October 1st. Burn pile day. The fire ban is over. All around the island you could hear the matches strike. Although other areas of the province had already lifted their ban, this island maintains ours until October 1st. If there was an emergency everyone’s wells are dry and their water tanks near empty. There is little water on the island available to fight a fire if there was one. It may seem over protective but we have had some pretty scary situations. Better safe than sorry.

We had a small burn pile and were finally able to tidy up a bit more of the property.. All the burnable summer garbage disposed of. We found more metal garbage to be taken off.  I do not understand where it comes from. I suspect it is breeding behind the studio…

Today, I completed the on-line portion of the first aid course I am taking this week. Portions of our fire committee fundraising goes toward education. A good many of the full-time residents have taken advantage of the opportunity to be trained in emergency first aid. I have delayed it as long as I possibly could. I hate hate hate taking courses of any kind. My idea of hell is writing a test. Especially writing a test where inevitably all of my neighbours are going to know my score.

Lingering effects of Mrs. Swan’s grade three class when she posted everyone’s marks on the wall at the front of the room. The whole world discovering that I didn’t know my eight times tables stays with me, even today..

I need to know how much water we use in a winter months when the water is plentiful and I am having all the baths I want. Then, I can measure my garden needs next summer and see what we need annually. Same goes for propane and diesel. Now that most of the systems are in and working (knock on wood) we need to know where we stand.

Last October, the night before the kids came for Thanksgiving we ran out of propane and diesel. We filled the tanks when we picked them up at the ferry. We installed our new solar-powered fridge that weekend. This year when they come, they will find a reasonably functioning house, with walls and windows and everything!!

E changed the batteries on the weather station so it is up and running again,  measuring among other things, rainfall by the month..

We reset the water meter measuring our house water usage to zero this morning. The water tanks up top are sitting at 2100 gallons. The water tank under the house is at about 100 gallons. The diesel generator is one-third full and the propane tanks are sitting at about 100 LBs. I am dying to see where the numbers sit at the end of the month, indeed at the end of all of the winter months.

Winter is coming.

All systems go…