Hey guys!

As promised, I’m here to update on our ice storm/power outage situation.

So it turns out there isn’t a ton of interesting stuff to update about… because we got power back last Friday night! *cue cheers of joys and confetti*

The power crews worked tirelessly all week. I’ve never seen that many utility trucks around the valley at once before! They were seriously on it! But we had been told to expect extended power outages in our area due to the extreme damage of the infrastructure, possibly up to several weeks.

So when I came back over the hill from my in-law’s house Friday night, you can imagine how surprised I was to see all the neighbors with their lights on! I plugged in the internet cable as soon as I pulled up to my folks’ place, and what do you know, they had power too! What a pleasant surprise and a relief.

There are still a few pockets in the county that haven’t got power back last I checked, but they’re getting pretty close. I took a drive through town the other day and was blown away by all the trees that were down… it’s pretty catastrophic. Everyone was outside assessing the damage. The tree guys and landscapers are gonna be real busy for a while!

(images from news articles)

But here at the compound we didn’t get much damage (since we didn’t get a lot of ice), so we’ve spent the last few days cleaning and putting away all the emergency gear, and just generally getting back into a regular routine. It’s funny, I got so used to not having electric lights next door, that Saturday morning I went over to make one more round of pancakes for the fam while the griddle was still out, and I got halfway through making the batter in the dark before it occurred to me that I could turn a light on!

The twins started back at their kindergarten this week, which has left my mornings a little more free to catch up on housework around the yurt, so I’ve been fairly well occupied with that. I’ve also made homemade yogurt, cooked several soups from scratch, and been reading Gut And Physiology Syndrome by Natasha Campbell-McBride in anticipation for starting our family on the GAPS diet (more on that in a future post!). 

Cody and my dad worked hard on Tuesday getting the pond weeded for this year. All the weeds will go to the compost piles and various garden beds around the property that need some extra good nutrients. And of course pond day ended with the annual tradition of taking a quick spin in the kayak!

We also finally bought a dehumidifier for the yurt and got it set up with a 200′ extension cord to the shop. It’s been running for a couple of days now and has made a HUGE difference in the amount of moisture accumulating on everything! We’ve got it set up near an exterior wall, and it has a nifty feature where it’s able to just drain constantly through a tube to the outside instead of us having to change the bucket every day, so that’s been nice. I’m not a fan of the constant hum when it’s running… kinda takes away from the peace and quiet of our yurt life. But for now it’s something I’ll have to accept in order to avoid mold growing inside. Hopefully our future cabin won’t have so much of a moisture issue!

Well, there you have it. It’s been a busy week! We’re glad to have the power back on and not have to worry about dealing with the generators or rationing water so extremely anymore. We still want to look into alternative energy production means for our property, although Cody did a little bit of digging online this week and discovered that there’s a whole permitting process and a bunch of environmental studies required to install any kind of hydroelectric system in our area… ugh. So I guess we’ll have to keep researching and figure out what we can afford.

For now we’ll keep plugging away and doing our normal thing here on the Compound. Talk to y’all next week!