Hi.
Towards the end of our week of snow and subzero temperatures, I recorded a new episode of my occasional Substack podcast, Doctor D’s Stream-0-Consciousness. It started out with me in a corner of the bedroom in our off-grid cabin playing acoustic guitar and singing into my phone. And then later that evening I recorded a couple snippets in bed under a pile of blankets and sleeping bags. The audio quality ain’t bad for a ten-year-old iPhone and it captures a certain raw essence of the experience. You can listen by clicking on the link below:
Here’s a bit of a retro diary from the week:
Friday January 12
As I was going out to the back yard to turn off the generator Friday night, Phoenix accidentally threw the wrong breaker switch on the electric panel.
Background: The cabin we are living in was built by the farmer’s daughter and her now-husband when they were 20 and 18 years old. It’s a pretty incredible abode, considering the builders were two kids falling madly in love and doing everything on a shoestring budget. And, as you might imagine, the cabin has a few quirks.
The electrical system is one such quirk. I think they might have envisioned eventually being on grid power when they wired up the cabin because it’s way too complicated and too big to comfortably run on solar power.
One side of the circuit box in the house was wired for 120 volts AC power; this is the solar input. (We thought there was a minimal, but functional, solar power set-up when we moved in. We ended up needing to replace that system with new panels and new batteries, but we were able to use the inverter from the old system. More on that in a minute.)
The other side of the breaker box is wired for a 240-volt input; this is the generator side.1
You can only power one side of the box at a time. Normally, if you accidentally turn both breakers on, the inverter connected to the solar system battery bank goes into overload protection mode, starts beeping loudly, and shuts off power to the mains.
This time, the inverter started beeping loudly, then there was a pop and a hiss…and the solar power wouldn’t turn back on. It was already getting cold and I had to be up early the next morning to work my first solo shift at the Saturday farmers market. So I shut off the generator, we lit some candles and stoked up the wood stove (our nightly ritual), and went to bed hoping for the best.
Saturday January 13
We usually run on solar power in the morning because - provided we’ve had any sun at all - it provides enough power to charge our phones, run the water pump, and keep the mini-fridge cool until the sun gets low in the sky.
I got up at 6:45 and made coffee. Before heading down to the farm to load up the coolers for market, I went out to the shed where the solar set-up resides, hoping the inverter had reset itself. I turned it on and heard a loud pop, saw a small flash of light, and watched smoke start to pour out of both ends of the unit.
Luckily, I had to go to work so I didn’t have time to obsess over how bad the damage was. Unluckily, Saturday was the first day of subfreezing temperatures in the build-up to the big storm. And the farm truck I’d be driving 50 minutes to market had no heat.
As you might imagine, I had to really work on my self-talk on the way!
It was so cold at market, I couldn’t afford to think of anything except keeping the stock rotated, remembering the prices of the various items I was selling, and telling myself not think about how cold my feet felt standing on the frozen parking lot.
The farm family’s dairy customers are by and large kind, fun, and interesting and the market was actually pretty enjoyable, especially once the sun came out around 10 am.
After a little time to warm up and recover from market, Phoenix and I headed off to McMinnville in the later afternoon to buy a new inverter. We figured we had been running close to the limits of the old 1000-watt inverter, so we went for the next power level up, dropping $300 on the attractively-named Jupiter Pure 2000— a 2,000-watt average/4,000-watt peak model that should be able to comfortably handle the mini-fridge, chest freezer, water pump, lights and laptops.
It was a long day and our reserve funds were once again wiped out but it felt like we were making progress.
Sunday January 14
I started setting up the new inverter on Sunday morning, only to find the cables that connected the old inverter to the battery bank were much too small for the beefy Jupiter Pure. But I had to go help my 81-year-old neighbor Annie insulate her pipes and water pressure tank before the storm started rolling in.
I finished that project around 4 pm, stopped by the garden to fill a trash can full of straw to help insulate our chickens from the intense cold, and then headed back to Harbor Freight to get the appropriate size cables for the inverter. And swing by Tractor Supply to pick up a bag of pine shavings for the chickens and for our composting toilet. And hit the gas station with non-ethanol gas to fill up a gas can for the generator.
I made it home just as the snow was starting to fall…
Monday January 15
By mid-morning we had six inches of snow on the ground, with more forecast over the next 24 hours. Kobi was in dog heaven. And it was really beautiful…
I went out to the shed to put the new 2-gauge ($50!) cables on the inverter and connect the inverter and the battery bank. Only to find the cable lugs were too bulky to fit the posts on the batteries. After a few minutes of muttering, complaining, and pacing around in the snow, I found my Dremel in the storage shed and used a sanding stone attachment to file down the ends of the connector lugs until I could fit them on the battery bank.
We were going to have solar power again, just in time for the subfreezing temperatures!
I attached the cables, turned on the inverter, plugged in the line to the house and…nothing. I suspected the plug to the 120-volt house line may have fried out when the old inverter caught fire and/or the 20-amp breaker in the house may have fried, but I’m not an electrician (not yet, anyway) so I didn’t know. All I knew was that it wasn’t working and it wasn’t going to work without replacing one or more parts that I couldn’t get locally and probably wouldn’t be able to get until the storm was over.
We were really hoping to have the solar system going again before the weather got really bad because:
(a) it’s nice to have quiet power for most of the day;
(b) although the smaller, more efficient generator we bought to power the house after we moved in uses about half the gasoline that the previous two used, it’s still expensive to run the generators for long periods of time;
(c) we live off an unmaintained country road up a long, steep driveway that was probably going to be impassable for the next several days, meaning the gas we had wouldn’t last us through the storm; and
(d) the way the system is configured, we can only have running water if either the solar power or the generator is working.
Tuesday January 16 - Sunday January 21
It got bitterly cold (down to -10 F a couple of nights) and the temps stayed below freezing all week except for a few hours on Thursday when I was able to make it out to get more firewood and fill a gas can. (As described in my last letter.) The driveway froze. The road froze. The pipes froze and didn’t thaw out for six days. Phoenix was up half the night feeding the wood stove on more than one occasion. But, in a cabin with metal siding built more for typically warm Southern weather than for Michigan-style winters, the stove couldn’t really keep up.
We survived, and we did our best to keep our spirits up — lots of hot chocolate made with raw milk was instrumental in this endeavor — but when you get that cold for that long, you’ve kinda got to just hunker down and survive.
Which we did. We had plenty of food stored up. We had enough propane in reserve to be able to cook food, make coffee, and even refill some little one-pound canisters to fire up the Little Buddy propane heater and toast our feet up from time to time.
Considering all of the misfortune we’ve had with equipment and all of the money we’ve trying to replace or improve the infrastructure, I have to say we weathered the storm with grace and we were about as prepared as we could possibly have been. (All credit to Phoenix for stocking us up with essential supplies such as wool thermal underwear and socks, a propane adapter that enabled us to refill the 1-lb. canisters for the portable heater, extra sleeping bags, and more.)
We had enough propane, firewood, and food for a week. We found out that a composting toilet really shines when the pipes are frozen for several days. And…
It was absolutely wonderful to wake up eight days after the storm hit and be able to write:
Tuesday, January 23
I turned on the breaker to the water pump this morning, walked over to the kitchen sink, and - with some degree of trepidation - turned the faucet knob.
And water came spurting and gushing out into the sink! Fairly frolicking out of the tap, she was!
I’m so glad I was able to siphon water into the camping totes while the pipes were frozen. But those seven-gallon totes are heavy, man. And you can’t use ‘em to take a shower.
It’s 45 degrees outside. We have running water. I’m lying on the bed wearing pants and a t-shirt (and wool socks and slippers; not trying to get too crazy yet). And I’m really looking forward to spring and to spending less time trying to fix up this old house and more time and energy growing beautiful medicinal herbs!
The generator thing is a whole ‘nother story. Which probably deserves its own post. So for now, I’ll just say that three months into our off-grid adventure we are on our fourth generator.