't mean something dire couldn't happen here.

Also, I need to get a supply of sturdy rope. I was lucky that only a few top boards on the equine fencing were broken. If I had lost complete sections of fencing, the horses could have been wandering around the neighborhood. Actually, I'm pretty sure the boys would hang around--they know those dangerous dirt bikes are out there. But, the girls definately have the "oh, let's go visiting" personality. On Saturday morning there were 3 cows wandering around on the main road at the end of my street. No one knew where they came from. It sends shivers down my spine thinking that that could have been the horses.

I also need supplies for mending the electric fence. Not as important as the wooden fence, as that's mostly to keep certain equines from eating the boards, but still, that needs to be repaired and if I lose parts of the wooden fence, a few strands of the electric wire will help to safely contain the horses. I need the wire, the connectors, etc. I just have to figure out where to get all these things.

And, keep as much food on hand as I can for humans and animals. The grain storage is a problem here as I can only keep 2 weeks worth at a time. I am considering getting more bags and just piling them up, but I worry about the rodents getting in them if they're not in barrels. I used to have squirrels living in the barn, before I got the horses. Now that I have the horses here and I spend a fair amount of time in and out of the barn, I don't notice the squirrels that much. I did have a raccoon in there one summer--he killed the last of my chickens. :-( I just worry about attracting nuisance animals. I think I will devise a way to be able to store more horse grain and try not to ever get below 2 week's worth of grain. I never get that low on hay. I start to worry about getting more hay in when I get down to about a month's worth.

And, of course, first aid supplies. I was very fortunate that none of the horses were injured by falling limbs. I'm making sure I have a supply of sheet cotton, betadine, standing wraps, etc. The horses were all good about the sounds of all the chain saws, but I think I'm going to get some calming herbs. Especially since I suspect this spring there's going to be alot of brush pile burning and Jeeves does NOT like fires. I'm not sure how the girls will be about that. But, better to be prepared with some calming herbs rather than risk colic from anxiety.

Last--emergency contacts. Make sure people know who lives close by who can take care of the animals so that in case something happens to me, others can be called to step in. I've got a list of emergency contacts in the barn, which I will be updating. I'm going to tell my neighbors about this list, so that if they see that something has happened to me, they can contact someone to take care of the animals.

If anyone can think of anything else, please let me know.

Saved by the Generator

Dave got the generator hooked up and working by mid-afternoon on Sunday. The first thing we did was start scrubbing out the stock tanks and refilling them. Who knew that it would be so exciting to do such a mundane chore?! Unfortunately, the water stopped when Jeeves's tank was only about 1/2 filled. :-( Dave was still here, so I grabbed him and told him what had happened. He looked at things, scratched his head, looked at things, and decided to move the circuit breakers to a different slot in the panel. That seemed to work as the pump started working again and we had water. Dave left. Shortly after, the pump stopped working again. Eeek! I checked the circuit breakers in the barn and in the main panel in the basement. All looked alright. Lights were working. But, not the water pump. I jiggled things. I kicked the generator, I cursed. The pump wouldn't work.

This is when I had my little temper tantrum. I threw myself on the couch and pulled the afghan over my head and tried to escape from life. Unfortunately, life has to go on, the horses need water, and I had to figure out what was going on.

Long story, not so short, the generator is 5000 watts. Which sounds like a lot and should be enough to power the water pump, along with the fridge, etc. George and I checked the few things that were plugged in and they didn't add up to 5000 watts. That is, until we looked at the water heater. The electric water heater. That little monster uses 4500 watts! Aha! The light bulb started to dawn over my head. I have a mixer valve in my basement that mixes hot water with cold for the line going out to the frost free hydrant by the barn. Soooo, as we were filling up the stock tanks it worked fine until the water in the heater cooled off enough that the water heater had to turn on to heat up. Then, that would overload the generator. Dave and Jenn actually drove all the way back out here to look at the generator again. It turns out there is a circuit actually on the generator that had to be reset. Once we did that, restarted the generator, turned the mixing valve so that no hot water was going to the barn AND turned off the circuit breaker for the water heater, it worked fine!! I got all the stock tanks filled up and never had any problems again.

Because the generator sucks up gas, I turned it off over night. In the morning, the first thing I did was throw on some clothes, run outside, and tried to see if I could start the generator myself from a cold-start. The day before didn't really count since it was already warmed up when I started it. The generator is started with one of those pull cords, which I usually fail miserably at. It takes me forever to get the weed wackers started up. But, miraculously, the generator started right up!! I ran back into the house and used the toiled...and flushed!! Brushed my teeth with the lights on!! Oh, the simple pleasures in life. :-)

I then turned OFF the circuit breaker for the pump and turned ON the circuit breaker for the water heater. I let the generator run for a bit over an hour, then I reversed the circuit breakers--pump ON, heater OFF. Then, I took my first shower since Wednesday morning! Oh, the joy! Those cold water sponge baths just weren't doing it for me.

It was a pain having to play with the circuit breakers, but it worked. The biggest thing for me was the water for the horses--everything else was a bonus. After that, I only ran the generator for a few hours a day. Usually an hour or so in the morning, so that I had water for the horses meal, quick clean up and toilets and to cool off the fridge. Then again late afternoon for the same. I would turn the water heater on in the morning and, except for when I showered, it would give me enough hot water to make it through the day with frugal use. Everything in my freezer had already been tossed since it had gotten too warm before the generator got working. But, I put a couple of 1/2 bottles of water in the freezer to see how cool it stayed and running it like that, a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the late afternoon, kept the fridge and freezer cool enough. So, now I know for the next time, how to keep the food good. I could have run the generator longer, but I wanted to conserve the gas. It took too long to go out and get more gas--the nearest gas station that was operational was over an hour away. Normally, it only takes 20 minutes to get to that station but with the condition of the roads (trees down, hanging over the roads, roads closed, etc.) it took over an hour to get there. It also gets pretty expensive refilling that thing. I didn't use it enough to really figure out how long it would run on a tank (6 gallons) but I'm pretty sure it would go at least 8 hours with the kind of use I was doing. The more watts you use, the more gas it takes. I now have 2 5-gallon containers of gasoline out in the barn (not where the horses are stabled, it's more an equipment barn). So, I am prepared.

My friends have a whole house generator. They have 3 large propane tanks that they use to fuel the generator. I think they can go weeks without power on the tanks they have. There are diesel generators that probably use less gas and therefore would run longer on a tank of gas. I didn't have any choice, I just took what showed up. But, it is good enough for my needs. If I had a lot more horses, I might want to upgrade to a bigger generator. I don't mind some sacrifices. The neighbors across the street have a generator and even when we just lose power for a few hours, they start that thing right up. I swear they can't go an evening without TV. :-( Now, the neighbor down the street is a disabled woman. She's on an oxygen tank and has to have electricity, so she ran her generator all the time. But, for her, it's a matter of life and death, not a convenience.

So, do some research--figure out what you want to have powered if you ever have an extended power outage. Check to see how many amps those things use. That will help you figure out what size generator you need to get. But, definately do some planning ahead of time and be prepared. I'm 50 yo and have never experienced a power outage like this. I didn't think I ever would. Surprise, surprise. I hope I never do again. When we have horses, we need to be ready. I've learned my lesson, fortunately, without any stress to the horses. They didn't have a clue all this "drama" was going on. They were getting fed and had water and were turned out as normal during the whole power outage. That's all they cared about.

Cleaning Up the Mess

I only cried for about a minute. I just needed the emotional release and it was over as quickly and unexpectedly as it started. With a deep breath, I looked around to figure out how I could get my morning cup of tea. The woodstove was the likely method of heating up the water, but would it really get it boiling? Well, I would find out soon enough. I opened up the flu, added some more smaller logs to get the stove burning hot and put some water into a small pot. I didn't want to use my regular kettle as the handle has a rubbery covering on it and I was worried the heat from the wood stove would melt it. It wasn't long before the water reached a rolling boil--perfect for tea. :-) I was set! If I can have my morning cup of tea, I can face whatever the day brings.

I dug a ginger scone out of the freezer, wrapped that up in aluminum foil and placed it on top of the stove to heat it up. That didn't go as well as the tea--the bottom of the scone burned pretty quickly. Oops! It was still good enough to be a go-with for the cup of tea, though. Playing with cooking on the wood stove during this power outage, I figured out that to heat up scones or muffins, it was best to get a rack out of the oven, put that on top of the wood stove, then put the foil wrapped treat on the rack. That way it warmed up but didn't burn...as long as I remembered to turn it and keep an eye on it.

After the tea and scone, I went back outside. I noticed a few of the neighbors out in the street, so I walked back out there to see what was going on. The men were getting their chain saws out and started cutting up the trees and limbs that were blocking the street. I grabbed the cut up pieces and dragged them off to the side of the road. Some of the older kids came out and helped me with the debris removal while the men handled the chain saws. We had to be careful, as there were still limbs crashing down. But, it wasn't long before the road was cleared enough for a car to get through. There was still an obstacle course for the cars to weave around, but it was passable. I didn't even consider venturing out, though. If I went out and something happened to prevent me getting back, who would take care of all the animals?!

I spent the rest of that first day cleaning stalls, and starting to remove the debris from the paddocks. Mostly what I did was get as much off the fence as I could. I used a hand saw to cut up what I could and tried to clean up what I could. I also took the dogs for a walk as far as I dared to go up the street, trying to find a spot where I could get signal on my cell phone. No luck with that.

The most heartbreaking loss is my little Hawthorne tree. :-( I planted that little tree the first year after I moved here, 7 years ago. It's spring flowers aren't much, but the berries in winter are so beautiful. And, in January,when the berries completely ripen, the birds come and eat them in one day. It has such a pretty shape. In the pic, it looks like it's a weeping variety but that's just because of the weight of the ice. The branches are supposed to be arching upwards, not drooping down. I will get a new one in the spring. For now, I just pruned off the branches that have snapped and will leave the rest there for the berries to ripen for the birds.

The worst thing that first day was that after dark, there wasn't anything to do. I had no batteries for the radio. Candles did not provide enough light to read and I didn't want to drain the batteries by using the flashlight. I needed that flashlight to be able to go out to give the horses their bed check hay. No phone. The dogs and cats, while cute and good company are not very good at holding their end of a conversation. So, I took the opportunity to do some meditation and some yoga...in the dark. :-) I have gotten out of the habit of meditation and this was a good reminder for me. I have promised myself that I will make the time to meditate even if only for 5 minutes day. Just a few minutes sitting in the quiet, focusing on my breathing and nothing else. A good way to center myself and focus my energy for the day. Some good comes out of the disaster.