Being Prepared . . .

What a week!  For many in the Southeast, it will not be forgotten any time soon.  For our small neighborhood the devastation was great, BUT so were the blessings.  There were several families down our main road who suffered much material ruin, but I have heard of NO deaths in our community.  Homes can be repaired, lost lives are so much harder to bear!  It was such a blessing to me to see how our community responded to the needs around us.  I am ashamed to admit that there are families here that we have waved to for over ten years, but have not taken the time to meet until this last week.  And what precious families they are!!  I aspire to be a better neighbor in the future!

Thankfully our family was without power for only two days!  It was a good test for us.  We had gathered much water before the storms began, and so when the power went out and the water pump no longer worked we had the water we needed . . . water for flushing the commode, for washing, for cooking and drinking.  Even without power, we have a propane stove and so we are able to continue cooking (my friend in Chattanooga has been using her camping stove for almost six days!)  So, we did not go hungry!  But we did find some interesting discrepancies in our "preparedness" supplies . . . we had two crank style radios that we have had for some time that we realized were both broken.  One of them we finally were able to get working with some AA batteries.  The other larger issue was our generator.  We have also had it stored for some time and when we tried to hook it up, we found that it would not work properly.  That was a great disappointment!

I guess the moral to the story for us, is to check your stashes more frequently to make sure everything is still in working order.  Some of these items we have "counted" on.  The other thing I realized during the power outage was that I had to rely on my flour stores.  Without a generator to power my grain mill - and I am very unhappy to say that I do not have a hand mill :( - I had to just use flour.  Not the end of the world, but something I need to consider if I intend to be grinding wheat in some future, perhaps "longer" power outage.

"The Lord is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble"