The end of the summer and start to the fall has been mostly cooler
- but still with not much rain. Fall has always been my favorite
season, and although the dry spell has muted the colours a bit, the
trees are still pretty. The wildfires I spoke of in my last post
slowly came under control, and the parks and trails opened up again
in early September. So we've been able to get out for more biking
and hiking.

                            ~

Much of eastern Canada uses electric heat, owing to the relatively
lower cost (especially with heat pumps, which are very common) as
compared to oil or propane. But since we want to stay in this house
long-term, we made sure to choose a house with a wood stove, which
we haven't had since living in the States, but which we felt was
important in case of winter power outages. Our other disaster preps
have suffered as well over the years, so now that we're in a more
stable living situation, we're trying to change that.

We have a portable, dual-fuel generator which we bought new about
five years ago. To make that more useful, I had an electrician
install a secondary panel and a weatherproof outside outlet. So that
can be used as needed to power some home essentials. I miss the
(propane) gas stove we used to have in the States, but the generator
can be used to run the electric stove we have now. The trick to the
generator is to use it for short periods only when needed, we had
good success with this method years ago during hurricane Irene [0].

We also have a propane camping stove (the classic Coleman) and solar
lights, as well as a kerosene lantern. For communication, we have
charging banks and portable solar panel for mobile devices, and my
ham gear - an old but reliable FT-60 HT for local repeaters, and an
HF radio with a portable antenna that runs on battery. I do miss
having a POTS landline phone. It was nice being able to make phone
calls on an actual corded phone using only power from the CO, but
those days are long gone (and, in practice the power from the CO
only lasted 12 hours or so). Few here even have copper coming into
their homes anymore.

One thing we don't have much of anymore is dehydrated or
freeze-dried food/cans. It's become very expensive, and I think a
pantry should be used and rotated through continuously. So you can
buy canned goods (or can your own, but we have not done that here)
and more of what you eat regularly that will keep at least for a few
months on the shelf.

For water, we have a well, and the generator will run the well pump,
plus we have some in storage. In the spring I want to setup some
rainwater collection to augment that during warmer weather. Toilets
can flushed with grey water stored nearby. All that, combined with
a decent pantry, and we should be ready for the next ice storm or
hurricane.

[0]: gopher://republic.circumlunar.space/0/~slugmax/phlog/phlog_archives/storm