Power Off weekend diary.

Well, last night at 11pm we turned the power back on.
All of a sudden it seemed very stark and noisy.
Amazing how you get used to candle light and the sound of silence as the fridge sits mute in the corner.

On the whole we had a great time. It was, as I thought, a time for reflection and a time to remember how to use that amazing of organs, the brain and its capacity for imagination.


Our table centre.


FRIDAY
As though the house felt it needed to purge before we turned the power off it decided to give us a mini disaster.
The ball cock in the hot water tank did its yearly shrivel up and die routine, so that a whole tank of hot water gushed out of the overflow and into the garden. The trouble is our tank gets too hot and the ball cock can't cope and implodes. So with much swearing Kim climbed the ladder into the attic and fixed it with the spare (of which we keep a few).
Disaster averted!
Had we not had a spare this would have put a huge dampener on the weekend. The water would have had to have been turned off, along with the fire!

SATURDAY
Having breakfast by candle light was an interesting enough diversion for the kids so that for a whole hour they forgot about the fact that the DVD's would not be playing nor the computer switched on.
Kim got up early to light the fire so that the kettle was singing for breakfast and the room was warm and cosy.
We were out for the morning with the Bennachie Access Team on a PR exercise so were not back in the house before lunch.
Lunch was soup (from the freezer the night before)and some fried garlic bread all made on the log burner.
As we also had the electric off outside an effort had to be made to get the horses done in the daylight, so by 4pm the big horses were out in the big field and the ponies were in the steading eating evening hay. All that had to be done in the dark was to give the ponies their late night hay and Kim used the wind up torch for this.
Dinner was a half cheat. cooking by candle light.


I made a tofu Thai curry on the log burner (lots of cashew nuts!)and Kim went to the chip shop and brought us all chips to go with it ;)
After Dinner we set to teaching the kids card games, something we've never done before, but we now have snap masters and blackjack apprentices! Kids drawing by candle.

Usually the kids have a story tape on the stereo when they go to bed, but instead I suggested they play a story game and for about half an hour they bandied a made up story from one to the other, all three of them making a contribution and laughing at the silly scenarios they deampt up.
Me and Kim read the newspapers by candle light and drank hot chocolate and chatted for a while and then at around 10pm went outside to see if we could see any meteors which where meant to be spectacular over this weekend.
We saw a few but apparently the best ones where just before dawn. Even reading was possible!

SUNDAY
Sunday was a little harder. Owen in particular whined for a while about not being able to watch a film, and mooched around the kitchen all morning.
Oliver and Alfie played outside but Owen was BORED!
He perked up again when Ollie came back inside and played some snap with him though.
Ollie went to a friends house for the rest of the morning and I took the littlies for a walk with the dog. A huge puddle in the stubble field we walk in had frozen solid so they spent a happy half hour playing ice skating!
Lunch was oatcakes and fruit (apples, melon and grapes)with home made hummus. Usually I blitz the chickpeas with a hand blender so it was interesting to make it the traditional way..well maybe not traditional, I used a potato masher!
Came out just fine though and got me to thinking that a potato ricer would do a better job.
That afternoon Kim took Ollie off on a mountain bike ride and the littlies played with the train track (a toy that has been gathering dust for a few months) while I tried to make sure that all the school clothes were dry and ready for Monday.
I did hand wash a basin of socks and hung them on a rail over the log burner to dry. Fine for small stuff but don't much fancy hand wringing out jeans!
All afternoon (since just before lunch) our dinner of veg and bean stew had been bubbling away on the logburner and an hour before dinner I made some yummy herby dumplings and popped them on top!
Sunday night is a bath night, so the littlies had their first candle lit bath. An interesting side effect of this was that unlike the usual shouting and splash fest that is bathtime for Owen and Alfie, they instead lounged int he bath like Turkish lords, relaxing in the soft light. Even the mankiest bathroom looks like a spa in candle light!

After their bath they snuggled up on their Daddies lap while I read the first couple of chapters from the Terry Pratchet book The Hogfather.
A great extra was a more relaxed evening, much calmer and quick to go to sleep AND sleeping for better and longer!
Ollie played a few more hands of blackjack which really made him use his maths skills, so we plan to do much more of that.
He had said to Kim, while out on the bike ride, that he wished we could do Power Off EVERY weekend!

All in all it was fun and informative. I think Sunday nights could become "Power Off" nights so the kids could really wind down and rest well before school on Monday and maybe we could have a PowerOff weekend once a month (maybe leaving the fridge and freezer on)and candles are going to become a part of our regular life.

So, we didn't miss the fridge, but then the porch was so cold there was no need for a fridge. A long term plan could involve building a cold room on the north side of the house to use, especially in the summer months, then there would be no need for a fridge at all.
The freezer had little in it anyway. The only thing I wanted to keep frozen was a pack of diced rabbit I brought for my parents to have at Xmas. I packed iceblocks around it, wrapped them in bubble wrap, two jiffy bags and then two layers of tin foil. It stayed frozen!! So I don't need to buy anymore!
I want to experiment more with preserving food in jars rather than freezing it, we very rarely use the freezer for anything other than the odd tub of non-dairy ice cream or some frozen peas so its worth looking into alternatives.
As well, we want to look into making a "summer home" down the end of our big field, a small cabin or yurt or even a couple of caravans! Somewhere we could "live" in the summer holidays and at weekends so that we were'nt using the electric in the house.

The only dissapointment was the solar light. I don't think it ever recived enough light to charge it as it really wasnt day light till gone 9am and by lunch time it was getting dimpsy again, but we'll hold onto it and see what happens in the summer!

We had a great time, hope you did too! And I hope next time you all join in!