The Zeiger Family Homestead Blog

The egg is, indeed, a marvel of natural engineering.

Yesterday, Aly and I went to town for the first time in 7 days. One of our errands included grocery shopping, so when we returned home we loaded a few things into our backpacks. I had a pile of mail in the bottom of my pack. I set a ham on top, with the flat side up, and on top of this I carefully placed a box of eggs, a dozen and a half.

We hurried home, as it was dinner time. We only stopped briefly to explore the huge expanse of pan ice stranded on the bay before heading through the forest. On the first hill, we saw a flashlight coming our way. Michelle, who had not gone to town with us, had hiked out to meet us. We all turned homeward. We briefly discussed passing her one of the packs, but decided to keep our loads.

When we arrived home, I reached into my pack to pull out the eggs. the box came out—empty! Continue reading →

Shut Down

The severe weather effectively shut down the homestead for a while.

Saturday, when the wind forecast called for 55 knot winds, with gusts to 75, we stopped the wind generator and cut back energy consumption. We had plenty of battery power, but we conserved to make sure we’d see the blow through, as they predicted it would last several days. At the same time, our high barely reached 2°. By the end of the day, we’d managed to heat the cabin interior to about 60°.

Everything stopped. We’d been busy with Aly’s college application, this blog and Self Reliance Works, preparing edits for the short story book signing/reading later this week—all computer-based activities. Instead, we pulled out a favorite puzzle and dedicated the living room floor to it. The cares of the day could go hang—we were snug and warm enough, and we had the excuse to leave it all behind and do something fun all day.

We ventured outside as little as possible, although the beauty of the storm tempted us to make a few short trips. Michelle went out and got a few shots of the frozen sea spray on the beach. We also had to go over to hear the large trees on the cliff above the boathouse trail working the rocks as they swayed in the wind, and to see all the branch tips that had been sheared off the trees over the cabin and scattered around the yard. These were brief trips, though. Too much wind chill.

The Zeiger homestead bight on ice (Photo: Michelle Zeiger.)

Continue reading →

Here’s to the Marvelous Egg!

Shut Down

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