The City Mouse in the Country

      Imagine the scene, a family fights for survival in a cold and dark world, where the winds blow ceaselessly and the wolves are always at the door.   A ragged man, tired of the weight of the world, exits the home and fights his way through the snow to a lone generator...with a single mighty pull the dark dissipates as the lights come on.  His family inside cheers for now they have heat and don't have to worry about eating cold beans out of a can!        Dramatic music swells.....       Okay, maybe it's not that dramatic.  Maybe the wolves at the door was a bit over the top, but the point is that ever since we lost power for just a tad over 24 hours recently; the idea of a generator has never been that far from my mind.     Plus, I work from home and I depend on power to not only allow me to access my computer and phone lines...but to also keep the pellet stove running.        When it comes to generators however, I quickly learned that I know less than diddly squat about t

           Hey everyone!  Did you know that this page now has a companion Facebook page?    It will have articles, memes and such that interes t me that relate to this page but don't really apply.  Be sure to check it out     Let's be honest, 2020 has been one very odd and stressful year.     Covid hung over Thanksgiving this year like some weird creepy Uncle that the kids shouldn't be left alone with.   In our family, we ended up having two Thanksgiving dinners.  One with my brother and family on the 21st, the other with Sue's family on the 26th.        This has been our first Thanksgiving together with our families in over 15 years.  When we lived in Florida we would come home for Christmas normally, but as children grow and things change, even that holiday seemed to fall by the wayside.       We often invited friends that didn't have family in the area or some of the elderly folk over for Thanksgiving dinner when we lived in Florida.  That became a tradition.   

 " We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” - Winston Churchill.      Winter isn't officially here yet, but we seem to be getting up in darkness and going to bed in darkness.  The nice weather we were having last week had disappeared and been replaced by...let's call them brisk...mornings and cloudy sky's.        Frost warnings and snow flurries are not on the agenda yet, but the days are counting down.        Up until this point, Sue and I had a vague idea of what we wanted to do come spring.  We knew that we wanted a garden; we knew that we tomato's, onions, a few herbs (Cue Simon and Garfunkel ), garlic and a few other things.     We also realized that, since it was just the two of us, any excess would either be canned or given away to family and the local food bank .  Sue was thinking that we might want to plant an abundance of pumpkins so that families that couldn't afford them would have something for their kids.  Which is jus

      Hey everyone!  Did you know that this page now has a companion Facebook page?    It will have articles, memes and such that interes t me that relate to this page but don't really apply.  Be sure to check it out.          So a few days ago my wife and I lost power for roughly 24 hours.   It was out on Sunday at roughly 4 PM and stayed out until Monday afternoon.      To be honest I've often wondered if I could lead a "Amish" style life.   I'm not a fan of TV in general.  I figured that some time in the future I would conduct a little experiment and see if I could give up things like the radio, TV and even my cell phone for 24 hours or so.        No, I'm not a " Prepper ", frankly if the proverbial excrement did hit the rotary blades I would probably be one of the first to go.   My nickname would be "Bait" in a Zombie survival situation.   I'm actually OK with that, because I believe in other people, that the best of a society come

 we honestly don't know where to go next. Our power was out for over 24 hours.  Luckily our house held the heat pretty well and we did not lose any food or other things.   It did however present us with some challenges and got me thinking that with winter coming, we are going to need some sort of back up power supply. One of the biggest problems that we have with our home is that it's all electric.  We do have some long term goals to help correct that issue.   Everything from solar panels to switching out the electric range for a propane range and getting a tank for it.  It looks like for now though we are going to have to go with a generator, and if we are going to go with a generator we have to ask ourselves what we want from it. The biggest issue that I have honestly is that I know literally nothing about them!!! I have never used one and wouldn't even know that to ask or where to begin. Here are my questions/concerns:   We have to have the following running come colder

    Hey everyone!  Did you know that this page now has a companion Facebook page?    It will have articles, memes and such that interes t me that relate to this page but don't really apply.  For example, did you know that for thousands of years it was considered rude if you didn't let the bees know there was a death in the family?   Anyhow, check out the link above and let me know what you think.   Now on with the show!!!            Over the past few days I've had a few things on my mind.   When I was focused on getting our house updated and up to code it was easy to concentrate on what needed done. Finishing the roof, the porch and a few other small projects occupied my mind.  My mother's untimely death in mid October also gave me time to focus on that, putting aside future plans to concentrate on the here and now.       Now that the major work has been completed and my mother has been laid to rest, the question now becomes " What comes next?"        If I am

           My buddy Aaron and his brother Wes called me early in the morning yesterday and asked if I be interested in splitting some wood with them.   Aaron has done tons of favors for me in the past, from cutting my grass to helping put up ceiling fans.   He's a good guy.   So, of course I said yes.     Being a "city mouse", it should come as no surprise to any of my two or three readers (who are probably family - Hi Steph!) that I have never split wood.  Aaron and Wes heat their home with a older wood burning stove, but increased it's efficiency with some good DIY thinking.  They also sell wood to supplement their income.     The idea behind splitting wood it is pretty simple.   You take a tree and section it down into usable bits.   This is normally done using a chainsaw, which I didn't use - that skill I'll pick up later.   Then take your nice round section of wood, place it upon a bigger rounder stump and then take a nice look at it.   You want to start

      The Original Look      When we bought this house, a little over two months ago, we understood that the roof was over 30 years old and would need to be replaced.   We actually had moss growing in one part of it, but there seamed to be little damage elsewhere and there was no leakage or damage to the wood underneath as far as we could tell.        There was also a design flaw in the original plans (???), the front porch roof only extended roughly three quarters over the concrete porch.   Since the front end of the porch roof was pitched that meant that any water or snow that missed the gutters was dumped into the final third of the porch.   This is where a diagram would come in handy but sadly, I've not idea on how to draw or attach it to this blog.   Sorry but my sad sack explanation is going to have to do.       Well I understand the basics of roofing, I'm in no way qualified to replace it.      So we hired a contractor and his largely Amish crew to help out, cleaning the

     Every homesteading article I read says the same thing.   Take it one step at at time and learn new skills.  Now that's all well and good, the only problem is that I am a "City Mouse" and I've become used to having things either "on demand" or having someone that can do it for me on my time schedule.          Thus it was the first weekend in November that I had planned on learning how to split wood.  Sue and I ended up buying a pellet stove, and buying a ton of pellets (50 forty pound bags) which were stacked into the back of the garage to fuel it.      Originally we were going to go with a traditional wood burning stove and had even bought a cord of wood, however that plan fell through due to cost to replace the original wood burning stove and bringing everything up to code.  (See previous posts).        So we gave the cord of wood that I had previously bought to a family member and spent part of the day Saturday loading and unloading  two pickup truck