Good morning everyone. Did you get some sleep? We went to bed at 8:30 last night, it’s almost 9 am this morning and E is still asleep. Partying when you are sixty something with a cold, takes its toll. But we have the winter to recover before the next New Years celebration.

It’s time for our system updates. Boring yes, but we can’t always be looking at wildlife and tomatoes plants. It’s the systems which are the most important thing to survival here and we must appease their gods.

Water.

We begin our year with 5600 gallons collected in the tanks. We are up 1000 from last month. We used 639 gallons giving us a total of 1639 gallons of water captured off our roof this month. There are heavy rains and winds predicted for the next few days, I suspect January will give us much the same.

Propane

I have been estimating the amount in our propane tanks for the last two months as I really can’t be sure. They normally lasted 120 days and we put four forties on back in mid June. They should have run out mid October, yet 180 days later we are still plugging along. I’ll say 25 pounds left  ???

Hot Water

The boiler tank is now working great. We have lots of pressure and lots of hot water. We are taking advantage of the unlimited baths as we know in the summer we will have to go back to quick showers. But we will enjoy them while we can. The unexpected radiator effects of the boiler helping to heat the living room continue to be noticeable.

Sunshine

Days are getting longer now with the hopes of more sunlight hours not far away. We aren’t collecting much solar power yet but by March we should be well covered. Dec 31st we had some sunshine and collected 2 kwh for the batteries. We are going to start tracking the kwh collected per month. 

Diesel

The Kubota generator tank was empty yesterday. So it should be easy to keep track of our diesel consumption this year. E bought four jugs in town yesterday for $105.00.

Firewood/Temperatures

We are going through a wheelbarrow load of firewood a day. A mixture of fir and arbutus. I imagine we have used about two cords of wood so far this winter. It hasn’t gone below zero at our house yet and we have had no snow. Just plenty of rain and wind.

Supplies

Freezer and pantry are well stocked. If we get held here by the weather we will have plenty to eat. Not so many vegies (crummy year in the garden)  but lots of meat and canned fruit. At the end of the year I write in felt pen the year on the top of all remaining cans in my cupboards. I try to use up the older stores first. I noticed there are some ’16s in there. Apparently I don’t use a lot of coconut milk.

There, system gods appeased, if you are still here, we can get back to the wildlife. These Orca visited

on December 31st