These Two Hands

Wow, that was some doozy of a storm! For those of you who might not know, we had some big ole-record-breaking snowfall around these parts last night. About 28 inches, and 10 more forecast for tonight, with 40-mile-an-hour winds. Drifts topping our chain link fence, burying our grill and patio tables with ridiculously over-puffed muffin-hats of snow, coating and draping and breaking trees all around us.

Which is of course why the power was out all morning: down the road a bit some very tall evergreens had keeled over right across the street one after another, snapping power lines as they fell. Our neighbors (who sleep on the street side of their house) told us they were woken up by snapping and arcing electricity that looked like a lightening strike.  Our street was impassible for most of the day.

The quiet and solitude all along our street was mesmerizing; the snow-draped trees and silent forest were beautiful. Snow continued to drift much of the morning, and our busy two-lane street had just enough of a rut cut out for a single utility vehicle to pass.

I was excited; we were woken up at 7am by the sound of our sump-pump back-up battery’s alarm emitting an extremely loud, piercing whine to let us know that the power was down and that the battery was also having trouble. I think the alarm itself was broken too, because no matter how long, frequently, or forcefully we toggled the “alarm reset” button (the ONLY button on the thing at all), the alarm would come right back on two seconds later. We ended up swaddling it in cooler boxes wrapped in old floor rugs, and that kept it quiet enough for us to sit upstairs and try to ignore it. After all, the ground was frozen so nothing was going to flood.

Josh was not very happy, but I was having a great time. I’d get to see if after reading all those homesteading and prairie life books, I could actually keep my family comfortable without electricity! Sofía woke up because of the battery alarm too and I explained to her that we were having an adventure and that we were going to live like people did in the old days. I sent Josh out to excavate a path to the firewood that I had so carefully stacked up back in October. I lit our “real” fireplace for the very first time using sawdust and beeswax polishing-cloths and kindling that I had saved up for that very purpose, and soon we had a roaring oak fire going.

After inviting the neighbors over – they had 5 young kids and no fireplace – I started breakfast over the fire.

I should say at this point that I was on my way out the door to gather pots of snow to melt for water when Josh reminded me that we had city water. I wanted to do it anyway; he said the snow might not be sanitary. Sigh. All right: I’d use the running water.

I found a griddle and a couple dutch ovens; I boiled water for tea and hot cocoa (Josh couldn’t grind his coffee, poor thing) and I was going to make pancakes on the griddle, but when given a choice Josh said he’d prefer cornbread. So I made up some sweet cornbread and tossed in a cup full of fresh blackberries and set the pot in the embers near the fire to bake, remembering to pile embers and ash on the lid as well. Well, I didn’t quite believe that baking over a fire would actually work, somehow, so I managed to burn the outer layer of half of it… but the insides were so very tasty and moist that Sofía and I managed to eat the whole thing. I’m definitely going to include berries again. It was way better than blueberry muffins.

Once that was gone I cleaned the dishes in cold water, swept the kitchen, and set about fixing lunch/dinner. I had dry beans, seasonings, and some sausages, so I prepared bbq beans-n-weenies in the Dutch Oven and set it to simmering on the coals.

I was ecstatic; by 9:30 in the morning I had started a fire, boiled water, baked a hot breakfast and had lunch and dinner on their way. (I’m not even usually out of bed by then!) My family had warmth and light and food. And all due to my foresight back in October when I had found an old stash of logs, painfully dragged an old log-holder out from where it lay rusting amongst the brambles and honeysuckle, and neatly stacked wheelbarrow-loads of firewood up by our back door, where it languished for the rest of the year, just in case. I felt exactly like a pioneer in my own little log cabin. Sofía and I read and played in the only warm room in the house, while Josh moped on the couch and wished for coffee.

Needless to say, the electricity came on about noon, and my little adventure came to an abrupt end. I’d been planning how to lay out bedrolls and stoke the coals. Ah, well – central heating has its high points too.

And it wasn’t all bad: later in the evening we went out to shovel the driveway which was one big 3-4′ deep drift, and our plumbing-contractor neighbor came by with the HUGE FRONT LOADER that he JUST HAPPENED TO HAVE IN HIS BACK YARD and cleared most of our driveway for us. I guess he felt sorry for us, floundering around in hip-high snow with two old rickety snow shovels, making no headway at all. Thank goodness for technology after all, I guess.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at 10:05 pm and is filed under blahblah, homesteading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.