Early January 2023| Practical Self Reliance

Ice Storms & Post Holiday Rest

The holidays are over, and we’re entering what’s generally a “quiet time” on the homestead, where we can catch up on indoor projects and plan for the year ahead.

We were hit by an ice storm the week of Christmas, and we’ve just finally finished cleaning up downed trees. I’m ready for a little actual winter R&R!

When trees tip around these parts, they tend to take their whole root ball with them, which is incredibly dangerous. There’s a lot of tension in every part of the tree, as the root ball is potentially hundreds (if not thousands) of pounds, ready to fall back into place when the tree trunk is cut…and potentially whipping back into place while you’re cutting it.

Cutting off a smaller tree at the base of the tipped up rootball of a larger tree.

We’ve been running saws and dealing with our woodlot for a solid decade, and I still hate trees like this…but leaving them as they lay is dangerous too. It’s slow and careful work, slicing small limbs first, seeing where the tension lies and where the tree wants to move.

This tree’s maybe 16 inches thick at the base, and perhaps 50 to 60 feet tall…and it took half the day to clean up. Slow and steady…

But in the end, if you’ve done it right, the wood is on the ground, and everything settles back into place nice and neat.

(Don’t try this at home, seriously. This type of downed tree is incredibly dangerous and should be dealt with by professionals or at least someone with a lot of years running a saw in the woods. If you’d like to learn to use a saw safely, I’d highly recommend the chainsaw classes run by the people at Game of Logging.)

The same ice storm that took these trees down also knocked out power to half of the state (and much of the rest of the country too). Our country was hit particularly hard, and 80% of homes were without power for at least a day. Three days later, on Christmas morning, our grid power came back on, but 40% of our town remained out for over a week.

That’s a long time to be without lights, water, and heat in a frigid Vermont December…as most people are when the power’s out. We’re lucky in that the “grid” is just our backup plan, and how we charge our batteries.

We were fully off the grid for 5 years, and when we connected to the grid, we kept all our off-grid infrastructure. Our appliances are still off-grid appliances, most of which run on DC electricity from batteries, propane, or wood. We have wood-fired hot water, and the solar panels keep the batteries charged on sunny days. When it’s cloudy for too long, we have a generator. (You can read about our system here.)

The grid is just an afterthought and a nice way to charge the batteries without running a noisy generator. At times like this, when the power’s out for everyone on Christmas…I realize just how lucky we are to have a setup like this.

With the grid down, it gave us a chance to check all our systems and backup systems, which is always a good idea. I’d like to say the generator started up instantly and purred like a kitten…but that’s not what happened. Even with plenty of backups, we still had a lot of work to do, but we got it all going in the end.

One of the things that draws down batteries quickly is heavy power demands overnight, when there’s no power coming in on the solar panels, and the generator’s turned off for the night.

Our littles wanted to make sure Santa could find our house on Christmas eve, but they also know that we really have to watch our power usage when the grid’s down…at least at night time.

That gave us the opportunity to test out our portable power bank. Generally, we’d keep it in reserve for a “real emergency,” but in this case, making sure Santa could spot our house from the sky was mission critical to my 5-year-old and 7-year-old.

Ice storms are messy, but they’re a part of living up here in the North Country. They’re also incredibly beautiful in their own way, and the forest is always changed in their aftermath.

Right after storms is one of the best times for winter foraging, as the wind will have knocked down things that are otherwise too high to reach…and often, new patches of ground will be exposed if it is warm enough.

In this particular storm, we lost a lot of large pine and hemlock trees, and their tops are one of the best places to forage usnea lichen. It’d normally be too high up to harvest, but once the trees are down, it’s easy pickings. Since the lichen won’t survive once the tree is down, it’s the perfect time to harvest without worrying about overharvesting a sensitive species.

These days, usnea is mostly made into herbal tinctures since it’s a natural herbal antibiotic, and it’s used to treat topical wounds and infections in the mouth and throat. It’s also used as a respiratory tonic for congestion, coughs, and sinus infections.

Historically, it was packed into wounds as a field dressing to prevent infection, stop bleeding and promote healing.

This time of year, believe it or not, is also a great time to harvest medicinal mushrooms, including:

• Chaga

• Birch Polypore

• Tinder Polypore

• Turkey Tail

• Witches Butter

And more than a dozen other winter mushroom species.

I found a huge cluster of Chaga this week, and I’ll be headed back with an axe to collect some for winter remedies shortly.

While you don’t think of winter as much of a season for foraging, it really is all about opening your eyes to the world around you and seeing resources, even if they’re not bright shining summer berries and fruits.

What are you harvesting, preserving, building, or exploring on your homestead this week? I’d love to hear about it!

Leave me a note in the comments…

(Comments only, please. Emails tend to get lost in my inbox, and as much as I’d love to get back to each and every one, my screen time is very limited…and things fall through the cracks, and emails get buried in my inbox. If you comment here, they’re all in one place, and it’s much easier to get back to every single one.)

Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance