Glad you are both doing well. I am enjoying reading about your adventures without power. Sometimes, as your Dad says, it really can be a special time,(though lots of work)and it's full of learning. I wanted to let you know of something I read online a while ago. If you have a heavy cast iron pot and wanted to make a stew or something, apparently, you can heat the pot and contents up to over 180 degrees F and cook it a bit. You then take it off the heat and just wrap the whole thing up in blankets and in about the same time as a crock pot, it is supposed to cook the food, without using any heat source. It is called "retained heat cooking". I have not tried it yet but it looked interesting.

Have a Merry Christmas and stay warm and dry. Glad you didn't have to drive on those icy roads.

Oh what I would do to be cut off from civilization for a few weeks! I dream of a cabin with a wood burning stove and a pot of beans or stew on it... Dick Proenneke (of Alaskan fame http://www.dickproenneke.com/ ) would drop ingredients in a pot on the wood stove when he would leave in the morning and then come back to a cooked dinner. I dream of that some day... One day. Not for a while though I guess.

Glad you are doing OK. Looks like another weather system headed your way. We dealt with it early today (tornadoes galore) and my friends in the Ozarks are dealing with it at present.

We're thinking of having a traditional wood stove on hand during no-electricity times to make cooking simpler. Unfortunately, our exterior wood stove just doesn't get hot enough on the surface to cook anything. (Which is good because it means that the heat is going into the sleeve and then into the house, but bad for cooking!)

It is awfully nice to be outside the world for a few days --- alone with your thoughts and the farm.