It’s been a fairly um… aggressive… winter. Mother nature ‘aint pulling punches. The bitch!
But I’m up to it. I have the tools to get by. Barely.
It was a very cold in the morning morning and I was working in an outbuilding with fair insulation but weak power. I have a little heater that does the job perfectly in reasonable conditions but it just can’t keep up once the ambient temp approaches -20. It’s just underpowered. But I’m not equipped for more power load so I blasted my Mr. Buddy Heater a few minutes to take the chill off. It did great but the area isn’t vented so I turned it off and tried to just power thorough. The day started cold and got colder. The electric heater kept the room tolerable, if not comfortable. Then right after sunset I blew a fuse. One of those shitty old screw in types. Worse yet, the fuse is located in a dilapidated barn behind many snowdrifts. Yuck! (Photos are grainy because I was using a half frozen cheapskate phone.) Kudos to Mrs. Curmudgeon for bringing me some fresh fuses from town!
After wading through nut deep snowdrifts to the old barn I had juice back on. But who knows how long? I decided to brush off and test out “plan B”; my little generator. It took a few pulls but once it was running it was a sweet as ever. It’s been sitting several months so a “shake out run” was in order anyway. I can run a single heater with the generator and a heater with shore power (and alternate a bit to take the pressure of the barn’s wiring). It’s crude but it works.
The real hero of the day was a slick little flashlight Mrs. Curmudgeon got me for Christmas. Without it I’d have probably stuck my finger in the blown fuse socket in the pitch black barn… which admittedly would have at least warmed me up. Damn is it cold out there!
The flashlight is very clever. I had it on my “wish list” on Amazon. It has a USB charging feature which was the real draw. I intend it to be the backup power should my SpotX crap out somewhere remote in a situation that’s… significant. Unlikely but I like to prepare. There’s a reason parachutes have a reserve. The flashlight, which saved my ass, as a feature was almost a second thought. You might want to check it out. I’ll add the Amazon link to the bottom of this post when I’m near better WiFi.
After all that I was so cold I was ready to climb inside the woodstove. Burning to a crisp has never sounded so warm and inviting. Instead I wrapped up some potatoes, sliced carrots, and meat into little tinfoil packets and cooked them on the coals. (This gave me an excuse to hover over the stove and thaw out properly. It was delicious.) Caveman food; yum!
I could feel the cold air as I read this post and it brought back memories of freezing my a$$ off blowing the snow off our quarter mile driveway with the tractor in a nor’easter in the dark. Man, I don’t miss that even just a little bit!
I finally bought a tractor with a cab. Last February I was thinking “this shit’s gonna’ kill me”. Now plowing the driveway is one of the warmer homestead chores. 🙂 Sadly a tractor cab won’t fix a blown fuse.
The little flashlight was a win though.
You magnificent bastard! What did you get? After last winter I looked at my options around September and went with a skid-steer. Enclosed cab, heater, I figured I’d get more use out of it than a tractor outside the winter, and during winter even though it mainly dumps snow instead of pushing it, I already have equipment to push and well a skidder never stops moving so re-locating drifts would be much faster. Also a lot easier if I’m able to control the limbs that operate the various controls, which would be a new-found ability in my dotage when the temperatures drop. The mighty “20hp of welded steel and sex appeal” Ferguson is still with me (it might be illegal to sell it without involving lawyers and osha), the IH560 with rear-mound 2-stage snowblower is still with me, but I’m getting tired of maintaining tractors older than I am in an unheated pole barn when it’s -30 and there’s a wall of snow between me and them. Saddened, beaten, perhaps even slightly afraid from last year I took out a note for half just to keep some reserve, the payment isn’t even satellite TV money, and suddenly I realized something. Skid-Steers are like Barbies for men — it ain’t the initial cost it’s all the accessories you’re just going to fine a need for! My will-power lasted 90 days, and I bought 2-row tire chains this afternoon. Lord, please help me…
Hear you on the cold. It’s been right around -40 for a week or so here. Those flashlights are skookum as frig! I keep one in my inside jacket pocket and a spare in the truck cause one is none…. The only downside is they’ll run bright and then just quit on ya when the battery goes flat. No dimming down… Thought for ya… I bought a Firman genny at the local sportsman’s whorehouse a few months back. 4500 watt, weighs about 90 lbs, runs about 12 hours on 5 gals and was less than 500 bucks. Got it to run power tools to build the retirement compound.
I like it so much I might buy a second one. They’re only $17.
LED’s just quit. Known problem. An LED has a 0.7volt drop across the terminals. Once your 1.5vdc battery hits 0.7 the thing just quits. It’ll dim from 1.5 to 1.2 to 0.8, but at 0.7vdc that’s the end of lighting. Doesn’t just continue to dim like a bulb, it literally doesn’t have the voltage to keep going and stops right there. Two is one and one is none, once it reaches 0.7vdc.
One of the best Boy Scout meals I eve had was a tinfoil beef stew cooked on the manifold of some old Chevy transport panel van on the way up to the camground on a Friday night. Made camp and we all ate our packets.
Boy Scouts is where I learned about tinfoil dinners too. Just as tasty now as in my youth.
“After all that I was ready to climb into the woodstove. Burning to a crisp has never sounded so warm and inviting.”
I’m sure that you’re familiar with “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” It sounds as though you were tempted to take Sam’s route to thawing out….
“I was so cold I was ready to climb inside the woodstove. Burning to a crisp has never sounded so warm and inviting.”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45081/the-cremation-of-sam-mcgee
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