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complete winter desolation took over and set walks on sheets of ice?? These are the ridicu-
in. Now my wife and I are generally speaking lous things that surge through my mind when
positive people willing to take on even the I am intent to celebrate our Lucky Thirteenth
most challenging projects (see our winery, Anniversary in the throes of a winter power
for instance!). And with my Cuban heritage I outage!
tend to make light of dark moments, so please
don’t take this the wrong way. But we did not
grow up in the country, or as farmers. And
Mother Nature timed this perfectly, striking at
the exact inflection point between Valentines
and Anniversary, when our guard was down
completely. We were caught literally in a false
sense of reality, watching the 1954 epic Seven
Samauri by Kurosawa, and clinging to the last
sip of Pol Roger we committed to the celebra-
tion late at night when we were plunged into
complete darkness. Normally when an outage
occurs there’s a sense of “temporary” to the
event. But this was quite different, and indeed
three things were certain: Caring for 4 pets,
we could not relocate to a neighbor at midni-
ght. The roads themselves were rendered im-
passable in our area by the ice, there would be
no road clearing trucks coming over the hill,
ever. And the temperature was 20F degrees,
headed to 5°, with the promise of wind, snow,
and more ice. For the next 6 days, it turned
out, we would have power at our home for less
than 8 hours, total. We were on our own.
So we had to scramble to gain our footing Going Analog – Wood Furnace Salvation
and work out a plan for sustaining ourselves Thanks to Barbara’s dutiful routine of collecti-
in this rural isolation. Here were some can- ng fallen branches from the back yard, we did
dles reserved for decanting old wine, would in fact have a store of kindling safe and dry
they actually work as a source of illuminati- inside a now-frozen shed. So I took the first
on? And here was our wood furnace, serving watch, set the fire, and at 5AM rekindled it, pla-
as a heat source. Could it also become a hub ced a pot of water on top of the wood furnace
of sustaining action, possibly a culinary opti- and went to bed. Barbara awoke at 7am and
on, day and night, and did we have the fuel we set about the many tasks we could conce-
for sustained use? And here were our dogs ive of – sorting the refrigerator and placing the
– normally calm and content, now begging best frozen items onto the back patio where
to go outside in 10-degree weather, snow, ice they would remain solid; moving milk, cheese,
and wind. Would the arctic air plunge itself butter, champagne, beef and fish we had re-
deep into their Akita “Mountain Bear Hunting” served for the anniversary safely to a cooler
heritage, reveal their primordial instinct and in the now-frigid garage. But most immedia-
provoke them to devour the two cats? Would te threat to my sanity was lack of coffee. So
they pull us off our feet during these winter we devised a plan for coffee using a pour-over
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