The Great Power Outage and Blackberry Jam (Blog Ninety-three)

Last Friday night, winds of over 80 mph whipped through our Botetourt Land, knocking out our power for 46 hours until around 7:30 Sunday evening.  When the power was restored, Elaine and I were playing scrabble in the fading light that reached our den.  We both spontaneously emitted squeals of delight.

We were fortunate to have our power restored so soon, as even as I write this on Thursday, many folks in Southwest Virginia are without electricity.  We were also fortunate that a neighbor loaned us his generator for about four hours a day so that we did not lose any of our venison and wild turkey.  We had the meat from 7 1/2 deer in our freezer, and it would have been a disaster if the venison had been lost.

This whole affair has caused us to do some planning for the possibility of future outages.  We have long had a wood stove which serves as a backup heat source in the wintertime.  But we realized that we need to have more bottled water on the premises and a charcoal grill to cook with.  Elaine has already purchased a grill and obtained water.

We also have decided to buy a generator and Elaine, who is in charge of researching things in our family, is doing the groundwork for a generator.  If readers of our blog have some recommendations in this area, we would appreciate them.

Finally, we have decided to do more canning.  Tuesday, I picked two gallons of blackberries and Elaine made jam from them.  She also has decided that canning the meat from one deer was not sufficient last year and hopes to can the meat from two whitetails this fall. 

Hopefully we will be better prepared next time.