Not Very Self Contained

Those seeds I started a month ago have grown!  They are crowding each other out, spreading wide but not leggy.  These grow lights are doing the trick!  They are just shop lights with one cool bulb and one warm.  My husband is looking at that lettuce like it's ready, but I told him to stay back and let it grow some more.

It's time to get them transplanted into larger pots.  The first step is to sterilize the pots.  We pulled them out of the barn and put them in bleach water yesterday.  Today I'll scrub them off and start transplanting.

I've been having a little trouble with cheese not knitting together as solidly as I'd like.  It occurred to me that the problem was temperature.  It's only 65ºF inside during the day but at night it drops into the 50's.  I tried something new.  I put a bowl of boiling water in there and then wrapped the whole thing with towels.

Today a fierce storm is hitting large portions of the country with heavy snow, ice, and very cold temperatures.  They predict many will be without electricity for days or weeks.  We are too far west to be effected much, but we are praying for all those who are. 

It got me to thinking about a week without electricity.  We have plenty of food, but our stove is electric.  We have a well, but the pump runs on electricity.  Our heat is electric.  We have a fire place but it's not very efficient at heating.  It's rekindled the fire under us to get one of those new high efficiency inserts in the fire place for heat and to boil water.  We have got to get some home-based generation system like wind or solar to run the pump.  All of these systems could off-set our regular energy usage as well, which does have a positive effect on the planet.  But in a big storm situation, it would have a pretty positive effect on our family too.