Early Friday, Feb. 26 I woke up to a dark house. I’d had the wood stove going for a few days by then, so all I had to do was go down to the basement and throw more wood in.  Thank goodness for a big stove that keeps burning all night long.
Then I went back to bed hoping for power in the morning. It came back on 3 days later – Sunday night at 5:00.

Cooking on the wood stove

I heated food on the wood stove – anything left over or thawing out that needed to be eaten – and spent most of my time lugging buckets of snow downstairs to melt for washing dishes and flushing the toilet. We have a well which won’t work without electricity. I could use just whatever water was left in the holding tank once the power went out, then no more.
Fortunately we’d had a bunch of snow so I had all the “non-drinking” water I needed.

The kids had to play outdoors – yay!

The kids found things to do to keep their minds off the fact that they couldn’t play video games or go on the computer and the dog was having fun too. We all got a lot more fresh air than usual.

winter road

I took the camera when we walked up the road to give some cornbread to an elderly neighbor. The snowy scene made a perfect photo. Besides calling the power company to get updates, there was not much to do other than the basics of survival. Being “powerless” gives us all a good idea of how life was for our ancestors and we all agree that we would not have wanted to be them!

My outdoor kitchen

Then I dug through my “outdoor refrigerator” to find the thawing chicken and marinated it for cooking on the grill.
In fact, I have lots of food to cook and my freezer is now bare.
In December 2008 I went without power for 8 days when the ice storm hit and had no way to keep warm. My goal was to have a wood stove for just such emergencies, so I am thankful that we could stay warm.