Grit your teeth and hold on!

I haven't posted for a bit. We still haven't got permanent internet out there, but the little thing is coming in the mail soon.

We are now almost fully settled into the house for the long haul, just waiting for springtime to arrive. It was nice weather for a week and some, but now cold weather has returned, and the wind as well.

I have place a temporary water system, which seems to work for the time being. It's basically a portable water heater that sits by the sink and gives us hot and cold running water from a bucket, but what else does a person actually need? We take showers in town, wash clothes in town, and flush toilets by filling the tank. We heat with wood and run our generator for electricity. We don't use very much of anything right now, except for gas, which I'm using too much of. It's a good thing gas is cheap for now, because we depend on it quite heavily!

At some point this week, probably tommorow, I'm going to order the first of our wind turbines, and replace our refrigerator. The turbine will just be a small one, and the purpose will be to supplement our electric usage, and allow me to equalize the batteries, which I can't do right yet. I picked up two 24volt battery chargers, and for the first time, we actually had fully charged batteries! I looked inside the cells, and I could see bubbles forming, which means that they're almost fully charged. I hope that these few months of moderate abuse aren't going to damage the batteries too badly. And the turbine will reduce the generator running time, which is nice, because starting that stupid thing in the cold is a PAIN! I should have gone with the propane version...but the price was right. $400 for a 4500 watt genny is pretty good, even if it only lasts for 1000 hours.

I've almost got all of the siding on the house, so things are going well. I've basically abandoned the water tank until spring time, when it's not going to freeze daily. It's well insulated, but I still can't keep the outlet from freezing! Plus, the trench that the intake line sits in is now filled with ice, which will freeze the water inside the pipe, and I can't get the ice out...so we won't have reliable, long term water storage till spring. That's about when I'm planning to start the barn.

The long term plan is to have a 15,000 gal cement cistern buried 4 1/2 feet in the ground (Which will protect the outlet from freezing) and this will become the back end of the barn, in a separate room dedicated to protecting it from freezing. All of the rain that falls on the barn will be channeled into the tank, hopefully providing at least half of our domestic water use. The pipe will be buried at least 4 feet in a trench leading up to the house, whereas right now it's totally exposed to the air (it's insulated, but it takes a ton of electricity to keep it from freezing).

All of this hardship is just making my family stronger, and I can feel myself growing hardier by the day! I don't regret this at all, and I'm actually glad we have a bit of hardship to strengthen our character. We've been spoiled in the city for too long, we've never had to fend for ourselves, and I knew it was going to be difficult at first, and it has been. Summer will be a nice break, and will give me time to build some more permanent fixtures.

Tax time is coming too, and I think I can milk that for some major refunds, especially in the GST dept.

See you soon, and I'll have more pics to come. I just can't upload them right now.