One of Those Days

The power went out when the I was in the middle of baking bread, running the dishwasher and washing machine, and hanging out for a coffee after letting the young guineas and chickens out.   The main concern of course was the two week old fluffy guinea fowl relying on the heat lamp in the brooder to stay warm.   Not to mention the lack of internet and the ability to do my job.

Before I had time to think about the next steps, I saw that Flash had stepped over a low bit of the previously horse proof fence.   I dashed out to get him away from our newly planted olive trees, back to the other horses and into their yard.  When I got back I could hear a suspiciously loud guinea fowl and realised I had left the patio door open when rushing to protect the garden.  Fortunately I have spoken to these birds every day of their lives and although they are still essentially wild birds, they are not too frightened of me.   They are still not sure about the magical properties of glass, but  he sidled out when I fully opened the sliding door.  I was relieved that there was no poo in the house.

So back to the power, fortunately we designed the house so we could plug the house supply into a generator and flip a switch to get power.  I got the full (and heavy) generator into the back of the ute and drove it over.   It is only 2.8kw, so I turned off the washing machine, dishwasher and water heater and pulled the cord.   It started on about the third pull, which for me is pretty good.   The bread carried on baking, I had a coffee and when I checked the internet, I saw that the mains power was due to be reconnected in another 2 hours.  My fallback in case I couldn’t get the generator started was to put a blanket over the guineas’ brooder box then use the inverter in the car cigarette lighter to get power for the computer and internet dongle so at least I knew when the power was coming back and I could send the work emails.