Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Post-Windstorm Harvest and Prepping for the Storm

Well, the windstorm predicted for the Pacific Northwest didn't turn out to be nearly as bad as originally forecast for our area, thank goodness. At the very least, it was a good reminder on how to be prepared for a long-term power outage.

Our big problem is that everything in our house runs on electricity. So, if the power goes out, we are relegated to cooking outside and we don't exactly have a great heating source (except the fireplace). We generally don't have much wood on-hand because we don't use the fireplace very often and I honestly can't remember the last time we lost power. It's been at least 20 years.

Fortunately, it's not very cold this time of year and we're sort of used to Freezing our Buns Off. Additionally, we have a lot of down blankets and other warm and woolies to tide us over. I can always strap Paco to the inside of my wool sweater. He might not like it for very long, but at least I'll be warm.

I was mostly concerned of losing electricity because we have 50+ pounds of salmon in our chest freezer that my brother brought back from a recent fishing trip up in Alaska. We were trying to figure out how to keep that packed with ice. Again, since we don't generally lose power, even in the bad windstorms around here, I can't say a whole lot of planning went in to trying to curb that concern. Plus, salmon party!

Anyway, on to the trees... I was afraid some of my fruit trees weren't going to make it, but fortunately, they all survived unharmed. (I have a few new ones I'll post about shortly.)

I surveyed the backyard this morning and everything was in order. I also managed to harvest a few things:

  • some of the last of the blackberries
  • a few raspberries
  • the last of the green beans
  • a big bowl of green tomatoes
  • carrots
I'm hoping the tomatoes will ripen inside but, if not, I'll figure out something else to do with them.

The Swiss chard, spinach, green onions, collard greens and beets are still trucking along, but not enough of them to harvest at this point in time. The garlic and fava beans are starting to come up, which is always very exciting!


How's the weather in your neck of the woods?

2 comments:

Diane said...

Your tomatoes will ripen just fine inside. In my neck of the woods early frosts always dictate picking green tomatoes and ripening inside but sometimes I also make fried green tomatoes.

We lose power a lot during nor'easters, particularly in the winter. We have a wood cookstove that is our primary heating source so no problem there. A fully loaded freezer will generally keep everything frozen for at least 72 hours, particularly if you cover it in quilts and blankets.

Living on an island off Canada's east coast power outages are a regular fact of life!

Crunchy Chicken said...

@Diane - I'm hoping the tomatoes will ripen just fine as well. I love the idea of a wood cookstove, but just don't have the space, even if I went crazy and pursued getting one.

Good thinking about wrapping the freezer - I'll have to keep that in mind!