November 2022

 

November began with a mighty wind storm.  Not only did it break this big Hemlock tree at about 20' off the ground, it took out our power line.  Of course, we weren't the only ones without power - most of Snohomish County was powerless - even in the cities.  So the priority of the PUD to fix one line that crossed over a steep gully wasn't their first choice. We watched with envy as power was restored to community after community, knowing that they couldn't possibly work on ours at night and only two families were affected by the down line.  

We had plenty to do - the downed tree scared us into removing 14 more danger trees.  The tree guy came out after 3 days and took down the trees, but the mess was all ours.  On the plus side:  we should have firewood for the next couple of years. 

We developed a system - Ron cut the trees into plugs and I hauled them to the wood pile. Fortunately, we have a splitter, thanks to our son, Tony. Splitting will come later - we still have several days of wood cutting and debris clearing.  About every other load, I hauled branches to a burn pile that has been going steadily for the past week as we worked.

We were without electricity for 5 and a half days, but by the end of that time, I was ambivalent about whether I even cared.  The biggest problem was water as our well pump needs power to run. We kept the freezers going running the generator for a couple of hours a day, cleaned out the fridge in the house and added a lot of stuff I should have dumped ages ago to our compost pile. We kept water in 5 gallon buckets in the bathtub for flushing, and had bottled water for drinking and cooking.  The house stayed warm with the wood stove, and I used the top of it for cooking.  

Nearly every day in November has been sunny and nice. We usually have a light frost at night and then sunny days that get around 50 degrees.  However, one day when the power was out, we had a scare with a cold wet day.  Nothing inspires us to keep working like seeing snow getting way too close.  The little mountain at the end of the lake always lets us know when winter is getting closer!