How We Survived a Power Outage

A few weeks ago, several of my southern US neighbors experienced a pretty significant winter storm.  They are still cleaning up from the event, from the stories I'm hearing, and some things may never been the same again.  Dealing with a weather event in the midst of this Pandemic, especially for folks who are not accustomed to COLD weather events, would be incredibly difficult, and my hat goes off to those who lived it and survived.  

In 1998, a few weeks after Deus Ex Machina and I bought our house in Maine and moved in, there was a massive ice storm here in the northeast.  The entire region from Massachusetts to Quebec was encased in ice.  It was like something out of a Disney movie with some chick named Elsa.  Here on the coast we lost power during that storm, but not for very long - around 24 hours.  Further inland and up into Canada, they did not fare quite as well, and there were places that were without power for weeks.  Yes, plural.

Our house had a small, undersized woodstove when we bought it (we've since replaced it and now heat exclusively with wood), and we were able to find a bundle of camp firewood at the local hardware store - enough to keep the chill out of the air.  We moved our mattresses into the living room, where the woodstove is, and all slept out there for that one power-free night.

That was my first winter in Maine.  As they say downtown - Bienvenue!  

Power outages, while not normal, do happen with a disturbing regularity.  I shared an article about our Thanksgiving Day power outage here.  Thing is, we have days-long events every few years, and so we've learned to deal with them, because they happen.  Sometimes, like the event I describe below in 2008, it's because of really dangerous weather, like an ice storm.  Sometimes it's just because on a beautiful, clear, winter day, there was a lot of wind and something breaks somewhere along the power line.  Sometimes it's because a reckless driver hits a pole.  One time, on a beautifully clear, sunny and HOT day in July we lost power.  I never did find out why that one happened.  It wasn't off for long.  I think we cooked dinner on the grill that night, and maybe made s'mores in the firepit in the front yard.

The reality is that our grid system is very fragile, and for those who aren't ready to be without electricity, life will be difficult and uncomfortable.  

For us, four days without electricity ended up being just another week.  

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Monday, December 15, 2008

Ice, Ice, Baby

Yes, we were among the over 400,000 people in the northeast to be without power following the ice storm on Thursday, December 11.

The electricity went out around 4:00 am on Friday and came back on about 1:00 pm today (Monday).

After two days of being "powerless" someone asked me what we did without electricity, and I had to think about it.

So, what did I do?

I baked bread (in a Dutch oven on the woodstove).

I did laundry (using my wash tub and wringer, and hanging clothes on the line to dry).

I finished reading The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan (highly recommended!), worked on one of the handmade gifts that didn't require a sewing machine, did dishes, swept the floors, tended the fire, cleaned out the refrigerator and defrosted the freezer.

The girls worked in their workbooks by oil lamplight in the early evening.

Or wrestled with Deus Ex Machina, who had a very much-needed break from work on Friday.

My answer to "what do you do without electricity?" was "Basically the same things we do with it."

I often cook on the woodstove. While I don't, typically, hand wash the laundry, I do always air dry, either on the wooden drying rack set in front of the woodstove or outside on the line.

I often read in the evening (or we listen to the audiobook, which we did, using what power was left in the UPS to supply juice to the transmitter, which sent the audio from the iPod into our solar powered radio).

And I've been spending quite a lot of time making gifts this season.

A few months ago, over at Seeking Simplicity Sasha Cedar talked about voluntarily going without electricity for a few days or a week - it was a kind of "participate if you want" challenge. I so wanted to participate, but I knew that Deus Ex Machina would scowl at me at the very suggestion.

What's cool about this past storm is that I got my trial without the scowl, and the result was exactly what I figured it would be: we survived ... we more than survived, we lived our lives with barely a change to our normal, everyday activities.

Not much about our lives changed.

Except that Precious discovered her favorite way to take a bath was in a wash tub set in the shower stall and filled with water warmed on the woodstove.

She calls it the "shower-bath-thingy", because it's a bath, but it's in the shower.

I call it the "Farm Girl" bath.

And it's how I bathed for the three days with no power.

We had heat. We had water. We had food. We had fun ... and we stayed clean.

What else is there?

Oh, the Internet. Yeah. I missed that :).

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Fast forward to 2021 ....

Since those days, we've done even more to be prepared for a potential outage.  We have solar/USB rechargeable lights.  They are brighter than candles or oil lamps, and better for these old eyes to read by.  We still have the oil lamps, but they are mostly a back-up.  I always stock up on glow sticks for use in the bathrooms.  We have acoustic instruments, and everyone plays.  We have games and books.   Our Internet is through our cellphone provider, and so as long as our devices are charged, we can even have the Internet.  And my laptop computer has a battery, too.  So, I could even do my work-from-home job - at least until my laptop battery died.

If the power goes out, we can't just flip a switch and get lights.  I can't cook in the oven in the kitchen.  I can't use my washing machine or dishwasher.  And we'd have to be very careful about opening and closing the refrigerator and freezer.  

But we would have lights after it gets dark, and I can cook on the woodstove, on the propane gas grill, in the fire pit, or in my new charcoal fired smoker out in the yard, and I can do laundry and dishes by hand.  

And if it's cold enough outside, our refrigerated stuff will be fine outside in a cooler on the front porch.  If we don't open the freezer, that stuff should stay okay, too, for about a week.

Mostly, we'd just do what we do.

It's a comfort to know that we can be independent of the grid for extended periods and that we would be just fine.